Anton Chekhov

Both Popova and Smirnov are alazons in the classic sense: figures made comic by pretending to be more than they actually are. If the languishing Popova derives from the Petronian source, Smirnov is a descendant of Moliere's Alceste, professing a hatred of society's hypocrisy but succumbing to a woman who exemplifies that society. The two poseurs come in conflict, and the roles reverse: the grieving relict snatches up a pistol and, like any case- hardened bully, insists on a duel while the gruff woman- hater finds himself incapable of facing down his female opponent. (It was the improbable duel that most outraged the critics.) It is in the cards that the frail widow and the brute in muddy boots will fall into one another's arms by the final curtain.

'The Proposal'

'A vulgarish and boringish vaudevillette, but suitable for the provinces' was how Chekhov disparaged The Proposal, even while he asked friends to intercede with the censors on its behalf. Inspired by the success of The Bear, he was anxious to get his next farce on the boards. It had its first production at the Krasnoe Selo Theatre on 9 August 1889, with a cast of Pavel Svobodin (who had created Shabelsky) as Lomov, Mariya Ilinskaya as Nataliya and the great comic actor Varlamov as Chubukov. It was greeted with unbroken laughter, not least from the Tsar who congratu­lated the actors. The Proposal shared The Bear's fate as a favourite curtain-raiser and benefit play in the provinces for years.

Botched proposals are a Chekhov specialty. The cross- purposes of the 'imaginary invalid' Lomov, incongruously decked out in tails and gloves, and Nataliya in her apron, mount to a boisterous, breathless pitch here. Chekhov understood how to accelerate the basic misapprehensions into a barrage of insults, and how, after building to a climax, to reinvigorate the action by introducing a fresh con­tretemps (which he may have learned from Turgenev's Luncheon with the Marshal). Later, the final interview of Tusenbach and Irina in Three Sisters, and Lopakhin's failure to propose to Varya in The Cherry Orchard will show Chekhov modulating the tone to one of shattered hopes and mutually conflicting illusions.

'Tatyana Repina'

Tatyana Repina is an anomaly among Chekhov's one-acts: it can be understood only in relationship to another play by someone else. In 1889, Suvorin wrote a 'comedy' founded on an actual occurrence: the suicide eight years earlier of the young actress Yevlaliya Kadmina. Jilted by her lover, she poisoned herself and came on in the last act of Ostrovsky's Vasilisa Melentieva, whose heroine is also supposed to die of poison. Kadmina perished in gruesome torments before the eyes of a Kharkov audience, and thus won posthumous notoriety. Chekhov considered her an 'extraordinary celebrity' and even solicited her photo­graph.

Suvorin's Tatyana Repina follows the facts fairly closely. Tatyana Repina, a high-spirited and talented provincial actress, is thrown over by her lover who hopes to repair his ruined fortunes by marrying an heiress. Deeply hurt, publicly insulted by a gross Jewish financier, seeing nothing to live for, Tatyana takes poison before going on stage and dies during the last act of Ostrovsky's play as her friends look on, aghast. From a modern standpoint, Chekhov's enthusiasm for this sensationalist play is hard to com­prehend; yet he was lavish with his praise and offered copious advice in his letters. He predicted a success that came to pass in both capitals, and got embroiled in the Moscow rehearsals as an intercessor between actors and author, when Suvorin was busy staging Chekhov's Ivanov in Petersburg.

Chekhov's one-act is therefore a kind of private joke, the 'what happens after the curtain goes down,' that St. John Hankin perfected in his Dramatic Sequels. Chekhov pur­ports to be amused by the epidemic of suicides that followed in the wake of Tatyana Repina's success, and he depicts the marriage taking place between the dead actress's lover and his rich heiress. The hieratic formality of the Orthodox wedding ceremony reproduced with con­siderable authenticity, blended with the trivial remarks of the bystanders, provides the structure. The counterpoint between the sonorous Church Slavonic with its portentous vows and the mundane chitchat of the wedding party produces a sour and sardonic effect. Eventually, the church choir has to compete with a worldly chorus of 'Voices' who begin to spread the news of the suicide epidemic, passing along fragments of tattle. Neurotic females are condemned for this copy-cat felo de se at the same time the choir is intoning its 'Lord have mercys' and 'Amens'.