Anton Chekhov

Chekhov based Calchas (late 1886 or early 1887) on a short story of the same name; like the previous play, it was meant as a 'dramatic etude' for a popular comic actor, Davydov. 'It should play 15 to 20 minutes,' Chekhov suggested. 'As a rule little things are much better to write than big ones: they're less pretentious, but still successful . . . what more does anyone need?' (to M. V. Kiseleva, 14 January 1887). Davydov performed it at Korsh's Theatre on 19 February 1888, but put in so many ad-libs about great actors of the past that Chekhov could barely recog­nize his script. Later he made some slight emendations which he submitted to the censorship in hopes of a performance in a State theatre, and changed the title to Swan Song. 'A long title, bitter-sweet, but I can't think up another, although I thought a long time' (to Lensky, 26 October 1888). (It's six syllables in Russian: Lebedinaya pesna.)

Svetlovidov - which means 'of bright aspect', probably a nom de theatre - has, like one of Tolstoy's heroes, begun life as an army officer but lost caste by going on the stage. Even there, his career has been one of decline, from tragedian to buffo. He has been playing Calchas, the wily old oracle- monger in Offenbach's comic opera La Belle Helene, a secondary part chosen for his benefit, no doubt because the popular operetta would fill the house. Its standard costume consisted of a short Attic tunic and tights on his 68-year old legs. So, throughout this play, Svetlovidov's declamation from King Lear, Othello and Hamlet is continually con­tradicted by his ludicrous appearance.

Although the play draws heavily on Dumas' Kean to allow a skilled character actor a field-day, it still encom­passes a serious Chekhovian theme - coming to terms with life. Svetlovidov, in the course of fifteen minutes, passes from self-aggrandisement as a ruined tragedian to self-contempt as a hammy clown to self-acceptance as an attendant lord, like T. S. Eliot's Prufrock, who can 'swell a progress, start a scene or two'. At the height of his delusion, he spouts Lear's storm speech; but by the end, he exits with a pettish repudiation of society from Griboyedov's classic comedy Woe From Wit. This diminuendo hints at a pocket en­lightenment, a compressed version of the awareness that tragic heroes take five acts to achieve.

'The Bear'

As usual, Chekhov's earliest reference to his work-in- progress was offhandedly negative: 'Having nothing to do, I wrote a vapid little Frenchy vaudevillette (vodevil chik) entitled The Bear' (to I. L. Leontiev-Shcheglov, 22 Febru­ary 1888). No sooner had it appeared in print, than Chekhov's friends insisted that he submit it to the censor and recommended the perfect actors to play it. The censor was not amused, disturbed by the 'more than strange plot,' 'the coarseness and indecency of the tone of the whole play,'² and forbade production. But he was overruled by a superior bureaucrat who, by suppressing a few lines, rendered it suitable for the public. It had its premiere at Korsh's on 28 October 1888, with the clever ingenue Nataliya Rybchinskaya as Popova and Chekhov's boyhood friend Nikolay Solovtsov as Smirnov. Solovtsov, a tall, ungainly fellow with a huge voice, had probably been in Chekhov's mind for the role of the bear as he wrote it.

The Bear was, from the start, a runaway success: the audience roared with laughter and interrupted the dialogue with applause, and the newspapers praised it to the skies. Theatres all over Russia added it to their repertoires and the best Russian actors clamoured to play in it. In Chekhov's lifetime it brought him in regular royalties and has held the stage throughout the Soviet era.

The Bear's comedy proceeds from the characters' lack of self-knowledge: the widow Popova fancies herself incon- solably bereaved, a fugitive from the world, while Smirnov takes himself to be a misogynist to the core. It updates Petronius' ancient tale of the Widow of Ephesus, which Christopher Fry later turned into ,4 Phoenix Too Frequent. That ribald fable tells of a widow whose grief for a dead husband melts under the ardour of the soldier guarding a crucified corpse; she eventually colludes with him to substitute her own deceased spouse for the body stolen during their love-making. Chekhov puts the pony Toby in place of the corpse, as a token of the transference of the widow's affection; he also doubles the comic reversal.