R.U.R. and The Insect Play

Josef and Karel Capek were the best known literary figures of liberated Czechoslovakia after 1918. After the success of R.U.R. (Rossums' Universal Robots, 1920), the brothers collaborated in their best-known work, The Insect Play (1921). Both plays are satires depicting the horrors of a regimented technical world and the terrible end of the populace if they fail to rise against their oppressors. They reflect the world in which the Capeks lived and give a commentary on its grosser follies.