Edward Gordon Craig was a theorist of the theatre, a stage director, and one of the most influential figures of the radical theatrical changes of the first half of the 20th century. His essays (On the Art of the Theatre, 1911), his magazine (The Mask, 1908-1929), his production of Hamlet at the Moscow Art Theatre (1911-1912) and his innumerable projects, drawings and engravings have radically transformed the theatre as an art by asserting that the stage director is its true creator.

He first took an interest in puppets in 1905 for a production at the Kroll-Oper in Berlin – which never saw the light of day – then for the 3rd Exhibition of German Industrial Arts in Dresden in 1906, where he hoped to present his International Übermarionettes Theatre (International Theatre of Superpuppets), but this too remained only a project because Craig did not find a satisfactory technique to manipulate human-sized puppets. After moving to Florence in autumn 1907, Craig took advantage of the studio at his disposal to try building giant puppets, and he continued his experiments at Arena Goldoni, an acting school inaugurated in 1913.

In 1914, Craig wrote a dialogue for two puppets which turned into the prologue to a long cycle of puppet plays he dedicated himself to between 1916 and 1918, entitled Drama for Fools. He travelled around Italy to meet puppeteers and thought about producing his own shows with the help of his wife Elena Meo and their two children. In 1918, he published a few extracts of his work in his magazine The Marionnette. Although he ultimately gave up the idea of staging Drama for Fools himself, he kept the typewritten booklets of his plays until his death, and never stopped illustrating and correcting them until the mid-1950s.