Luigi Pirandello

Denna mångbottnade roman från 1915 utspelas i en levande och autentisk filmmiljö under filmkonstens barndom och skildrar med psykologisk insikt ett fortfarande lika aktuellt mänskligt drama. Här samlas Pirandellos typiska teman såsom det rollspel samhället tvingar människorna in i och individens ensamhet och frustration i en värld där ingen egentlig kommunikation är möjlig och ingen objektiv sanning kan uppnås.

Pirandello (1867-1936) is the founding architect of twentieth-century drama, brilliantly innovatory in his forms and themes, and in the combined energy, imagination and visual colours of his theatre. This volume of plays, translated from the Italian by Mark Musa, opens with Six Characters in Search of an Author, Pirandello's most popular and controversial work in which six characters invade the stage and demand to be included in the play. The tragedy Henry IV dramatizes the lucid madness of a man who may be King. In So It Is (If You Think So) the townspeople exercise a morbid curiosity attempting to discover 'the truth' about the Ponza family. Each of these plays can lay claim to being Pirandello's masterpiece, and in exploring the nature of human personality each one stretches the resources of drama to their limits.

Three essential plays by one of Europe's foremost 20th century dramatists The Rules of the Game (1918) is based closely on the author's own unhappy marriage centred around Leone Gala and his wife who are separated, their only contract, a formal visiting procedure; Henry 1V, shows the effect of madness and delusion on the figure of a king (1922); and in Six Characters in Search of an Author six actors are trapped inside a rehearsal for an unwritten play desperately needing a writer to complete their story and release them. Intrigued by their situation, the director and his company of actors listen as the characters begin to describe and argue over the key events of their lives. This, his best known play, caused riots when it was first produced at the Teatro Valle in Rome in 1921.

This special one-volume edition features five great plays by one of the most celebrated and fascinating dramatists of the twentieth century. Pirandello, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1934, was the playwright par excellence of the conflict between illusion and reality. His modern and sensationally original plays dramatize with force and eloquence the isolation of the individual from society and from himself. The editor, Eric Bentley, is an international theater authority. In addition to the Introduction and the biographical and bibliographical material in the Appendices, Mr. Bentley has prepared for this volume the first English translations of the play Liol and Pirandello's important "Preface" to Six Characters in Search of an Author. Included Plays: Liol It Is So (If You Think So) Henry IV Six Characters in Search of an Author Each in His Own Way