Anton Chekhov

At his theatre, which opened in 1882 with The Inspector General, the former lawyer and ticket broker Korsh maintained a stable of hacks to produce translations of European bedroom farce and well-carpentered dramas of adultery; by so doing, he greatly increased his audiences and reached ranks of society new to the theatre. Moreover, to his credit, he instituted a policy of matinees at reduced prices every Friday, when he would present classics and controversial new plays. A Korsh premiere normally drew the entire literary and artistic world of Moscow, as well as an enthusiastic younger generation. Stanislavsky attributed to him the creation, over a decade, of a theatrically sophisticated public that was ready to accept the reforms of the Moscow Art Theatre.

Important works such as The Power of Darkness, Ibsen's A Dolls House and An Enemy of the People, and plays by Becque, Rostand and Sudermann had their first Moscow productions at Korsh matinees, in elaborate stage settings renowned for their realism. It was Korsh who nagged at Chekhov to write a comedy in the spirit of his funny stories, and who produced Chekhov's first staged play, Ivanov, with great success. Korsh's theatre, with its dedicated if uneven acting company, naturalistic scenery and lip service to the higher ideals of drama may be the generic target of Treplyov's disgust in The Seagull at the 'cliche-ridden, pedestrian' modern theatre.

When the curtain goes up to reveal an artificially-lighted room with three walls, these great talents, high priests of sacred art, demonstrate how people eat, drink, love, walk, wear their jackets; when out of cheap, vulgar tableaux and cheap, vulgar speeches they try to extract a moral - a tiny little moral, easy to understand, useful around the house; when in a thousand different ways they serve up the same old thing over and over again - then I run and keep on running . . . (Act 1)

During the period when Korsh and Lentovsky domi­nated the Moscow scene, Chekhov's journalism entailed much theatre attendance, and he became acquainted with actors and managers. Familiarity bred contempt in him but could not efface his perennial fascination with the stage. Many of his early works teem with vignettes of backstage life, usually presented as caricatures or sardonic social commentary. There is nothing idealised about Chekhov's gallery of thespians, who are depicted as vain, ignorant, petty but somehow more sympathetic than the solid citizenry. In the late 1880s, when Chekhov's friendship with professional playwrights such as Shcheglov (Leon- tyev) and Prince Sumbatov (Yuzhin) deepened, and when he saw his own plays produced, his commentary grew more embittered, more caustic and more exasperated.⁴ Actors are capricious and conceited,' he wrote to Leykin (4 December 1887), 'half-educated and presumptuous,' and, to Suvorin, 'actresses are cows who fancy themselves goddesses' (17 December 1889).

Actors never observe ordinary people. They do not know landowners or merchants or village priests or bureaucrats. On the other hand they can give dis­tinguished impersonations of billiard markers, kept women, distressed cardsharps, in short all those indi­viduals whom they observe as they ramble through pothouses and bachelor parties. Horrible ignorance (to Suvorin, 25 November 1889).

When Suvorin proposed to buy a theatre in St. Peters­burg, Chekhov tried vainly to dissuade him. But once Suvorin's Theatre was a fait accompli, Chekhov showered his friend with advice, recommendations, and suggestions for casting. In particular, he boosted Lidiya Yavorskaya, a popular star who excelled in plays such as La Dame aux camellias and Madame Sans-Gene. Chekhov's brother Mikhail later wrote, 'I was never a fan of her talent and especially disliked her voice, screechy and cracked as if she had a chronic sore throat. But she was an intelligent woman, progressive, and for her benefits would stage plays that seemed at the time "racy".'⁵ Chekhov was well aware of her defects as an actress, but they had a very brief fling, and he later used some of her traits in sketching Arkadina in The Seagull.

As his intimacy with professionals grew, Chekhov com­mented even more impatiently about the theatre's short­comings. 'I implore you,' he wrote to Shcheglov, 'please fall out of love with the stage'.

True, there is a lot of good in it. The good is overstated to the skies, and the vileness is masked . . . The modern theatre is a rash, an urban disease. The disease must be swept away, and loving it is unhealthy. You start arguing with me, repeating the old phrase, the theatre is a school, it educates and so on . . . But I am telling you what I see: the modern theatre is not superior to the crowd; on the contrary, the life of the crowd is more elevated and intelligent than the theatre ... (25 November 1888, 20 December 1888)