That's the way it is

So it is (if it seems so to you) ( Italian original title: Così è (se vi pare)) is an Italian drama by Luigi Pirandello . The premiere was on June 18, 1917 in Milan .

The piece became Pirandello's first lasting success. The drama version was preceded (probably 1914) by the novella La signora Frola e il signor Ponza, suo genero (German: Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, her son-in-law). The play was first published in 1918 in the magazine Nuova Antologia and in the same year again in the first volume of the Maschere nude (naked masks).

action

A family of three is new to a small town and behaves strangely insofar as they live separately. Signora Frola's son-in-law Signor Ponza explains that his mother-in-law has gone mad over the death of her daughter Signora Ponza, his first wife. The mother-in-law mistook his second wife for her daughter, his first wife.

Signora Frola, on the other hand, says that her son-in-law did not recognize his wife after her stay in a psychiatric hospital. So they faked a second wedding with the same woman to calm him down.

Both provide a plausible explanation of their version, but small town society now wants to know which version is correct. Only Lamberto Laudisi upsets everyone by sometimes considering both to be possible at the same time, but later even doubts whether Signora Ponza the son-in-law's wife even exists. Finally the company agrees on the plan to interview this woman themselves. At the end she says contradictingly that she is Frola's daughter. - And the second wife of Ponzas. For herself she is nobody. She is who she is believed to be.

output

Luigi Pirandello: So it is (if it seems so to you) in: ders .: Collected Works, Vol. 10: So it is (if it seems so to you) The early pieces, Ullstein Berlin 1998 ISBN 3-549-05539-0