This selection of plays by Luigi Pirandello contains some of his best-known works, such as Six Characters in Search of an Author – an absurdist piece in which the characters, actors and Pirandello himself interact during the rehearsal of a fictional play within the play – and Henry IV – a tragicomic tale of a man who falls from a horse and believes himself to be the eponymous Holy Roman Emperor.

Preoccupied with the nature of truth and delusion, and treading dangerously on the borderline between sanity and madness, Pirandello’s plays are a daring exploration of human actions and the dark motives lying behind them, and the culmination of the naturalistic school of theatre inaugurated by authors such as Ibsen and Chekhov.

Translated by: Felicity Firth, Robert Rietti, John Wardle, Donald Watson, Carlo Ardito