Word: twentieths
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When the curtain first rises, you are plunged into a thickly tangled plot that may take you the whole first act to unravel. Basically, the main character is not really the medieval German emperor, (sigh of relief from those who hate historical plays), but a twentieth-century Italian aristocrat who suffered a fall from his horse during a mock-medieval pageant and remained convinced that he was actually Henry IV. In order to humor him, his relatives have totally recreated Henry's courts, with servants in medieval dress, oil lamps instead of electric lights, visiting abbots and monks--the works...
HENRY OBVIOUSLY arrives at the same conclusion. Although he regains his reason long before those twenty years are up, he keeps mum about it and lets the farce go on. Partly, he really prefers the middle ages (or his view of the middle ages), to the anxiety-ridden twentieth century. Also, being part of recorded history gives him a certain amount of security: he can live in the past and know what to expect instead of living in the present and worrying about the unknown future. But besides all this, Henry feels that he lost his place in the modern...
Pirandello only makes things worse by trying to link this theme to the element of time. Which has greater reality, the eleventh century or the twentieth? Youth or age? Such questions try to squeeze profundity out of mere ambiguity. I doubt that even Pirandello knows where he intends them to lead. The play itself is not always strong enough to bear up under the load of philosophical significance, especially when the philosophy seems inconsistent or even meaningless...
...what of Vietnam, a nation that has felt the sledgehammer effects of twentieth-century warfare directly for the past three decades? As the people of Hanoi emerge from their bomb shelters, what do they feel about the end of the fighting? Do the Vietnamese have the same deeply-rooted doubts about the war and its violence that predominate here...
...that investigators might require newsmen accused of inaccuracy to divulge confidential sources. "We feel it is wrong to suggest that reporters and editors who are willing to risk jail to protect their sources would -or should-be ready to disclose them to the council." M.J. Rossant, director of the Twentieth Century Fund (and a member of the Times's editorial board from 1962 to 1967), denied that disclosure would be necessary. Said Rossant: "Some publishers in Britain were opposed to a press council on the same grounds as Sulzberger, but the vast majority now support...