ABSTRACT
An important qualitative leap forward came in the late 1950's with the appearance of what has been referred to as "poetic" or "lyrical" drama. These terms are somewhat misleading, for one would search in vain for substantial similarities between the representative plays of this type and representative plays customarily put in the genre of "poetic" or "lyrical" drama. Original Czech post-war dramas were remote from the technique of Chekhov, with Gorky being the model playwright among the Russians. It is one of the major ironies of the Czech drama from the period of the thaw that the relevance of Chekhovian drama was not discovered directly but in a complex, roundabout way from the West. The Chekhovian method also enabled the expression of the feeling of disillusionment that begins to pervade the dramatists' consciousness in the early 1960's. The mood of plays becomes melancholy, the dramatis personae communicating again and again their frustrations and unhappiness.
