Presented here for the first time together, and many for the first time in English, are the writings that formed the genesis of "Six Characters in Search of an Author," along with a new translation of the theater masterpiece itself by Martha Witt and Mary Ann Frese Witt. Although Pirandello's best-known play is now considered a revolutionary modernist work, it did not begin as avant-garde art, but rather in the musings of a relatively unknown Sicilian living in Rome. The writings included in this volume display its genesis. The idea of characters as living beings in dialogue with their author...

Presented here for the first time together, and many for the first time in English, are the writings that formed the genesis of "Six Characters in Search of an Author," along with a new translation of the theater masterpiece itself by Martha Witt and Mary Ann Frese Witt. Although Pirandello's best-known play is now considered a revolutionary modernist work, it did not begin as avant-garde art, but rather in the musings of a relatively unknown Sicilian living in Rome. The writings included in this volume display its genesis. The idea of characters as living beings in dialogue with their author...

Luigi Pirandello's "Henry IV" opened to general acclaim at the Teatro Manzoni in Milan on February 24, 1922, less than a year after his revolutionary theatrical achievement, "Six Characters in Search of an Author." The title of the later play suggests a historical drama, recalling Shakespeare's great history plays. Yet "Henry IV" is instead anti-historical in that it "plays with" history, presenting historical events not as sequential and true, but as simultaneous and as an imaginary refuge. Henry IV (whose real name is not given) lives in a fake medieval castle where everyone must wear the...