The specificity of this article is the consideration not only of the completed text entitled A Duma about Brytanka, but also of the play-forming and creating process, which became possible due to the presence of drafts and draft notes to the work. Therefore, this study is conducted not only in along the lines of literary theory, but also textology. The relevance of the study is that the view from above allows us to comprehend, or even rethink, the play A Duma about Brytanka in the context of the author’s work and also in the context of the Soviet drama landscape in general. Understanding and rethinking the work of predecessors is an important process for comprehending the development of literature as a general process and its development within the national borders. The aim of the study at hand is to determine how the realities of the time and especially the accepted literary trend and historical events influenced the formation of the text of the play. The results of the study show that the original idea of A Duma about Brytanka had much more romantic features, as romanticism as a style of thinking was inherent for Yuri Yanovskyi. However, in the process of creating the play, the author began to rely on the documents that showed the real case of the social republic. The author abandoned the original version and completed the play so that it became much closer to the Soviet canon than to romanticism.