Above all, it managed, despite inimical circumstances, to maintain contact with European trends and to bring to our stages the realism and naturalism then in vogue. Domestic realist dramatists were performed (including Jozef Gregor Tajovský, Ján Hollý and Pavol Socháň), but so, too, were Chekhov, Bjornson, the Mrštik brothers, Gabriela Preissová and Ivo Vojnovič. The plays of Aleksander Fredro, Johann Nepomuk Nestroy and Eugene Scribe proved popular, and Moliere, Schiller and Shakespeare were also tackled, as were, ultimately, symbolist works.
One should not, however, gloss over the fact that, despite the remarkable endeavours of hundreds of amateur thespians, the state of affairs in Slovakia was decidedly grim. While other European nations had their own schools and advanced their own culture untrammelled, both Slovakia as a whole and its theatre remained essentially peripheral, notwithstanding its location at the centre of Europe. This situation, the result of chauvinism on the part of the ruling nation, was no longer acceptable in the European context, and it is little surprising that so aged a state as Austro-Hungary should dissolve with such ease in 1918.

II.
There can be no doubt that the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918 arrested the further degradation of the Slovak nation and brought it nearer to the level of Europe’s modern nations. Among those who did much to bring about the new state was the Slovak Milan Rastislav Štefánik, who, however, died in Czechoslovakia in mysterious circumstances in 1919. The feudal conditions of Austro-Hungary were replaced by the parliamentarism of the Czechoslovak Republic, and the benefits of democracy extended to the field of culture and, hence, to theatre. However, given that up to then Slovakia had lacked even a single professional company, everything had to begin virtually ab initio after 1918. The first step came with the establishment in 1920 of the Slovak National Theatre (Slovenské narodné divadlo), which had three companies: drama, opera and ballet.
But this event itself – even at this early stage – revealed the adverse as well as the positive consequences of the political conception which informed the new Republic, namely the existence of not two nations – the Czech and the Slovak – , but one – the Czechoslovak. It was an idea that had no basis in reality. The Czechs and Slovaks had never prior to this time constituted a single nation. They were different in mentality, spoke different – albeit kindred – languages, and had different religious traditions and their own cultural and economic organisation.