The world-wide reputation of Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) rests largely upon his plays. His name is associated with theatrical innovation, the representation on the stage of shifting levels of reality, masks, role-playing, and the relationship between art and life. His acknowledged masterpiece Seipersonaggi in cerca d'autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author) is perennially discussed by critics and theatre historians, and he ranks with Ibsen, Chekhov, Brecht, Shawand Beckett as a colossus of twentieth-century theatre.

His contribution to world literature ought, however, to be assessed in the light of his mastery of two genres, the play and the short story. Some of the plays were based on the stories, with varying success, but the stories cannot be seen simply as the store-house from which the plays are drawn. They outnumber them by five to one in any case, and deserve to be studied in their own right for a fair picture of Pirandello's creative achievement. For an understanding of his philosophic stance, and of his work as a whole, there are essays and novels too which have to be considered. The volumes of poetry, which belong to his earliest period, mark his literary apprenticeship, and while they are of interest, poetry is clearly not Pirandello's natural medium.

His entire oeuvre seems to have been ‘fashioned out of pain’, to echo his own appraisal of Don Quixote. Hisdramatic protagonists, from Enrico IV to the unnamed self-portrait, the grand old man of letters in Quando siè qualcuno (When One Is Somebody), are all motivated by the need to accommodate themselves within an intolerable condition.