Expanding the canon of the classical Hungarian dramatic heritage was one of the primarily objectives of the Hungarian realist theatre of the 1960s and 1970s. Both political theatre and director’s theatre turned their attention to forgotten 19th-century plays. On the one hand, they could be used to promote a social realist view of history. On the other hand, they had no stage history, so directors were free to interpret them. The expansion of the canon was primarily a dramaturgical problem in theatre discourse. The norms for staging the classics were shaped by the plays that were being rediscovered at the time. In order to promote the classics, institutions such as the Gyula Castle Theatre and the annual Celebration Week of Classical Hungarian Dramas at the National Theatre in Budapest were established. However, canonisation efforts were not able to change the narrow repertoire of the Hungarian classical dramatic heritage.