Henry IV
1922
First Published
3.80
Average Rating
86
Number of Pages
In this meeting of two of the twentieth century's greatest playwrights, Tom Stoppard has reinvigorated Luigi Pirandello's masterpiece of madness and sanity. After a fall from his horse, an Italian aristocrat believes he is the obscure medieval German emperor Henry IV. After twenty years of living this royal illusion, his beloved appears with a noted psychiatrist to shock the madman back to sanity. Their efforts expose that for the past twelve years the nobleman has in fact been sane. With his mask of madness removed, the aristocrat launches an offensive to deflect their unwanted attention. While Pirandello's characters race linguistically about in Stoppardian dervishes, battling for the upper hand-and the greatest laughs-one question What constitutes sanity?
Avg Rating
3.80
Number of Ratings
1,772
5 STARS
26%
4 STARS
39%
3 STARS
26%
2 STARS
7%
1 STARS
2%
goodreads
Author
Luigi Pirandello
Author · 54 books
Luigi Pirandello; Agrigento (28 June 1867 – Rome 10 December 1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet, and short story writer whose greatest contributions were his plays. He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his almost magical power to turn psychological analysis into good theatre. Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian. Pirandello's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd.
