[Under their present regime, the Czechs are] faced daily with an official language…. With the "official" language there goes an "official" consciousness which is outside the daily life of an average person. The process of constant pigeonholing of everything as either good or bad, the unshakable value judgments which go with these words (examples like "enemy of the people," "subversive bourgeois revisionists" or "lackeys of Imperialism" will suffice) have created a chasm between everyday language and the official language; and this has resulted in a sort of linguistic schizophrenia of every person who has some sort of official post. In this connection one is bound to remember Orwell's concept of "Newspeak," which was intended to subjugate the mind by linguistic means.

Havel has brought this phenomenon to the stage for the first time and in an inimitable way. The three plays [The Garden Party, The Memorandum, and The...