Hry o požáru
Plays about fires

Protectorate drama as an example of allegorical communication

Summary/Abstract: This study focuses on three dramas written during the occupation (i.e. at a time whendrama and literary communication were very stringently regulated by Protectorateand Reich censorship), each dealing with the motif of a fire threatening theexistence of a family business (a laundry, a mill and a factory), and each conceived ina similar fashion. Two of them — Hra na schovávanou (Hide and Seek, 1939) by OlgaScheinpflugová and Červený mlýn (The Red Mill, 1940) by Richard Werner — usedthis motif as an easily understandable allegory, which by means of this seemingly‘innocuous’ private sujetenabled them to express the sense of national jeopardy feltwithin that political situation and to appeal to the Czechs’ sense of solidarity, as wellas to express their views on “how we got into this situation in the first place”, thedifference between them being that Scheinpflugová was a defender of prewar liberaldemocracy, whereas Werner was, if anything, attacking it. Although the third dramaZámek Miyajima (Miyajima Castle, 1944), appears to be an apolitical Ibsenesque playwithout any topical allusions, at the time in question it also expressed the attitudeof its author Olga Barényi, a woman who identified with the Protectorate regime tosuch an extent that she started to come out against Czechness and the Czechs. Henceanalysis and comparison of these three different works which share a single motif canshow how the differing authors’ positions within their allegorical communicationsare reflected in the semantic, ideational and plot structures of the individual literaryworks.

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