Anton Chekhov

The earliest revision was for the Alexandra Theatre in St. Petersburg. Chekhov wrote, 'Now my Mr. Ivanov will be much better understood. The finale doesn't satisfy me exactly (except for the shooting, everything is weak) but I am comforted that its form is still not finished' (19 December 1888). Originally, Ivanov had died on stage of a heart attack and Chekhov realized that this posed a problem for an actor while it undermined the real causes of Ivanov's destruction.

The play's life-blood is gossip. In the first act, we hear of slanderous rumours about Ivanov, but no one takes them too seriously. In the second act, the school for scandal is in session at Lebedev's home, but the gossipmongers are so caricatured that again .their power to harm is discounted. Ivanov is now associated with Borkin's shady machina­tions, however. In Act Three, Lebedev still refuses to believe the tattle, but warns Ivanov, 'There're so many rumours about you running through the county, watch out, our friend the District Attorney may turn up . . . You're a murderer, and a vampire, and a grave-robber . . .'Aided by Lvov, the rumours reach Anna's ears, provoking her confrontation with Ivanov and her collapse. In the play's first version, this theme continued into Act Four, with even Lebedev succumbing to doubts about Anna's death. Ivanov, definitively charged with villainy by the Doctor, dies of a heart attack 'because,' said Chekhov, 'he can't endure the outrageous insult' (letter to Aleksandr, 20 November 1887).

This was to turn the play into a tract about provincial narrowmindedness, and, indeed, many of the critics described Ivanov as the honourable but vacillating victim of scandalmongers. So Chekhov added Sasha to the attackers in Act Four, and had Ivanov taking active measures in his own defence. He gave him a long mono­logue about dreams of becoming the young Ivanov once more. 'If Ivanov turns out looking like a cad or a superfluous man, and the doctor a great man . . . then, obviously, my play won't come off, and there can be no talk of a production' (to Suvorin, 30 December 1888).

Doctor Lvov therefore needed touching up. In tradi­tional drama, doctors were raisonneurs, whose sagacious moralizing clued the audience into the way to think about the characters. But Lvov does not heal breaches: he creates them through his purblind and self-righteous assumptions. In this respect, he much resembles Gregers Werle in Ibsen's The Wild Duck, who, in his quixotic attempt to strip away illusions, destroys the lives of those around him. Chekhov's task was to make sure that Lvov did not seem either an objective spokesman or a fatuous prig. 'Such persons are necessary, and for the most part sympathetic. To draw them as caricatures, even in the interests of the stage is dishonorable and serves no purpose' (to Suvorin, 30 December 1888).

Rehearsals for the Petersburg production went badly, despite a strong cast, and Chekhov quarrelled with the comic actor Vladimir Davydov who played the lead in a monotonous style to indicate seriousness. The opening night was a huge success, but Chekhov sneaked away, regarding the ovations as intoxication that would later give him a severe hangover. He continued to revise Ivanov, dropping one comic character, Dudkin, and, in general, toning down the farce elements. A third version appeared in 1889, with more explanations added between Lvov and Anna, and the removal of the dream monologue of Ivanov in the last act. Even then, Chekhov was not content and kept touching it up until 1901.

Chekhov never managed to eliminate the mannerisms of boulevard drama that vitiated the subtlety of his concept. The Act Two curtain, with a consumptive wife intruding on her husband in the arms of another woman, is effective claptrap; at least we are spared the fainting which is described in the next act. Scenes of vituperation rise, in the best melodrama manner, to one consummate insult. 'Kike bitch,' Ivanov screams at Anna in his ugliest moment; 'Bastard!' (or 'Cad' 'Villain' - podlets is too dated to translate well) is the summation of Lvov's contempt for Ivanov. Chekhov was to handle the slanging-match be­tween Arkadina and Treplyov in The Seagull more saliently. Even the final suicide is, as the critic Kugel said, 'a sacrifice made by Chekhov's soul to the god of theatrical gimmickry,'⁴ literally ending the play with a bang. It may have been copied directly from Luka Antropov's popular comedy-melodrama Will-o'-the-Wisps (1873).