SOURCE: "Pirandello: Master of the Naked Masks," in Reflections: Essays on Modern Theater, Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1969, pp. 49-57.

Esslin, a prominent and sometimes controversial critic of contemporary theater, is perhaps best known for coining the term "theater of the absurd. " His The Theater of the Absurd (1961) is a major study of the avant-garde drama of the 1950s and early 1960s, including the works of Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, and Jean Genet. In the following essay, he provides an overview of Pirandello's work, stressing his influence on modern theater.

Among the creators of the contemporary theatre Luigi Pirandello stands in the very first rank, next to Ibsen, Strindberg, and Shaw. And even though his plays may be less frequently performed in the English-speaking world than those of either Shaw or Ibsen today (Strindberg is equally unjustly neglected), his living influence in the work of the dramatists of our own...