So! This is the play that gave us the word “robot”, which comes from the Czech word for either slave or forced laborer (umm, well slave) depending on the translation. This play got it all started.
But of course, the concept of the robot is a much older idea — whether we’re dealing with golems in (whoa, Czech) Jewish myths and legends, or the animation of Frankenstein’s Creature or the bringing to life of Galatea etc etc, the animation of life is a fairly archetypal myth.
But here, it’s applied to a modern context of industrial/post-industrial Eastern Europe and the concept changes. It’s no longer the idea of whether or not the life we breathe into existence through invention has a soul — although that is addressed here — but more so, what are we allowed to demand of this life through labor. So the connections to factory labor and the mechanization of human life though both assembly line factories but also automation are forefront in this play.
The play itself is almost quaint given how many other examples of this kind of story exist and so it’s tempting to view it through a historical artifact lens primarily and that is satisfying, but it’s also perfectly good on its own. So combining both lenses to create the historical and influential study makes it pretty satisfying. It’s a lot like Frankenstein in that way. It’s hard not to see it through the influence it had, but that influence was not accidental because not only is this the first, it’s also clearly very good too.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/R-U-R-Rossums-Universal-Penguin-Classics/dp/0141182083/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=rur+capek&qid=1557492766&s=gateway&sr=8-1)