Henry IV was written shortly after Pirandello's most famous play, Six Characters in Search of an Author. Together, they are considered Pirandello's most important works. Pirandello wrote numerous other plays, including Right You Are (If You Think So), Tonight We Improvise, and As You Desire Me. Pirandello also wrote several novels, including The Late Mattia Pascal and One, None, and a Hundred Thousand. In all of these works, Pirandello takes a modernist approach to deconstructing concepts of fixed identity, sanity, and the imposition of meaning onto understanding life and history.
Pirandello was a significant influence on many of the avant-garde theater playwrights who succeeded him, who...