Four plays from the great Czech playwright. These plays are a condemnation of modernity, and while I may disagree with some of his conclusions, his way of arriving there is artistic and well drawn out. My particular favorite would be the Insect Play, in which the interactions of insects illustrate the failings of the modern military-industrial complex, and attempt to critique the dog-eat-dog world of business. On the latter point, however, he mostly manages to demonstrate that nature is not always such a friendly place; it is very easy for someone to miss the point entirely. The military point, demonstrated by an ant colony, is a much easier pick up. A good, solid entry into the play genre; it's a shame these plays are not done more often, though I do recognize some difficult staging. It would probably be easier to stage now, in the era of the modern science it criticizes, then in the time they were written. Highly recommended, even though somewhat dated. ( )

The four plays included in this book – RUR, The Insect Play, The Makropulos Case and The White Plague – are all early developments on a sci-fi theme. Capek raises many interesting issues, though there are occasional plot holes and too-convenient moments for characters to spout their beliefs. He does an effective, at times merciless, job of satirizing various hypocrisies and weaknesses. However, this can make his characters become a little one-note. The dialogue is, at times, a bit unnatural in the mouth of his characters (could also be a translation thing) but there are some very memorable quotes and phrases that perfectly encapsulate odd situation, hypocrisies etc.

RUR is the classic that originated the robot. A company manufactures robots – unlike many depictions today, they are not machines – more like weird-organic humans genetically engineered to be obedient. They do look like humans though – one of the characters confuses the robots with actual humans. The company directors work on their isolated island, producing and selling robots. Their normal lives are interrupted when the beautiful, idealistic robot-rights activist Lady Helen arrives. Everyone debates on the effects of the robots on society, which becomes increasingly strained after a robot revolution breaks out.

The Insect Play follows a human Traveller as he stumbles into the insect world. Capek organizes this play as a series of short scenes, each focusing on one group of insects or several interacting species. But though they are insects and at times do insect-related things, the characters in the play clearly are meant to satirize human foibles and weaknesses. Capek can be light, when looking at the casual partner swapping among butterflies, or dark, when anatomizing the justifications for war in an ant colony.

In The Makropulos Case, the litigants and lawyers involved in a Jarndyce v Jarndyce esque lawsuit are confronted by a very odd opera singer who seems to know too much about the case. Her secret forces them all to face their own mortality.

One can see why the Nazis et al. would hate The White Plague. In this play, a disease has broken out while the nation is on the brink of war. The lowly clinical doctor who discovers a cure sets up a conflict between him and other scientists, patients and politicians.

Stop if spoiler-averse

Read together, there are many connecting threads between the plays. RUR, The Makropulos Case and The White Plague all hinge on some secret document/formula. But they’re not secrets that act as a McGuffin – something inconsequential that exposes conflicts between the characters - but instead are integral to the plot. There are whole sections taken up on debating the meaning of the formulas and all of them are life-altering, possibly bringing about or preventing the apocalypse. Still, at the same time the actual “secret” is a bit inconsequential – none are something like – we’re actually related! It doesn’t matter what the cure is for the White Plague (that is, no one cares if it’s a protein vs. small molecule or something like that), but more about the fact that the secret is controlled by the adamantly anti-war doctor Galen who will only help the poor (exacerbating matters is the fact that the disease is horrifically painful). The morals of his decision are called into question, but so are the daily decisions of everyone else helping to run the war machine, even from people who might not even associate themselves with the war effort. Similarly, the formulas for robot reproduction and human immortality aren’t necessarily what readers care about, but the effects they have on the characters and implications for the future in both RUR and The Makropulos Case.

RUR and Makropulos are also similarly structured. The female lead is an outsider and pretty much all the male characters – who are either undifferentiated or sort of one note – fall in love with her. She acts as a catalyst for the long debates surrounding the formula in question. But Helen is the polar opposite of Emilia Marty, the ageless opera singer from Makropulos. Helen is sweet and idealistic while Emilia’s indifference can take on the form of vulgarity or cruelty. Helen can be quite bumbling and annoying at times. Emilia, on the other hand, is manipulative and always fascinating. It is likely that Helen does not appeal to contemporary audiences because she seems to conform to the stereotype of the helpless woman. She displays as a number of characteristics that make her come off as a ditz. She’s always making mistakes and conventionally abandons her beliefs for marriage. Still, her role is ambivalent. She pretty much guarantees their destruction in two ways – urging the chief engineer to make the robots have feelings, then destroying the formula. Although that does make her seem stupid, the latter at least wasn’t her fault. Capek has the male characters condescend to her, constantly keeping things from her and saying that she doesn’t need to know the unpleasant things going on in the world being a woman and all. So of course she couldn’t know how her actions affected the outside world or the meaning of the formula. Because the play is about the hubris of the (male) creators, it’s just another thing that they screwed up. And while the destruction of the formula doomed the characters, it also doomed the robot society. Robot Helen, at the end, provides some redemption. It’s only briefly mentioned, but love, art etc – all the values Helen represents – win out in the end, both with Robot Helen and the characters’ thoughts on what really matters. But, this is only applicable if life has a finite period. For Emilia Marty, everything of that nature, as well as everything else, has lost its value. As opposed to Helen, she is very anti-feminine but really just anti-human. In some ways, she was more like the indifferent robots. Robots, though, had a finite shelf life. They gradually became more human and finally came to lament the fact that they couldn’t reproduce. Emilia gradually lost her emotions and was indifferent, almost contemptuous, towards her offspring. With a set lifespan, the robots needed some sort of hope for the future – not really anything like religion or creative abilities to outlast them – while an indefinite lifespan makes not caring about your kids easy. It also led to the crazy situation she found herself in with Gregor. Like Helen, Emilia is an ambivalent character but she doesn’t end up abusing the formula. It was male hubris that led to her predicament and in the end, after all the male characters debate about what they could do with the formula for immortality (all according to their types), she shows the futility of their plans with her own situation. At the end, Kristina – the ingénue character – is the only one who can destroy the formula.

The White Plague and The Insect Play are very different in content, but both have similar structures. There are a number of representative characters given short scenes, though in Plague, they move the plot along and provide a panoramic view of the situation with the disease, while in Insect – more short, self-contained episodes. Both satires of personality types and characteristics, whereas RUR and Makropulos more examination of the follies and tragedies of humans messing with the natural order. In Insect, Capek mocks all sorts of human behaviors and justifications. The meaningless coupling and recoupling of the butterflies, who swear eternal love, then quickly find a new partner was relevant then and now. The shit-obsessed dungbeetles are a caricature of never-satisfied capitalists while the Parasite spouts socialism rhetoric. Other insects use the family as justification for schadenfreude or violence and the “Me!” obsessed Chrysalis is a true child of narcissism. The ant society shows the meaninglessness of war, also a theme in Plague. In Plauge, a number of characters exist mainly to show the hypocrisies in the war and medical machines. Sigelius is more concerned with fame and politics than science or helping people. The smug family is only concerned with the disease insofar as it will affect them and perfectly indifferent to war. Krug and the Marshal change their views on the disease as soon as it affects them. And Galen, for all his good intentions, is commodifying the cure. In Insect, a number of plotlines – for each individual insect type – go on simultaneously, though the butterflies and ants have their own acts. The insect types interact and the Traveller makes comments, trying to decide which insect values are the best. It’s all very interesting, occasionally funny, occasionally bleak – certainly different from most plot-driven plays. And any character one-dimensionality passes by, because, well, they’re insects. The dialogue in Plague also shows the weaknesses of the characters, though the plot has to advance. This play has a rather cinematic feel – lots of cuts between varying scenes and characters, some a dialogue between two characters, but others featuring large crowds, going back and forth between the activity in homes, hospitals and the government. It’s effective but many of the characters come off as ideas more than people.

Other thoughts.
There are some funny moments in RUR that maybe Capek didn’t intend to be funny. The setup that Helen enters in the first act – a bunch of nerds living on an island, making robots – is somewhat comical. I could actually see them all falling in love with her on first sight because they were all socially awkward. Helen, in annoyance, suggests that they marry a robot instead, but one of them says he doesn’t want to to marry a robot. Not that he didn’t want to do other things, but didn’t want to marry one. Can take that how you want to. One meant to be funny part – the discrepancy between the idealized history of how robots came to be and Domin’s description of the creator as a horrible old man – you can think of plenty of famous people and historical situations to whom this could apply. Capek seemed to hit a lot of Robot Topics in the play – besides that allusion to robot sex and marriage, robot revolution, robots developing people emotions, robots unhappy at not being able to produce children etc. The robot overtake happened too fast – also would likely be some jobs that robots couldn’t do. Also – it was mentioned that humans weren’t reproducing because of the robots. But if people had all that free time – think they’d be making more babies, not fewer.

The Insect Play – the poet butterfly Felix did read some of his poetry – cringingly bad – it was supposed to be bad, but did wonder about the translation. The butterflies debate some of the rhymes, which would make it hard to translate. Translated poetry in general is difficult to read, but when getting into rhyme structure, one wonders how much is coming through in the translation. Other than that, the butterflies could be any awkward teenagers meeting, getting together and breaking up, with some insect flying and deaths.

Makropulos – did wonder why Emilia didn’t just go off in the woods somewhere – seemed like she had enough money, had no pleasure in performing or interacting with people anymore. But suppose the only thing worse that being around people who are always the same, only the names changing, would be being stuck by yourself for eternity. The only time she was a bit lively was in contemplating the past or at the end, when the secret came out. She did have pleasant memories about the earlier Prus or Hauk-Sendorf, though from other things she said – was likely fairly indifferent to them at the time. Only the past – or really, the memory of it – that gives pleasure – very Proustian and oddly human for such an antipathetic character. Another moment I thought of Proust – in describing his relationship with Albertine, the narrator notes that she can no longer give him any pleasure, but can only make him unhappy with boredom, worry and jealousy. That seemed to be Emilia’s general relationship with people and the world, especially in her severe boredom and annoyance at Gregor’s ridiculous passion.

White Plague – I would image that Galen found the cure by accident – some patients accidentally given another drug, or in specific conditions – and one would image that the occurrence could happen again. This wouldn’t work for the plot (Galen has to be the only one with the cure), but often important scientific discoveries occur in more than one lab – one could have better evidence. for example, but often not just a lone person. The initial scene between Galen and Sigelius was pretty funny – at first has a veneer of civility, but each trying to push their agendas, also each calculating the scientific vs the political. They both need something from the other, so the occasional ‘taking my toys and leaving’ moments get deflected. Initially, they come to an agreement, but that falls apart later. Sigelius isn’t very sympathetic, but in some of their conversations, he’s the one representing the less-crazy view – saying that they can’t politicize their medicine. Krug and the Marshal come off as rather less self-aggrandizing than Sigelius and they are able to defend their points of view, though the Marshal decides to agree to Galen’s conditions when they come down with the disease. Still, the truth is that most people really only can care about what’s in front of them. Maybe works like a bell curve, but of course someone’s personal problems will be more important than the horrible things occurring around the world. Everyone would be paralyzed if they gave everything equal weight. The Marshal says that a victorious war is better than a shameful peace and many would agree – appeasement is still a dirty word. The play was written in 1937 and Capek died while the horrors of WWII were just starting, though his brother and frequent collaborator Josef was arrested and died in Bergen Belsen in 1945. ( )