Pirandello’s dramaturgy is built on spontaneous relations between situation and condition, person and character and reality and make-believe on the stage. This required the playwright to observe humans and their behaviour for a long spell.
The analysis of reality lead to the use of grotesque events, cases seemingly with no way out, a crowd of dissociated creatures, who were slaves to prejudice and longed for impossible freedom.

Among Pirandello’s many works the play "But it’s nothing serious", first performed by Emma Gramatica’s drama society in Leghorn in autumn 1918, seems typical of what has just been said. The play in three acts describes the protagonist’s paradoxical decision - Memmo Speranza feigns a marriage to avoid the risk of a real marriage with its consequences and endless complications, considering that by nature he tends to fall hopelessly in love and quite frequently into the bargain.
The chosen “wife” is Gasparina, a seemingly nondescript and dowdy young woman who runs a guesthouse. The two reach an agreement that must be absolutely honoured: the marriage will be legally valid only in appearance and in return Memmo will offer the woman financial ease and a little house with a garden in the country. The man’s decision is not impracticable - it is logical in a way and is backed by absurd reasoning as he has also saved his skin in a duel against a possible future ex-brother-in-law. Memmo / Don Juan finds Gasparina is the solution to the matters of his heart – as a married man he will be safer from other women while Gasparina will find the situation financially advantageous. Life will be more peaceful and less tiring for her. The marriage takes place gaily before the hotel’s other guests. Memmo shortly looses his head once again for a woman he had recently left and regrets the “madness” of the fake marriage, but only for a brief spell. Meanwhile Gasparina’s peaceful and less strenuous life makes her radiant - she is virtually transformed. Old Mr. Barranco, who has always loved her, would like to remove Gasparina from this situation, asking for the marriage to be annulled because it has not been consummated. Hence he advices the woman to visit Memmo and invite him to her country home where Mr. Barranco will expound the solution he has hit on, in other words Gasparina’s freedom to return single. Memmo does not miss this appointment and he immediately realizes that he does not wish for an annulment at all, rather he finds that he has really fallen in love with Gasparina, who is now attractive and lovable with laughing eyes. He finds his former women vain and superficial, they do not suit him anymore and he wholeheartedly longs for Gasparina. She has long loved him in silence and accepted the marriage hoping to change their union into something serious and lasting rather than through self-interest. This play begins in the absurd and has a happy ending: the presumed lover’s madness turns into love for a woman who combines beauty, goodness of heart and integrity. But, despite the ending, Memmo numbers among those who are searching for a meaning to their life, his fate is unavoidably painful; he too is a prisoner of bourgeois conventions, a rebellious spirit that pines away within pre-established social limits.

This is even more obvious in Leone Gala’s character in the play "The rules of the game".
He too is defeated by life – a sensitive man, he experiences the tragic side of life. However following disillusionment, the wreckage of his dreams and aspirations that materialize in the break-up of his marriage and realizing what his lot is, Leone defends himself and finds a possible way out – he in turn must become inhuman, against his very nature, killing feelings, enjoying others’ sorrows and attempting to live a passionless life, but with smiling desperation. In fact the topic of marriage, separation by mutual consent and pretence before the eyes of the world are the moving forces of The rules of the game. Besides Leone, the other two corners in this lovers’ triangle are his wife Silia and her lover, Guido Venanzi. As an ironic, apparently detached and superior intellectual, Leone grants his wife’s wish by leaving her the flat without causing a scandal. He takes with him only his beloved books and cooking utensils, the primary elements in the culinary art he delights in. Silia, his unhappy, tormented wife, cannot stand Leone’s character anymore, neither his composure before her lover, Guido. The agreement that Leone should pass by every evening to learn the latest is one of the terms of the separation. One evening, while Silia invites him in on purpose to make him meet an embarrassed and good-for-nothing Guido face to face, Leone is not in the least affected by her lover’s presence. On this occasion he explains his philosophy of life based on overcoming passion, on rationality that wins all thanks to an armour-shield towards life: every feeling, event or person must be emptied or reduced to pure reasoning, compensating for this emptiness with an entertaining toy, in his case philosophy and cuisine. He thus believes he has reached an enviable inner balance. An egg life throws your way will smash on the floor or on you if you are not ready to catch it, while if you catch it you can bore a little hole and drink it; the shell will remain like a concept - you toy with it awhile then, smashing it, you throw it away. Silia enters the scene carrying an eggshell for her husband. He in turn hands it laughing to her lover, not being the one to have drunk from it. Silia’s nerves cannot stand her husband’s apparent indifference and, moving to the window, she throws the shell trying to strike him at the street door. But she fails and instead strikes a young man in a group of drunkards. They believe they are at the prostitute Pepita’s doorstep and interpret the thrown eggshell as an invitation to go in. An idea strikes Silia just as they barge into her home. She locks Guido in (he must not be seen as he is her lover) and welcomes the four. She gets one of them to hand her his business card just as other tenants in the building run to her rescue, drawn by the commotion. But the woman has already been abused, and though the marquis Miglioriti, the one who handed her his business card, regains his senses and apologizes, she will hear no reason. Silia plans on her husband exposing himself in a duel with the marquis for the disgrace brought on his wife. On the morrow she relates the event to Leone, who praises her for having shrewdly locked in her lover and seems to wish to defend her. He does not seem to draw back, rather he charges Guido to act as second and the news spreads like wildfire through the city. This is why Leone, quite self-confident, gives Guido an imperative mandate with no chance of reconciliation. The marquis Miglioriti, besides being a good swordsman is also an excellent shot - both points should leave no way out to poor Leone, who seems extremely self-possessed before danger. However on the morning of the duel Leone sleeps despite everyone and everything: the doctor and his seconds go to his place but, faced with their pressing requests to dress for the duel, he declares that he does not mean to fall into a trap that has been prepared specially for him. He says it is up to Guido to defend his woman’s honour in this game between the two parties. Hence the lover dies in the duel, while Silia and Leone go back to their wretched lives. In any case it is a defeat especially for Leone, who believes himself clear-headed and presumes he has understood the game, because he has probably not realized that he too is part of a cold and desperate game. At the end the philosopher husband is the real victim – he had deluded himself that he could use reason to get the better of the situation, while his search for a meaning to life turns into a disastrous fall into the blank depths of insubstantiality. (traslated by Interpres) Riproduzione vietata in qualsiasi forma e utilizzo