Pirandello's Henry IV

by Luigi Pirandello

  ORDULF (eagerly) Would you like me to fetch the lamp?

  HENRY The lamp, yes . . . the lamp. Do you think I don’t know that as soon as I turn my back, off to bed with my flickering lamp . . . you switch on the lights?—same thing in the throne room. I pretend not to notice.

  ORDULF Ah, well, in that case, would you like . . .

  HENRY No, it’s blinding; I want my lamp.

  ORDULF Fine—it’s right outside.

  Ordulf goes out, returning immediately with an antique lamp—one of those you hold by a ring on top.

  HENRY Good. Shed a little light. Sit here. No, not bolt upright . . . make yourself comfortable . . . And I’ll go here . . . Pity we can’t order up a nice moonbeam. The moon is our friend. I often feel grateful to her . . . lost to myself, gazing up at her from my window . . . Who would believe that she knows nine hundred and twenty-seven years have gone by and I, sitting at my window like any poor fellow, can’t really be Henry IV? I say, what a lovely picture we make: “The Emperor Among His Faithful Counsellors: Night.” Isn’t this nice?

  LANDOLF (quietly to Bertold) Do you realise? If we’d only known it was all pretend . . .

  HENRY What was?

  LANDOLF Er . . . what I mean is . . . this morning I was just saying to him . . . (He points at Bertold.) because he’s just joined . . . I was saying, what a shame, what with our costumes, and lots more in wardrobe, and with that great throne room . . .

  HENRY What about it? What’s a shame?

  LANDOLF Well . . . that we never knew . . .

  HENRY That this comedy was a comedy?

  LANDOLF Because we thought . . .

  HAROLD Yes, that it was all real.

  HENRY And it isn’t? You don’t think it’s real?

  LANDOLF Well, if you’re saying . . .

  HENRY What I’m saying is that you’re all stupid. You should have acted it for yourselves, not for my sake or the occasional visitor, but just like this, behaving naturally, with no one to see . . . eating, sleeping, scratching your arse, living, alive in the remote, romantic, sepulchral past, here at the court of Henry IV! And reflecting that nine hundred years on, there are people scuffling about in a permanent state of torment desperate to know how things will turn out for them. While you, meanwhile, are already history! Whatever happens has happened, however painful the events and brutal the battles, they’re history and nothing can change them, they’re fixed, forever . . . so you can sit back and admire how every cause leads obediently to its effect, with perfect logic, how every event fits neatly with every other. That’s the wonderful thing about history.

  LANDOLF Beautiful . . . beautiful . . .

  HENRY Yes—but now it’s over. Now that you’re in on it I can’t do it anymore. I can’t take my flickering lamp to bed. I’m bored with it all! (almost to himself, violent with contained anger) By God, I’ll make her sorry she came! Dressed up as my mother-in-law! And that Abbot! Dragging along a doctor to study me. Thought they’d cure me, did they? Idiots! I’d love to give at least one of them a hard slap—yes, that one, a famous swordsman, I believe. He’ll run me through! Well, we’ll see, won’t we . . . ?

  There is a knock at the door.

  HENRY (cont.) Who is it?

  GIOVANNI (offstage) Deo gratis.

  HAROLD Oh, it’s Giovanni come to do his evening performance as the little monk!

  ORDULF Good, let’s make him do the whole thing!

  HENRY (sternly) You foolish boy—you don’t understand . . . making fun of a poor old man who’s only doing this out of love for me.

  LANDOLF (to Ordulf) We have to take it seriously.

  HENRY Exactly. Deadly serious. Otherwise you’re making a cheap joke of truth.

  Henry opens the door and lets Giovanni in, dressed as a humble monk, with a parchment scroll under his arm.

  HENRY (cont.) Come in, Father, (continuing to them) All the documents concerning my life and reign that had anything good to say about me were destroyed by my enemies. Nothing survived except this, my biography, written down by a humble and devoted monk . . . and you’d make fun of him? (to Giovanni, fondly) Sit down, Father . . . sit there and . . . keep the lamp by you.

  Henry sets the oil lamp next to Giovanni.

  HENRY (cont.) Ready?

  GIOVANNI (unrolling the parchment) Ready, Your Majesty.

  HENRY So, write . . . (dictating) “Henry IV’s excommunication gave the barons their opportunity. On October sixteenth, 1076, at the diet of Tribur, they decreed that Henry would lose his kingdom if he did not receive absolution within a year and a day. But he escaped to Italy, and at Canossa in January 1077, in the castle of his enemy Matilda of Tuscany, he threw himself on the mercy of the Pope.

  ACT THREE

  The throne room is dark. The canvasses of the two paintings have been removed, and in their place, inside the frames, are Frida, dressed as “Countess of Tuscany,” as we’ve seen her in Act Two and Carlo Di Nolli, dressed as “Henry IV,” frozen in the same postures as the paintings. Henry IV enters, holding the lamp.

  FRIDA Henry!

  Henry stops at the sound of the voice and turns, frightened.

  HENRY Who’s that?

  FRIDA (slightly louder) Henry!

  Henry shrieks and drops the oil lamp, puts his arms around his head, and makes as if to run away. Frida jumps from the frame yelling like a madwoman.

  FRIDA (cont.) Henry! Henry! I’m scared!

  Di Nolli jumps down, rushing to Frida, who keeps on screaming, almost fainting.

  DI NOLLI It’s all right, Frida, it’s me, I’m here . . .

  From the door everybody rushes in: the Doctor, Matilda (dressed as “Countess of Tuscany”), Belcredi, Landolf, Harold, Ordulf, Bertold, and Giovanni. One of them switches on the lights in the room. Henry IV stands there watching, confused. The others, ignoring him, rush to help and comfort Frida, who is sobbing in the arms of her fiancé. They are all talking in great confusion.

  BELCREDI Finita la comedia!

  DOCTOR All over!

  MATILDA He’s made fools of us, Frida! Do you see?—he was cured all along!

  DI NOLLI Cured?

  BELCREDI It was all an act. Everything’s all right.

  FRIDA I’m so scared!

  MATILDA There’s nothing to be scared of now—look at him!

  DI NOLLI What do you mean, cured?

  DOCTOR So it seems, the two-faced . . .

  BELCREDI That’s right—(pointing to the four Counsellors) they told us all about it.

  MATILDA He’s been cured for ages—he confessed.

  DI NOLLI But he’s only just—this moment—

  BELCREDI It was all put-on, he was laughing at you up his sleeve—us, too, for all our pains.

  DI NOLLI I can’t believe it!—making a fool of his own sister right up to her death?

  Henry has remained, all hunched up, peeping out at them. He stands up and shouts at Di Nolli.

  HENRY Go on! Yes? Keep going! Tell me more! Go on!

  DI NOLLI (startled) Go on what?

  HENRY She wasn’t just “your sister” was she?

  DI NOLLI My sister? I said your sister—you made her come here to the bitter end dressed up as your mother, Agnes!

  HENRY Don’t you mean your mother?

  DI NOLLI Of course I mean my mother!

  HENRY But your mother’s been dead for centuries—you’ve just arrived fresh from there . . . jumping out newborn from your frame . . . How do you know I haven’t been mourning her for years, in my heart, even dressed as I am?

  MATILDA What’s he talking about?

  DOCTOR Calm down, everyone, please . . .

  HENRY What am I talking about? I’m asking you, wasn’t Agnes the mother of Henry IV? (turning to Frida) You should know, Countess, if anyone does.

  FRIDA Me? I don’t know anything!

  DOCTOR He’s having a relapse—stand back everyone.

  BELCREDI Relapse, my eye! He’s playing games again.

  HENRY Me? Who was in th
e picture frames? Himself? Look at him, standing there—Henry IV.

  BELCREDI We’ve had enough of this joke.

  HENRY Who said it was a joke?

  DOCTOR Don’t provoke him, for God’s sake.

  BELCREDI They did! (pointing again at the four Counsellors) Them!

  HENRY You? Did you tell them it was a joke?

  LANDOLF No . . . we just said you were cured.

  BELCREDI There you are. (to Matilda) Aren’t you embarrassed at yourself?—look at him (indicating Di Nolli)—look at yourself, Countess—playing at dressing up!

  MATILDA Oh, shut up! What does it matter who’s wearing what, if he’s really cured?

  HENRY Yes, I’m really cured, (to Belcredi) But I haven’t finished with you yet. (aggressively) Are you aware that in twenty years no one has dared to come into my presence dressed like you and this gentleman here?

  Henry points to the Doctor.

  BELCREDI Of course I am. For that matter, when I appeared before you this morning I came dressed—

  HENRY —as a monk, of course!

  BELCREDI You mistook me for Peter Damian, and the only reason I didn’t laugh was—

  HENRY You thought I was crazy. So, now that I’m sane, you can jeer at her to see her in costume? And yet, you might have reflected that, in my eyes, she looks . . . Oh, what does it matter? (turning suddenly to the Doctor) You’re a doctor?

  DOCTOR Er—yes. . .

  HENRY So all this was your idea. Don’t you realise you could have plunged my mind back onto the dark pit of madness . . . making pictures talk and leap out of their frames?

  Henry observes Frida and Di Nolli, then Matilda, and lastly he looks at his own clothes.

  HENRY (cont.) Double, double . . . Splendid, just what the doctor ordered for the lunatic . . . (pointing at Belcredi) To him it’s just another game of dressing up. (addressing Belcredi) And now—off with the motley, eh?—so I can come along with you—do you think?

  BELCREDI With me—with us . . .

  HENRY Where should we go, then? How about the club? In best bib and tucker. Or shall we go home with the Countess, the two of us?

  BELCREDI Whatever you like. Why not? You don’t want to stay here—all alone and for evermore—keeping up a carnival joke that went wrong? It’s amazing how you managed to keep it going once you’d recovered from the accident.

  HENRY Ah, yes—but when the horse threw me and I hit my head, I actually did lose my mind, I’m not sure for how long.

  DOCTOR Ah! Most interesting! How long roughly?

  HENRY About twelve years. (to Belcredi) Yes—knowing nothing about what life had saved up for you and not for me, from the day of the carnival onwards . . . all the changes, friends who turned against me, or how my place was taken, in . . . let’s say . . . the heart of a woman I loved . . . not knowing who’d died, who’d gone away . . . all that, you know, was no joke.

  BELCREDI That’s not what I said—I was talking about later when . . .

  HENRY Oh—later! Well, one day . . . Are you listening, Doctor?—I’m a very interesting case, you should take notes . . . Well, one day . . . all by itself, God knows how, the damage here (He touches his forehead.) . . . mended itself . . . I open my eyes slowly, to begin with I’m not sure if I’m asleep or awake—and then, yes, I’m awake, I touch things, the fog is clearing . . . I’m cured . . . And now—just as he says (pointing to Belcredi)—yes, throw off the masquerade! Shake off the nightmare! Open the doors and windows! Breathe in the air! Quick! Away! (more calmly) But where? For what? For everybody to point a furtive finger?—“There goes Henry IV!” And not as you see me now, but out in the world, arm in arm with you, my dear friends!

  BELCREDI It wouldn’t be like that.

  MATILDA Who’d ever . . .? It’s unthinkable. It was an accident.

  HENRY They used to say I was cuckoo before I had the accident. (to Belcredi) You know that better than anyone—anybody who stuck up for me had you to deal with.

  BELCREDI Oh, come on, it was all in good heart.

  HENRY And there’s my hair—look.

  BELCREDI But mine’s going grey too.

  HENRY Yes, but there’s a difference. I turned grey in here, as Henry IV. Can you understand what that means? I didn’t realise!—I just noticed it one day, it was something of a shock, because I knew at once it wasn’t just my hair. I was going grey, I was rotting away. I was done, I’d missed the feast.

  BELCREDI You weren’t left abandoned . . .

  HENRY I know. They longed for me to get better. Even the one who was right behind me and jabbed my horse till the blood ran . . .

  DI NOLLI What?

  HENRY . . . jabbed it to make it rear up, till it threw me.

  MATILDA My God! It’s the first I’ve heard of this!

  HENRY Was that in good heart, too, do you suppose?

  MATILDA Who? Who was behind us?

  HENRY What does it matter? It could as well have been any of those who went on to the banquet and would have saved me their meagre leftovers of sympathy, a few bones of contrition on the edge of their plates. Thank you very much!

  So, Doctor—see if I’m not a first in the annals of lunacy! I decided to stay mad, finding everything I needed here for a completely new form of amusement, to live as a madman of sound mind. Maybe it was to get my own back on the paving stone that cracked my head. What I saw when I came round was desolation, bleak and empty, and I decided to deck it out in all the colours and splendour of that long-gone carnival day when you . . . oh, there you are, my lady . . . when you had your triumph . . . and to make everyone who came here continue—this time for my diversion—that celebrated masquerade which had been—for you if not for me—-just the whim of a day . . . to make it last forever, not as make-believe now but as the real thing, the genuine mad article: the right clothes, the throne room, the four Privy Counsellors—all of them traitors, I gather—(turning to them) I’d like to know what you think you’ve gained by it? If I’m cured, you’re out of a job. I must have been mad to confide in you. But now it’s my turn. Guess what? They were thinking we could carry on this charade behind your backs!

  Henry begins to laugh. The others, with the exception of Matilda, laugh too.

  HENRY (cont.) Don’t blame them. (shaking his clothes) We are what we wear. Look, this is an obvious, deliberate caricature of that other charade which is the life we live as puppets . . . so you have to forgive them, they don’t realise it’s only their frocks. (to Belcredi) You soon enter into the spirit of it. You start behaving as if you’re in some tragedy, like this . . . (He demonstrates.) I’m cured, gentlemen, because I’ve woken up to my madness. So I’m calm. Your problem is you haven’t woken up to yours, so you toss and turn your whole lives through.

  BELCREDI Oh, so in the end, we’re the madmen, are we?

  HENRY Well, if you weren’t crazy, would you have shown up here with her?

  BELCREDI I might if I thought you were crazy.

  HENRY And what about her?

  BELCREDI Ah, her . . . I don’t know about her. She’s hanging on to your every word, she seems quite entranced by your sane-as-a hatter emergence. (to Matilda) Since you’re dressed for the part, Countess, why don’t you join him?

  MATILDA Damn your insolence!

  HENRY Take no notice!—he can’t help provoking me, though the Doctor warned him. (to Belcredi) Why should I care about what happened between us?—the part you played in my unlucky love . . . (indicating Belcredi to Matilda) . . . the part he now plays in your life! My life has been this one here. I wasn’t there when you got old. Was that what you wanted to tell me, to show me, by dressing up, stooping to this—on doctor’s orders? Nice one, Doctor. “Before” and “After,” eh? But unfortunately for you, I’m not that crazy. I knew damn well he wasn’t Henry IV. Because I’m Henry IV. I’ve been Henry IV for years . . . stuck behind my mask, while she’s lived life and enjoyed herself for twenty years . . . and become—look at her there—someone I don’t know anymore . . . because I kno
w her like this . . . (pointing at Frida and moving closer to her) to me this will always be her. Now you look like little children ready to jump out of your skins. (to Frida) And you were frightened, weren’t you, my sweet, by the game they tricked you into playing. How could you know it wasn’t the game they thought it was? Oh, what a marvellous terror!—the dream that comes to life, never more alive than in you. You were only an image but they made you flesh . . . blood . . . breath. You’re mine—mine!—mine by right!

  Henry takes her in his arms, laughing insanely, while everybody shrieks in terror; but when they rush to pull Frida away from him he becomes menacing and shouts to his four Counsellors.

  HENRY (cont.) Hold them off! Hold them! I order you!

  The four Counsellors, stunned, fascinated, automatically try to restrain Di Nolli, the Doctor, and Belcredi.

  BELCREDI Let go of her! Let go! You’re no madman!

  Henry takes Di Nolli’s sword.

  HENRY Oh no? (He runs Belcredi through.) Are you sure?

  Belcredi screams. Everyone rushes to Belcredi’s aid, shouting in confusion.

  DI NOLLI Is it bad?

  BERTOLD Right in the guts!

  DOCTOR I warned you! Didn’t I tell you?

  FRIDA Oh my God!

  DI NOLLI Frida, stay by me.

  MATILDA He’s mad!—Mad!

  DI NOLLI Hold him down!

  BELCREDI (protesting fiercely) Oh no . . . there’s nothing crazy about you! He’s not mad! He isn’t mad!

  They take Belcredi, continuing to yell, out. Among the cries there is a more piercing one from Matilda, followed by silence.

  Henry remains onstage, between Landolf, Harold, and Ordulf, with his eyes wide open, in astonishment.

  HENRY Now . . . yes . . . no two ways about it . . . Together again . . . Henry the Fourth, now and forever.