How has the art of theater managed to survive at all into the era of modernism and the era of what is currently, however ineptly, called postmodernism? asks preeminent theater scholar Eric Bentley. Through the work of [Luigi] Pirandello, I should think, more than any other single individual.

Bentley’s English versions of four of Pirandello’s most celebrated plays–collected here for the first time–capture the playwright’s voice with remarkable perception. He has provided texts that are the standard for American productions, sensitive both to what is uniquely Sicilian in Pirandello’s language and to the rigors of the American stage.

Along with Pirandello’s better-known works, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Emperor Henry, and Right You Are, this edition includes the widely performed The Man with the Flower in His Mouth, unavailable in any other collection.