# Six Characters in Search of an Author: every role by lines, words, and stage time

> Luigi Pirandello, translated by Edward Storer. 24 speaking roles, 14,567 words, about 104 minutes of speech.

- URL: https://www.offbook.com/plays/six-characters-in-search-of-an-author
- Last updated: 2026-10-08

**The Father** has the most to say in Six Characters in Search of an Author: about 616 lines and 5,453 words, 37.4% of the play. Pirandello’s play begins when six unfinished characters interrupt a theater rehearsal and demand that their story be staged. The Father carries more than a third of the words, The Manager about a quarter, and The Step-Daughter more than a fifth. Together these three hold about 85% of the play, while The Mother speaks less than 4% of it.

- Speaking roles: 24
- Scenes: 3
- Words: 14,567
- Speech time: 104 min

## Every role, largest first

| Role | Lines | Words | Share | Minutes | Scenes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| The Father | 616 | 5,453 | 37.4% | 39.0 | 3 |
| The Manager | 459 | 3,699 | 25.4% | 26.4 | 3 |
| The Step-Daughter | 371 | 3,247 | 22.3% | 23.2 | 3 |
| The Son | 103 | 865 | 5.9% | 6.2 | 3 |
| The Mother | 72 | 568 | 3.9% | 4.1 | 3 |
| Leading Man | 30 | 186 | 1.3% | 1.3 | 3 |
| Leading Lady | 25 | 162 | 1.1% | 1.2 | 3 |
| Prompter | 13 | 93 | 0.6% | 0.7 | 2 |
| Maddame Pace | 8 | 61 | 0.4% | 0.4 | 1 |
| Juvenile Lead | 10 | 52 | 0.4% | 0.4 | 3 |
| Property Man | 10 | 43 | 0.3% | 0.3 | 2 |
| L’Ingénue | 4 | 26 | 0.2% | 0.2 | 2 |
| Third Actor | 4 | 26 | 0.2% | 0.2 | 1 |
| The Actors | 2 | 13 | 0.1% | 0.1 | 2 |
| Door-Keeper | 2 | 10 | 0.1% | 0.1 | 1 |
| Leading Actor | 1 | 10 | 0.1% | 0.1 | 1 |
| An Actor | 2 | 9 | 0.1% | 0.1 | 1 |
| Other Actors | 1 | 9 | 0.1% | 0.1 | 1 |
| Fourth Actor | 1 | 8 | 0.1% | 0.1 | 1 |
| Madame Pace | 1 | 7 | 0% | 0.1 | 1 |
| Fifth Actor | 1 | 4 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| Some Actors | 1 | 3 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| Machinist | 1 | 2 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| Some Actresses | 1 | 2 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |

## Who speaks in which scene

Words each role speaks in each scene (scene: words). Scenes: Act 1 = Act 1; Act 2 = Act 2; Act 3 = Act 3.

- **The Father**: Act 1 (3,082), Act 2 (1,004), Act 3 (1,367)
- **The Manager**: Act 1 (827), Act 2 (1,829), Act 3 (1,043)
- **The Step-Daughter**: Act 1 (1,241), Act 2 (1,380), Act 3 (626)
- **The Son**: Act 1 (344), Act 2 (177), Act 3 (344)
- **The Mother**: Act 1 (270), Act 2 (186), Act 3 (112)

## The longest speeches

| Speech | Scene | Words | Lines |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| The Step-Daughter: “My little darling! You’re frightened, aren’t you? You don’t know where we are, do you? What is the stage? It’s a place, baby, you know, where people play at being serious, a place where they act comedies. We’ve got to act a comedy now, dead serious, you know; and you’re in it also, little one. Oh darling, darling, what a horrid comedy you’ve got to play! What a wretched part they’ve found for you! A garden … a fountain … look … just suppose, kiddie, it’s here. Where, you say? Why, right here in the middle. It’s all pretence you know. That’s the trouble, my pet: it’s all make-believe here. It’s better to imagine it though, because if they fix it up for you, it’ll only be painted cardboard, painted cardboard for the rockery, the water, the plants. … Ah, but I think a baby like this one would sooner have a make-believe fountain than a real one, so she could play with it. What a joke it’ll be for the others! But for you, alas! not quite such a joke: you who are real, baby dear, and really play by a real fountain this big and green and beautiful, with ever so many bamboos around it that are reflected in the water, and a whole lot of little ducks swimming about. … No, Rosetta, no, your mother doesn’t bother about you on account of that wretch of a son there. I’m in the devil of a temper, and as for that lad. … What have you got there? What are you hiding? Ah! where did you get this?” | Act 2 | 288 | 29 |
| The Father: “For the drama lies all in this—in the conscience that I have, that each one of us has. We believe this conscience to be a single thing, but it is many-sided. There is one for this person, and another for that. Diverse consciences. So we have this illusion of being one person for all, of having a personality that is unique in all our acts. But it isn’t true. We perceive this when, tragically perhaps, in something we do, we are as it were, suspended, caught up in the air on a kind of hook. Then we perceive that all of us was not in that act, and that it would be an atrocious injustice to judge us by that action alone, as if all our existence were summed up in that one deed. Now do you understand the perfidy of this girl? She surprised me in a place, where she ought not to have known me, just as I could not exist for her; and she now seeks to attach to me a reality such as I could never suppose I should have to assume for her in a shameful and fleeting moment of my life. I feel this above all else. And the drama, you will see, acquires a tremendous value from this point. Then there is the position of the others … his. …” | Act 1 | 226 | 23 |
| The Father: “Was it my fault if that fellow carried you away? It happened quite suddenly; for after he had obtained some job or other, I could find no trace of them; and so, not unnaturally, my interest in them dwindled. But the drama culminated unforeseen and violent on their return, when I was impelled by my miserable flesh that still lives. … Ah! what misery, what wretchedness is that of the man who is alone and disdains debasing liaisons! Not old enough to do without women, and not young enough to go and look for one without shame. Misery? It’s worse than misery; it’s a horror; for no woman can any longer give him love; and when a man feels this. … One ought to do without, you say? Yes, yes, I know. Each of us when he appears before his fellows is clothed in a certain dignity. But every man knows what unconfessable things pass within the secrecy of his own heart. One gives way to the temptation, only to rise from it again, afterwards, with a great eagerness to reestablish one’s dignity, as if it were a tombstone to place on the grave of one’s shame, and a monument to hide and sign the memory of our weaknesses. Everybody’s in the same case. Some folks haven’t the courage to say certain things, that’s all!” | Act 1 | 223 | 23 |
| The Father: “He disappears soon, you know. And the baby too. She is the first to vanish from the scene. The drama consists finally in this: when that mother reenters my house, her family born outside of it, and shall we say superimposed on the original, ends with the death of the little girl, the tragedy of the boy and the flight of the elder daughter. It cannot go on, because it is foreign to its surroundings. So after much torment, we three remain: I, the mother, that son. Then, owing to the disappearance of that extraneous family, we too find ourselves strange to one another. We find we are living in an atmosphere of mortal desolation which is the revenge, as he scornfully said of the Demon of Experiment, that unfortunately hides in me. Thus, sir, you see when faith is lacking, it becomes impossible to create certain states of happiness, for we lack the necessary humility. Vaingloriously, we try to substitute ourselves for this faith, creating thus for the rest of the world a reality which we believe after their fashion, while, actually, it doesn’t exist. For each one of us has his own reality to be respected before God, even when it is harmful to one’s very self.” | Act 1 | 209 | 21 |
| The Manager: “Ah! Just your part! But, if you will pardon me, there are other parts than yours: His and hers! On the stage you can’t have a character becoming too prominent and overshadowing all the others. The thing is to pack them all into a neat little framework and then act what is actable. I am aware of the fact that everyone has his own interior life which he wants very much to put forward. But the difficulty lies in this fact: to set out just so much as is necessary for the stage, taking the other characters into consideration, and at the same time hint at the unrevealed interior life of each. I am willing to admit, my dear young lady, that from your point of view it would be a fine idea if each character could tell the public all his troubles in a nice monologue or a regular one hour lecture. You must restrain yourself, my dear, and in your own interest, too; because this fury of yours, this exaggerated disgust you show, may make a bad impression, you know. After you have confessed to me that there were others before him at Madame Pace’s and more than once. …” | Act 2 | 201 | 21 |
| The Manager: “Well then, we’ll have it in the garden. Everything shall happen in the garden; and we’ll group the other scenes there. Here, a backcloth with trees and something to do as a fountain basin. Ah, you’ve fixed it up. Good! This is just to give an idea, of course. The Boy, instead of hiding behind the doors, will wander about here in the garden, hiding behind the trees. But it’s going to be rather difficult to find a child to do that scene with you where she shows you the flowers. Come forward a little, will you please? Let’s try it now! Come along! come along! It’s a nice business, this lad here. What’s the matter with him? We’ll have to give him a word or two to say. Come on! come on! Let me see you a little! Hide here … yes, like that. Try and show your head just a little as if you were looking for someone. … Excellent! fine! Suppose the little girl there were to surprise him as he looks round, and run over to him, so we could give him a word or two to say?” | Act 3 | 190 | 19 |
| The Father: “Infamous! infamous! After she went away, my house seemed suddenly empty. She was my incubus, but she filled my house. I was like a dazed fly alone in the empty rooms. This boy here was educated away from home, and when he came back, he seemed to me to be no more mine. With no mother to stand between him and me, he grew up entirely for himself, on his own, apart, with no tie of intellect or affection binding him to me. And then—strange but true—I was driven, by curiosity at first and then by some tender sentiment, towards her family, which had come into being through my will. The thought of her began gradually to fill up the emptiness I felt all around me. I wanted to know if she were happy in living out the simple daily duties of life. I wanted to think of her as fortunate and happy because far away from the complicated torments of my spirit. And so, to have proof of this, I used to watch that child coming out of school.” | Act 1 | 182 | 19 |
| The Step-Daughter: “Worse? Worse? Listen! Stage this drama for us at once! Then you will see that at a certain moment I … when this little darling here … Isn’t she a dear? Darling! Darling! Well, when God suddenly takes this dear little child away from that poor mother there; and this imbecile here. does the stupidest things, like the fool he is, you will see me run away. Yes, gentleman, I shall be off. But the moment hasn’t arrived yet. After what has taken place between him and me, I can’t remain any longer in this society, to have to witness the anguish of this mother here for that fool. … Look at him! Look at him! See how indifferent, how frigid he is, because he is the legitimate son. He despises me, despises him, despises this baby here; because … we are bastards. And he doesn’t want to recognize her as his mother—she who is the common mother of us all. He looks down upon her as if she were only the mother of us three bastards. Wretch!” | Act 1 | 175 | 18 |
| The Father: “I don’t know to what author you may be alluding, but believe me I feel what I think; and I seem to be philosophizing only for those who do not think what they feel, because they blind themselves with their own sentiment. I know that for many people this self-blinding seems much more “human”; but the contrary is really true. For man never reasons so much and becomes so introspective as when he suffers; since he is anxious to get at the cause of his sufferings, to learn who has produced them, and whether it is just or unjust that he should have to bear them. On the other hand, when he is happy, he takes his happiness as it comes and doesn’t analyse it, just as if happiness were his right. The animals suffer without reasoning about their sufferings. But take the case of a man who suffers and begins to reason about it. Oh no! it can’t be allowed! Let him suffer like an animal, and then—ah yes, he is “human!”” | Act 3 | 174 | 18 |
| The Son: “And they want to put it on the stage! If there was at least a reason for it! He thinks he has got at the meaning of it all. Just as if each one of us in every circumstance of life couldn’t find his own explanation of it! He complains he was discovered in a place where he ought not to have been seen, in a moment of his life which ought to have remained hidden and kept out of the reach of that convention which he has to maintain for other people. And what about my case? Haven’t I had to reveal what no son ought ever to reveal: how father and mother live and are man and wife for themselves quite apart from that idea of father and mother which we give them? When this idea is revealed, our life is then linked at one point only to that man and that woman; and as such it should shame them, shouldn’t it?” | Act 2 | 164 | 17 |

## Small roles that can be doubled

These pairs of small roles never speak in the same scene, so one actor could play both. Check entrances and silent appearances in your script before you cast it this way.

- Prompter and Other Actors
- Prompter and Some Actors
- Maddame Pace and Third Actor
- Maddame Pace and Door-Keeper
- Maddame Pace and Leading Actor
- Maddame Pace and An Actor
- Maddame Pace and Other Actors
- Maddame Pace and Fourth Actor
- Maddame Pace and Fifth Actor
- Maddame Pace and Some Actors
- Property Man and Other Actors
- Property Man and Some Actors

## Questions actors ask

### Who has the most lines in Six Characters in Search of an Author?

The Father, with about 616 lines and 5,453 words, 37.4% of everything spoken in the play. The Manager is next, with about 459 lines (25.4%).

### How long is Six Characters in Search of an Author?

The full text has 14,567 spoken words, about 104 minutes at 140 words a minute before pauses, scene changes, and cuts. Most productions cut the text, so running times vary.

### How many speaking roles are in Six Characters in Search of an Author?

24 named roles speak in this edition, across 3 scenes. 19 of them have less than 2% of the words, which is why small parts are often doubled.

## How we count

Counts are computed from the full text of the [Standard Ebooks edition](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/luigi-pirandello/six-characters-in-search-of-an-author/edward-storer) (public domain; retrieved 2026-10-08). Words are every spoken word, with stage directions removed. Lines are verse lines as printed, plus prose at 10 words a line, because prose has no fixed line breaks; editions differ, so other sources give slightly different line counts. Time is words at 140 words a minute, before pauses and stage business. A role is counted in a scene when it speaks there. To count a script that is not in the library, paste it into the [script line counter](https://www.offbook.com/tools/script-line-counter).