Anton Chekhov

MODERN DRAMATISTS

TON CHEKHOV

MACMILLAJST MODERN DRAMATISTS

Macmillan Modern Dramatists

Series Editors: Bruce King and Adele King

Published titles

Reed Anderson, Federico Garcia Lorca

Eugene Benson,/. M. Synge

Renate Benson, German Expressionist Drama

Normand Berlin, Eugene O'Neill

Michael Billington, Alan Ayckbourn

John Bull, New British Political Dramatists

Denis Calandra, New German Dramatists

Neil Carson, Arthur Miller

Maurice Charney,/oe Orton

Ruby Cohn, New American Dramatists, 1960-1980

Bernard F. Dukore, American Dramatists, 1918-1945

Bernard F. Dukore, Harold Pinter

Arthur Ganz, George Bernard Shaw

Frances Gray, John Arden

Julian Hilton, George BiXchner

David Hirst, Edward Bond

Helene Keyssar, Feminist Theatre

Bettina L. Knapp, French Theatre 1918-1939

Charles Lyons, Samuel Beckett

Susan Bassnett-McGuire, Luigi Pirandello

Margery Morgan, August Strindberg

Leonard C. Pronko, Eugene Labiche and Georges Feydeau Jeanette L. Savona Jean Genet

Claude Schumacher, Alfred Jarry and Guillaume Apollinaire

Laurence Senelick, Anton Chekhov

Theodore Shank, American Alternative Theatre

James Simmons, Sean O'Casey

David Thomas, Henrik Ibsen

Dennis Walder, Athol Fugard

Thomas Whitaker, Tom Stoppard

Nick Worrall, Nikolai Gogol and Ivan Turgenev

Katharine Worth, Oscar Wilde

Further titles are in preparation

MACMILLAN MODERN DRAMATISTS

ANTON CHEKHOV

Laurence Senelick

Professor of Drama, Tufts University

M

MACM1LLAN

© Laurence Senelick 1985

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmit­ted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended).

Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

First published 1985

Published by

Higher and Further Education Division MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London

Companies and representatives throughout the world

Typeset by

Wessex Typesetters Ltd Frome, Somerset

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Senelick, Laurence

Anton Chekhov.—(Macmillan modern dramatists) 1. Chekhov, A.P.—Dramatic works I. Title

891.72'3 PG3458.Z9D7

ISBN 978-0-333-30882-0 ISBN 978-1-349-17981-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-17981-7

To the memory of James Arnott

Contents

List of Plates viii

Editors' Preface x

A Life 1

At the Play 16

Journeyman Efforts 28

Without Patrimony 28

Ivanov 34

The Wood Demon 41

The One-Act Plays 50

On th e High way 5 3

On the Harmfulness of Tobacco 54

Swan Song 55

The Bear 56

The Proposal 58

Tatyana Repina 59

A Tragedian In Spite Of Himself 62

The Wedding 63

The Jubilee 65

The Night before the Trial 67The Seagull 70

Uncle Vanya 88

Three Sisters 102

The Cherry Orchard 117

The Theatrical Filter 135 References 151 Bibliography 158 Editions and Translations of Chekhov 163 Index 165

List of Plates

Georges Wilson as Borkin and Jean Vilar as Platonov in Ce Fou de Platonov at the Theatre National Populaire, Paris, 1956. (From The World. Photo: Agnes Varda)

Meyerhold's production of The Proposal in 33 Swoons, Moscow, 1935. Igor Ilyinsky as Lomov and Logina as Natasha.

Michael Chekhov, the dramatist's nephew, in A Tragedian in Spite of Himself, Majestic Theatre, New York, 1935.