art of words and the drama. With the result that we see the Czech theatre of most recent years endeavouring to illuminate and evaluate the new cultural factor of the mother country’s inclusion in the list of Europe’s national entities, and at the same time to bring some kind of synthetic and dramatic formula to bear on the chaos of the post-war period. And besides realistic or semi-lyric and satiric attempts to put on the stage the life of the Siberian legions or the fall of the Austrian military power, or the hopes and perils of the liberated home-land, the signature of the times was to be seen in the fact that national problems had been displaced by social ones. The real dramatis personae was no longer the Czech people, but contemporary society; not simply the fashions of Europe, but Europe itself ; not the nation, but the world and humanity.
This found its expression also in the selection of the foreign repertoire, in which field there was precisely as much love of experiment, as the term “experiment” can ordinarily be applied to designate the most daring and successful enterprises of our theatre. Verhaerens’ social tragedy, Les Aubes (never produced before except in Russia) and Kraszynski’s Godless Comedy (never played except in Poland, the country of origin) distinguished the repertoire of the daring stage-manager, K. H. Hilar; Romain Rolland’s historical dramas, revolutionary pieces by Büchner and others, Galsworthy’s humanitarian plays, attempts at a new style in the stage management of crowds, were outstanding symptoms in the last four or five seasons; and especially we must consider the efforts which were made here to find some new type of social tragedy or comedy. There was, for instance, the broadly limned Hussite tragedy by Arno Dvorak, in which the intention was to give not merely a chronicle-like chain of events, but neither more nor less than a ‘“tragedy of the people.” (Incidentally, the conception proved to be more powerful than the execution.) Then a young expressionist, Jan Bartos, came forward with caricatures of modern society. Then the ideologist Stanislav Lom attempted to express in a simplified version the development of the state or the struggles of the race. Then the leader of the younger generation, F. K. Salda, wrote a tragedy, The Hosts, and followed this with a play on the theme of the eternal revolution in life and customs. Further, there is ferment in the sphere of Moravian literature. The passion for style is evident in Leo Blatny and others; while Gungen and
