Six Characters in Search of an Author
Luigi Pirandello · 1921
Six fictional characters interrupt a theater rehearsal demanding that their story be staged. Pirandello blew apart the fourth wall before anyone had a name for it. The play asks whether characters are more real than the actors who play them, and it never settles the question. It caused a riot at its Rome premiere.
The case against
Pirandello's people halt the action every ten minutes to explain the play you are inside. The Father is a lecture machine, the embedded story is lurid melodrama (a near-incestuous encounter at Madame Pace's), and the reality-versus-illusion debate gets restated rather than deepened. One genuinely great idea, asked to fill an entire evening.
Drama · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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