Anton Chekhov

Peace, Richard, Chekhov. A study of the four major plays (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983).

Pitcher, Harvey, The Chekhov Play. A New Interpretation (Lon­don: Chatto & Windus, 1973).

, Chekhov's Leading Lady. A Portrait of the Actress

Olga Knipper (London: John Murray, 1979).

Raicu, John, 'Chekhov's use of church ritual in Tatyana Repina in Themes in Drama 5, ed. J. Redmond. (New York and London: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

Rayfield, Donald, Chekhov. The Evolution of his art (London: Elek, 1975).

Schmid, Herta, Strukturalische Dramentheorie: semantische Analyse von Cechovs 'Ivanov' und 'Der Kirschgarten.' (Kron- berg: Scriptor Verlag, 1973).

Senelick, Laurence, 'Chekhov's response to Bernhardt,' in Bern­hardt and the Theatre of Her Time, ed. E. Salmon (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984).

, The lake-shore of Bohemia: The Seagull's theatrical

context,' Educational Theatre Journal (May 1977): 199-213.

, ed. and tr. Russian dramatic theory from Pushkin to

the Symbolists (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1981).

Shevtsova, Maria, 'Chekhov in France, 1976-9: Productions by Strehler, Miquel and Pintilie,' in Transformations in Modern European Drama, ed. Ian Donaldson (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1983).

Silverstein, N. 'Chekhov's comic spirit and The Cherry Orchard,' Modern Drama 1, 2 (Sept. 1958): 91-100.

Simmons, Ernest, Chekhov. A biography (Boston: Little Brown, 1962).

Stanislavsky, K. S.,My Life in Art, tr. J. J. Robbins (Boston: Little Brown, 1923).

Stroud, T.,'Hamlet and The SeagullShakespeare Quarterly 9, 3 (Summer, 1958): 367-72.

Styan, J. L., Chekhov in Performance (London: Cambridge University Press, 1972).

Valency, Maurice, The Breaking string: the plays of Anton Chekhov (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966).

Welleck, Rene and Nonna, D., eds., Chekhov. New perspectives (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1984).

Editions and Translations of Chekhov

The authoritative edition of Chekhov's works in Russian is Polnoe sobranie sochineny ipisem (30 vols.), produced under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (Moscow, 1974-84). The plays with their variants, revisions and extensive notes are located in Volumes 11 to 13. In English, all of Chekhov's plays can readily be found in The Oxford Chekhov, translated and edited by Ronald Hingley, Vols. One to Three (London, 1964-83). This edition is especially useful for its translations of the variants and early drafts. Hingley, however, tries so hard to be idiomatically British, that he neglects Chekhov's careful repetitions of keywords and phrases.

Chekhov's plays have been regularly retranslated and adapted since the First World War. Some of the earliest English versions are the best: George Calderon's Two Plays by Tchekhof (London, 1912), not least for its excellent introduction, and Constance Garnett's Nine Plays (London, 1923), which, though old- fashioned, gives a sense of period gentility. Annotated editions of major works include Chekhov's Plays, ed. and trans. E. K. Bristow (New York, 1977); The Cherry Orchard and The Seagull, trans; Laurence Senelick (Arlington Heights, 111., 1977) and The

Editions and Translations of Chekhov

Three Sisters, adapted by Randall Jarrell (New York, 1969). Other standard translations include those of Stark Young (New York, 1956), Ann Dunnigan (New York, 1964), and David Magarshack (London, 1968). (Magarshack has also translated an unabridged Platonov, London, 1964.)

Intelligent new versions include Michael Frayne's The Cherry Orchard (London, 1978) and Three Sisters (London, 1983), and The Seagull adapted by Thomas Kilroy (London, 1981) which sets it in turn-of-the-century Ireland. Less to be recommended are the versions of Elizaveta Fen, which cut lines and phrases without comment, and of Jean-Claude Van Itallie, which compound this fault by making all Chekhov's characters sound alike.