Criticism > Drama Criticism > Pirandello, Luigi - Henry Iv

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

HENRY IV

PRODUCTION REVIEWS

Stark Young (review date 6 February 1924)

SOURCE: "The Pirandello Play," in The New Republic, Vol. XXXVn, No. 479, 6 February 1924, p. 287.

[In the following review of the New York City stage production of Henry IV, Young criticizes the acting as weak but lauds the drama's "intellectual beauty."]

The Pirandello play at the Forty-Fourth Street Theatre is important not by reason of any display or novelty or foreign importation but through the mere occurrence on our stage of a real intellectual impact, a high and violent world of concepts and living. So far as the practical end of it goes Pirandello's Henry IV is difficult for our theatre. Its range and complexity of ideas are made more difficult by the presentation that it gets now and that it would be almost sure to get one way or another in any of our theatres.

The play is fortunate in its translation, certainly;...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Biographical Information
3. Major Works
4. Critical Reception
5. Principal Works
6. Author Commentary
7. Overviews And General Studies
8. Six Characters In Search Of An Author
9. Critical Commentary
10. Henry Iv
11. Further Reading
12. Copyright

1. Drama