Drawing on broad research, this study explores the different social and theatrical masking activities in England during the Middle Ages and the early 16th century. The authors present a coherent explanation of the many functions of masking, emphasizing the important links among festive practice, specialized ceremonial, and drama. They elucidate the intellectual, moral and social contexts for masking, and they examine the purposes and rewards for participants in the activity. The authors' insight into the masking games and performances of England's medieval and early Tudor periods illuminates many aspects of the thinking and culture of the times: issues of identity and community; performance and role-play; conceptions of the psyche and of the individual's position in social and spiritual structures. Masks and Masking in Medieval and Early Tudor England presents a broad overview of masking practices, demonstrating how active and prominent an element of medieval and pre-modern culture masking was. It has obvious interest for drama and literature critics of the medieval and early modern periods; but is also useful for historians of culture, theatre and anthropology. Through its analysis of masked play this study engages both with the history of theatre and performance, and with broader cultural and historical questions of social organization, identity and the self, the performance of power, and shifting spiritual understanding.

A 2007 study of the mask in Greek tragedy, covering both ancient and modern performances.

In Pirandello's Theatre of Living Masks, Umberto Mariani and Alice Gladstone Mariani offer the first new edition in nearly sixty years of six of his major works.

This special one-volume edition features five great plays by one of the most celebrated and fascinating dramatists of the twentieth century. Pirandello, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1934, was the playwright par excellence of the conflict between illusion and reality. His modern and sensationally original plays dramatize with force and eloquence the isolation of the individual from society and from himself. The editor, Eric Bentley, is an international theater authority. In addition to the Introduction and the biographical and bibliographical material in the Appendices, Mr. Bentley has prepared for this volume the first English translations of the play Liolà and Pirandello’s important “Preface” to Six Characters in Search of an Author. Included Plays: Liolà It Is So! (If You Think So) Henry IV Six Characters in Search of an Author Each in His Own Way