SOURCE: "Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore," in Luigi Pirandello: An Approach to His Theatre, Edinburgh University Press, 1980, pp. 137-69.

Ragusa is an Italian-born American critic and educator with a special interest in Italian literature. In the following excerpt, she offers a thematic and structural analysis of Six Characters in Search of an Author.

Multifacetedness (poliedricità), wrote Lampedusa, is the distinguishing characteristic of works of absolute first rank. Because Sei personaggi possesses this quality and presents different aspects of itself to different viewers, I judge it a work difficult enough to require exegesis and rich enough to withstand it. Of the three bodies of material that for purposes of analysis can be seen as constituting distinct structural elements in the play—(1) the story of the Characters' lives, (2) the attempt on the part of Manager and Actors to turn this story into a play, and (3) Pirandello's own telling of the...