Jan Neruda, the theater critic

The topic of this bachelor thesis is the theatre critiques and essays of Jan Neruda dedicated to Provisional Theatre, which functioned in the years 1862 - 1883. In the first part of my thesis, I am presenting Neruda's journalistic work, while further I describe the form, style and topics of his critical treatise. I tried to classify his critical works into the social, political and cultural context by using secondary literature and by including selected passages from his critiques. I present significant celebrities of Provisional Theatre, as well as important leading personalities and milestones in the development of this theatre. Neruda dealt thoroughly with practical aspects of staging and he closely observed the acting work. In his critiques he described general acting principles of the late romanticism with occasional realistic tendencies, but he also commented on concrete theatrical and non-theatrical phenomena. His importance lies in the consistent critical observation of the practical theatrical aspects, which he pursued with sustained journalistic regularity and thoroughness. With his theoretic work he helped to achieve the professionalization of the first Czech systematically operating theatre and he portrayed it for future generations