Morality in Pirandello's Come tu mi vuoi

Morality in Pirandello's Come tu mi vuoi JEROME MAZZARO The choice ending Luigi Pirandello's Come tu mi vuoi (As You Desire Me, 1930) has not received the attention it deserves. L'Ignota's decision to go off with Salter rather than remain with Pieri comes as close as any decision by a Pirandello character to makiog a moral choice. Domenico Vittorioi's view that the decision is that of a soul "that has tried to live 00 this earth and could not" is, perhaps, not so overstated as John Gassner would have one believe.' Nonetheless, the role's being often thought of as simply an acting vehicle for Marta Abba (for whom it was written) and Pirandello's allowing Hollywood to alter the choice have lulled critics into minimizing the decision's moral significance, provided, of course, that whatever decision occurs is convincingly presented. The play's historical and literary antecedents argue for the film 's "happy" ending. The Bruneri-Canella controversy and trial which inspired it ended finally with the amnesiac choosing to stay with the wealthy "wife," and Giovacchino Forzano's libretto for Giacomo Puccini's Gianni Schicchi (1918), which is cited as another source, ends with Schiechi better off than when he began, if one discounts the negative afterworld aspects of Dante's:telling in the Inferno (30: 25-45). All the same, L'Ignota's decision offers a resolution to the quandary of identity that audiences were left in with Cosi e(se vi pare) (Right You Are [If You Think So], 1917) and the rejection of normal reality in Enrico IV (r922). L'Ignota decides who she is in a reality whieh audiences can accept, and in doing so, she chooses what strikes playgoers as apparently the less attractive alternative because, presumably, it offers growth. The play opens in the living room of Salter's Berlin apartment. He and his daughter Mop are awaiting the return of L'Ignota. He has reached an apparent breaking point as a result of her bringing gentlemen revellers back with her. He has a pistol but assures Mop that he does not intend to use it. L'Ignota returns from her dancer's job with the usual assemblage of gentlemen, among whom is Boffi. Together with Salter and Mop, Boffi manages to send the Modern Drama, 36 (1993) 556 Morality in Come tu mi vuoi 557 others away. He discloses to the remaining group that L'Ignota is, in reality, Signora Lucia Pieri. Asked to tell of Signora Pieri's life and why he believes L'Ignota is she, he claims to have known her since she was a baby. In an effort to escape the quarrel with Salter that ensues, L'Ignota confesses to knowing Boffi and to being Signora Pieri. As Boffi relates her abduction from her home by German soldiers, she begins to assent to various details. Complaining that her current life has become mad, she is drawn to the idea of a husband who has been searching ten years for his missing wife. Wanting no longer "to remember anything" (538), she wishes "to be only [her] body" (538) and, on those terms, consents to be "recreated" if Pieri "can give a soul to this body, which is that of his Cia" (538). Salter, in reaction, shoots himself, and in the confusion of getting him to the hospital, L'Ignota is left alone to consider her state as "a body without a name" (538). Four months later, winter and death have turned to spring and rebirth. At the Pieri villa, Aunt Lena and Uncle Salesio discuss the effects of Cia's return. Having given her the home as a dowry, Salesio is about to lose claim to it again. He is being chided by Lena for not having had Pieri's faith in Cia's being alive and for starting legal proceedings to have her officially declared dead and the villa taken from Pieri. They await the arrival of Cia's sister Inez to acknowledge Cia's return and stop the proceedings. L'Ignota enters, dressed to look like the large portrait of Cia, prompting Lena's reaction that she has made herself into...