Exclusive U.S. publisher of the 1998 Nobel Laureate

After all, the Moscarda he believed himself to be was different when he was alone, or with his wife, his tenant, or his friends. And there were hundreds--no, thousands--of additional Moscardas in the minds of everyone who had met or heard of him.

Moscarda grappled with this new knowledge: that he was not who he thought he was, nor who anyone else thought he was. And the people around him? They were not who he thought they were either.

So he decided, in his own words, to ...find out who I was, at least to those closest to me, acquaintances so-called, and to amuse myself by maliciously decomposing the I that I was to them. What follows is a series of experiments, meant to befuddle and confuse those around him and prove that he was not, in fact, who they believed him to be.

Written by Nobel Laureate Luigi Pirandello over the course of 15 years, One, None, and One Hundred Thousand was a groundbreaking look at the nature of identity and the self.

Pirandello was no stranger to reinvention and loss of identity. Born into a well-to-do Sicilian family, he seemed destined to follow his father into business as a sulfur merchant. Instead, he spent his youth writing stories, and later excelled in literary studies.

Pirandello's early writing and teaching at the Istituto Superiore di Magistero di Roma was sufficient to support himself, his wife, and his three children--supplemented by an allowance from his father and his wife's dowry.

But in 1903, the family was ruined when the sulfur mines his father had invested in were flooded and destroyed. The family fortune was gone, including his wife's dowry. The news so shocked her that she suffered a complete mental collapse. In the aftermath, she suffered from hallucinations and anxieties that would follow her for the rest of her life.

At first, with an ailing wife and no money, Pirandello contemplated suicide. Instead, he redoubled his efforts. He took on more teaching work and wrote at a furious pace. He would go on to write 7 novels, numerous short stories, poetry, and around 40 plays throughout his career.

The issue of identity comes up again and again in Pirandello's work. In his play To Clothe the Naked, the protagonist tries to reinvent herself, with each subsequent identity stripped away from her by others. In The Life I Gave You, a mother is confronted with the truth that her long-lost son is not the person that she has created in her mind. In the end, she chooses to adhere to her fiction rather than face the facts about her son.

In Six Characters in Search of an Author, Pirandello's most famous work, six unused and incomplete characters walk onto a stage and demand that a director and his actors tell their stories. But of course, the lines between reality and invention are blurred, getting more absurd as the play goes on. This play created such a stir on opening night in Rome that fighting broke out in the audience, forcing Pirandello to flee the theater with his daughter. Later that year, the same play would be hailed by critics in Milan as a work of genius.

Pirandello's work was later seen as a precursor to the Theatre of the Absurd, in which writers explore the meaninglessness of human existence through deliberately confusing situations and purposeless dialogue.

By the time of his death in 1936, Pirandello was a well-known and respected writer in the theater and literary worlds. Although his name wouldn't be recognized by many today, his contributions to literature can be seen in the later work of notable writers like Jean-Paul Sartre and fellow Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett, among others.

Mistero Buffo is Dario Fo's one-man tour de force, in which he creates his own subversive version of Biblical stories. Infused with the rhythmic drive of a jazz improvisation, the immediacy of a newspaper headline, and the epic scope of a historical novel, Fo and his wife/collaborator Franca Rame have performed Mistero Buffo throughout the world to over 10 million people.

One of the major theatrical artists of the twentieth century, Italy's Dario Fo was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Ron Jenkins' translations of Dario Fo have been performed across the country. He is the theater department chair at Wesleyan University.

This book is the first nearly complete (poetry and verse omitted) translation of the only known personal manuscript notes of a Sixteenth Century Commedia dell'Arte performer. This is a very important work for anyone interested in what such actors said and did in their improvised performances. Included with the literal translation are the detailed play outlines from the twenty plays in these manuscripts. In the original the outlines are terse and ambiguous, making them difficult to perform, but this book provides versions of each of them that have been resolved into clear entrances, exits, motivations and actions for every scene. Scholars get their literal translations. Performers get playable plays, as well as examples of prologues, monologues and one-liners that this Sixteenth Century actor thought were worthy to write down.

• Enjoy the beautiful curated photographs (in color) of Rome in Italy
• The photos captures the quintessential stunning landmarks, scenery and architectural buildings of the country and city from day to night without no words (texts)
• This full page picture book will make a great home coffee table decor accessory or as a gift for a loved one
• 8.5 x 11 / large size
• Glossy softcover

Massimo Bontempelli (1878-1960), poet, novelist, playwright and composer would become one of the literary giants of the twentieth century. The father of magic realism in Italy, he was associated with the futurist avant-garde and then launched his own influential literary movement, Novecento. Editor and creator of various journals, he collaborated with some of the greatest writers of his day, from James Joyce to Luigi Pirandello. Bontempelli was a prominent fascist intellectual and largely for this reason is today a controversial, little studied and seldom translated writer. Patricia Gaborik strikes out at this problem by presenting here an extensive introduction on the thought and legacy of this figure and complete translations of three of his major plays: Watching the Moon (1916), Stormcloud (1935) and Cinderella (1942). Bontempelli's sense of theatricality was unparalleled, his characters are bewitching, and Gaborik's translations privilege both readability and playability, offering these plays the chance for a robust, English-language life not only on page but also on stage. In 1953, Bontempelli was awarded the Strega Prize, Italy's most prestigious literary award. Watching the Moon is a densely layered response to the era's avant-gardism, with traces of symbolism, expressionism and futurism. It presents the story of a woman who travels to the literal ends of the earth in an attempt to rescue her (dead) daughter, whom she believes has been kidnapped by the moon. Stormcloud, where a nimbus is responsible for misery and destruction, points fingers at individual behaviors and especially at personal egotism in the face of love and death. It is a strange and compelling exemplar of magic realism for the stage. Cinderella, fearless, radical and subversive, adds to Bontempelli's slate of strong and complex female characters, still sometimes a rare commodity on the stage. First English translation. Introduction, notes, select bibliography, illustrated. 198 pages.

First performed in 1921 with Romans calling out 'Madhouse ' from the audience, Six Characters in Search of an Author has remained the most famous and innovative of Pirandello's plays. Often labeled a satirical tragicomedy, this play initiated the anti-illusionism movement of the early twentieth century, rejecting realism in favor of a more symbolic, dreamlike quality. When an acting company's rehearsal is interrupted by six family members who wish their life story to be enacted, the result is a masterpiece in the exploration of the nature of human personality. Both popular and controversial, this play blurred the lines of reality and illusion in unpredictable ways, ultimately influencing later playwrights like Beckett and Sartre with its bizarre blending of theatrical qualities. Such is the eloquence and depth of Pirandello's body of work that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1934, just two years before his death, an honor worthy of a playwright whose plays had a subtle yet profound impact on much of the theatre that would follow. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper and follows the translation of Edward Storer.

The Dimension of Loss is an extended and tragic reflection on that inescapable experience, evoking the loss of familiar places and of homes lived in, and also the loss of hopes, of affection, of meaning, of desire. In two long monologues from Enzo Lamartora's volume It was (published in Italy in 2017), extensively revised by the author and translated by Michael Palma, we come to know two women whose family histories of anguish and emptiness have left them with a feeling of loss / that enfolds us, that permeates us, / like a fog in the darkness of a forest. Shot through with emotional intensity, rich in images both concrete and fantastic that suggest a battle scene viewed through the eyes of a child, the poems form what the author describes as the rough draft of a life and a poem that might have been.

Drama, Poetry and Music in Late-Renaissance Italy presents the first ever study of Lenora Bernardi's life, alongside English translations, scholarly notes and critical essays of her work.

From the moment of her spectacular death on the scaffold, the story of Mary Queen of Scots became nothing short of a sensation across Europe. She was executed on 8 February 1587, and her death was the climax of a captivity that lasted over eighteen years. Shortly after the event, Federico Della Valle, one of Italy's most accomplished dramatists of the time, composed La reina di Scotia ( The Queen of Scots), a tragedy depicting the final hours of the Scottish queen's life.

With its restrained tone, streamlined action, and refined poetic language, The Queen of Scots ranks among the very best of early modern Italian drama. In this book, Fabio Battista provides an English-language annotated edition of Della Valle's work, accompanied by a comprehensive introduction exploring the fictional afterlife of Mary Queen of Scots from the early modern period to today. The volume also includes the English translation of a widely circulated letter detailing the queen's momentous execution. Made available to an English-speaking audience for the first time, this tragedy is the earliest dramatic reworking of the death of Mary Queen of Scots in a modern vernacular, spearheading a tradition that endures to this day.

Drama, Poetry and Music in Late-Renaissance Italy presents the first ever study of Lenora Bernardi's life, alongside English translations, scholarly notes and critical essays of her work.

True to Goldoni's mixture of comic wit and farce, the plot is a breathtakingly fast succession of twists and turns which only unravel in the very final lines with a surprise ending.

Two friends are in love with the same young woman. Neither wants to place their friendship in jeopardy. How can love triumph without breaking off their friendship? Goldoni explores the conflicts brought about when Florindo has to choose between Lelio, his best friend, and Rosaura, his best friend's fiancee. Added to this conundrum are the issues of whether Ottavio, the old miser, will provide a dowry and the mature Beatrice's unashamed incessant pursuit of Florindo.

The play is set in Bologna in Lelio's house. Florindo is a guest along with his faithful manservant. From the opening of the play, Florindo seeks to return home to Venice in order not to damage his friend's relationship. However, his departure is obstructed time and again by his hosts, leading to one complication after another.

From the beginning, the plot is intense and fast-moving with inversions fed into the action in quick succession. This creates suspense which continues throughout the play as potential marriage partners are switched back and forth until the very ending when the audience finally discovers what the main characters' destiny will be. Will love or friendship prevail?

The Venetian element is brought into this play through Florindo and his manservant, both Venetians. Apart from these two characters, all the others are portrayed as self-seeking, selfish and sly - whether servants or masters. The tension is kept at a constantly high level by the struggles between the characters. These struggles are not just brought about through love and friendship but are also generational and social. Furthermore, there is the added complication in the contrast of the characters' ideas of reality as they deceive one another. This creates dramatic irony and humour as the audience know more than any of the characters on stage.

This perceptive translation has been acclaimed by Goldoni academics for brilliantly preserving the rhythm, humour and the fast pace typical of Goldoni's dialogue, while the monologues are deemed to be as striking in the new language as in the original.

Valeria Miani's Celinda (1611), the only female-authored secular tragedy of early modern Italy, is here made available for the first time in a modern edition. Miani's tale of the doomed love of the Lydian princess Celinda for the cross-dressed Persian prince Autilio/ Lucinia offers a striking example of the explorative attitude to gender identity that is such a marked characteristic of Italian drama in this period, both within the erudite and the commedia dell'arte tradition. Accompanied by Julia Kisacky's sensitive translation, and with a valuable contextualizing introduction by Valeria Finucci, this edition of Celinda makes an important contribution to our understanding of women's place within Italian literary culture in a period increasingly recognized as exceptional for the range and quality of femaleauthored writing it produced.
--Virginia Cox
Professor of Italian, New York University

After all, the Moscarda he believed himself to be was different when he was alone, or with his wife, his tenant, or his friends. And there were hundreds--no, thousands--of additional Moscardas in the minds of everyone who had met or heard of him.

Moscarda grappled with this new knowledge: that he was not who he thought he was, nor who anyone else thought he was. And the people around him? They were not who he thought they were either.

So he decided, in his own words, to ...find out who I was, at least to those closest to me, acquaintances so-called, and to amuse myself by maliciously decomposing the I that I was to them. What follows is a series of experiments, meant to befuddle and confuse those around him and prove that he was not, in fact, who they believed him to be.

Written by Nobel Laureate Luigi Pirandello over the course of 15 years, One, None, and One Hundred Thousand was a groundbreaking look at the nature of identity and the self.

Pirandello was no stranger to reinvention and loss of identity. Born into a well-to-do Sicilian family, he seemed destined to follow his father into business as a sulfur merchant. Instead, he spent his youth writing stories, and later excelled in literary studies.

Pirandello's early writing and teaching at the Istituto Superiore di Magistero di Roma was sufficient to support himself, his wife, and his three children--supplemented by an allowance from his father and his wife's dowry.

But in 1903, the family was ruined when the sulfur mines his father had invested in were flooded and destroyed. The family fortune was gone, including his wife's dowry. The news so shocked her that she suffered a complete mental collapse. In the aftermath, she suffered from hallucinations and anxieties that would follow her for the rest of her life.

At first, with an ailing wife and no money, Pirandello contemplated suicide. Instead, he redoubled his efforts. He took on more teaching work and wrote at a furious pace. He would go on to write 7 novels, numerous short stories, poetry, and around 40 plays throughout his career.

The issue of identity comes up again and again in Pirandello's work. In his play To Clothe the Naked, the protagonist tries to reinvent herself, with each subsequent identity stripped away from her by others. In The Life I Gave You, a mother is confronted with the truth that her long-lost son is not the person that she has created in her mind. In the end, she chooses to adhere to her fiction rather than face the facts about her son.

In Six Characters in Search of an Author, Pirandello's most famous work, six unused and incomplete characters walk onto a stage and demand that a director and his actors tell their stories. But of course, the lines between reality and invention are blurred, getting more absurd as the play goes on. This play created such a stir on opening night in Rome that fighting broke out in the audience, forcing Pirandello to flee the theater with his daughter. Later that year, the same play would be hailed by critics in Milan as a work of genius.

Pirandello's work was later seen as a precursor to the Theatre of the Absurd, in which writers explore the meaninglessness of human existence through deliberately confusing situations and purposeless dialogue.

By the time of his death in 1936, Pirandello was a well-known and respected writer in the theater and literary worlds. Although his name wouldn't be recognized by many today, his contributions to literature can be seen in the later work of notable writers like Jean-Paul Sartre and fellow Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett, among others.

Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore) is an Italian three-act play written by Luigi Pirandello in 1921, considered as one of the earliest examples of absurdist theatre. It's a play within a play that deals with perceptions of reality and illusion, and plays with the ideas of identity and relative truths. The plot features an acting company who have gathered to rehearse another play by Pirandello, when they're interrupted by 6 characters who arrive in search of their author. They immediately clash with the manager who at first assumes they're mad. But, as the play progresses, the manager slowly shifts his reality as the characters become more real than the actors. Six Characters in Search of an Author opened in Rome at Valle di Roma and created a huge and clamorous division in the audience, forcing Pirandello to escape out the side door. But a year later it was presented in Milan to great success, before moving on to Broadway in 1922 where it ran for 136 performances.

Giovanni Battista Guarini's Il pastor fido was a major text of the late European Renaissance, both in itself and as a manifesto of its author's ideas on pastoral tragicomedy. This edition presents the text of the first English translation of the play, probably by Tailboys Dymock, first published in 1602.

While Richard Fanshawe's royalist version of 1647 is better-known, the process by which Fanshawe's version was canonized and Dymock's forgotten was based on false premises, as the introduction to this edition demonstrates. Not only is Dymock's version the freer of the two, shortening and simplifying Guarini's text, it also appears to be an attempt to make the play more fitting for the contemporary London stage. Those responsible for the 1602 version decided to work on a play with poetic pedigree, but they made a book that looked like the English playtexts of the time - a compromise which reflects the fluctuating aesthetic values at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

The text is presented with modern spelling and punctuation, accompanied by extensive explanatory notes and an introduction discussing both the history of this translation and of Guarini's original, situating them both in their wider literary historical context, and demonstrating the historical value of the first English Pastor fido in the context of late Elizabethan translation practice, theatrical discourse and theatrical publishing.

Massimiliano Morini teaches English Linguistics and Translation at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo.

Alice Rohe, pioneering photojournalist, offers a masterful translation of L'uomo, la bestia e la virtù, the controversial play by Luigi Pirandello. With his discovery of the text at the Library of Congress, Giuseppe Bolognese reintroduces readers to this farcical love triangle.

Cornelio, an old doctor, has lost his wife and daughter during the Sack of Rome and his son Valerio in a shipwreck. He now wants to marry Camilla, who however loves Mario. To escape, in turn, from marrying Valerio's widow, Mario then suggests that Camilla run away with him. Meanwhile, Aurelia has been captured by pirates from her father, Guicciardo Gualandi, and is in the hands of their leader, Rinuccio Corso. But Gismondo Castrucci, who's in love with her, pretends to be her real father and promises Rinuccio a reward of one hundred and fifty scudi for her release....

This publication presents a new edition, with the first English translation, of the Italian Renaissance comedy The Theft (Il Furto) by Francesco D'Ambra. The Theft was originally performed in Florence in 1544 for the Accademia Fiorentina and for Duke Cosimo I de' Medici of Florence and subsequently grand duke of Tuscany. The Theft is the work of an accomplished and revered dramaturge.

Although performances of dramatic works in Florence often featured intermedi - entr'acte musical compositions - in many cases the music composed for them exists only in fragments. But this play is almost unique in the history of the Italian Renaissance theater and music because the intermedio materials survive in their entirety.

The volume includes scholarly editions of Francesco D'Ambra's and Ugo Martelli's original Italian texts. Vanni Bramanti uses all the relevant primary sources and provides a critical apparatus to the text and an introduction to the playwright and the play. Linda L. Carroll presents an authoritative facing English annotated translation of the text.

It also offers Alexander Dean's edition of the entr'acte music and Anthony M. Cummings' introduction to poet Ugo Martelli's and composer Francesco Corteccia's entr'actes.

Dual-language drama. Preface, introductions, plot summary, appendix, notes, and bibliography. 324 pages.