Collected Plays: Volume One

Henry IV
The Man With the Flower in His Mouth
Right You Are, If You Think You Are
Lazarus

This is the first volume of a collected edition of the complete plays of Luigi Pirandello, one of the major playwrights of the early 20th century, in revised or new translations, under the general editorship of Robert Rietty.

The volume contains three full-length plays and one important one-actor. Henry IV (1922) has always been one of the most performed and popular of the plays, both in Italy and in other countries: a study in the nature of reality and delusion, it has great dramatic impact and is intensely moving. The Man With the Flower (1923) is perhaps the best known of his shorter plays, poignant and, in its denouement, devastating. Right You Are, If You Think You Are (1917) is a major play that has had many successful productions and a strong message of live and let live. Lazarus (1929), although less known, remains one of his most haunting creations that has also had successful productions in English-speaking countries.

Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934, is not only one of the major playwrights and fiction writers of the century, but an important influence on later dramatists, especially the post-war absurdist school. Born in Sicily, his personal tragedies, especially his wife’s insanity, played a major role in the development of his thinking and his work. Many of the plays grew out of initial short stories. His concerns are the nature of truth and delusion, the border line between sanity and madness, human motivations and what lies behind them, and the importance of dreams, which haunted his life and influenced his work.