Luigi Pirandello is not often linked to George Bernard Shaw, although they did communicate through notes on one occasion, with Shaw expressing himself in a mélange of operatic French, German, and Italian, the last of which gave Pirandello much entertainment. Both playwrights admired and liked one another; Shaw praised Six Characters as the most original play he had encountered, while Pirandello greatly admired Saint Joan and wanted Marta Abba to perform the part. The New York Times invited Pirandello to write an essay on Shaw’s play, which Pirandello concluded with the assertion that Saint Joan was “a work of poetry from beginning to end.” Further consideration of how Shaw’s plays related to Pirandello’s reveals that, in spite of Pirandello’s despairing view of the human condition, which Pirandello constantly mocked as futile, one can discover moments of humor that often resemble Shaw’s comedic style.

Already known thanks to the translation of some novels and The Late Mattia Pascal, Pirandello began his involvement in French theatre with the 1923 performance of Six Characters in Search of an Author, which was directed by Georges Pitoëff. This chapter recounts Pirandello’s fortunes in France and explores their mediation by translator Benjamin Crémieux, who helped bring the writer’s works to French readers and theatregoers. However, Pirandello’s success began a downward arc in the late 1920s due to several factors, including overexposure and French critics’ accusations of excessive cerebralism. Although Pirandello’s plays continued to be performed, they received progressively less favorable responses. The 1934 Nobel Prize, however, brought the playwright back into the limelight, and he was celebrated and applauded in January 1935 at the staging of Tonight We Improvise by the Pitoëff Company.