Table Of ContentMACMILLAN MODERN DRAMATISTS
Macmillan Modern Dramatists
Se ries Editors: Bruce King and Adele King
Published titIes
Reed Anderson, Federico Garcia Lorca
Eugene Benson, J. M. Synge
Renate Benson, German Expressionist Drama
Normand Berlin, Eugene O'Neill
Michael Billington, Alan Ayckbourn
John Bull, New British Political Dramatists
Denis Calandra, New German Dramatists
Neil Carson, Arthur Miller
Maurice Charney,loe Orton
Ruby Cohn, New American Dramatists, 1960-1980
Bernard F. Dukore,American Dramatists, 1918-1945
Bernard F. Dukore, Harold Pinter
Arthur Ganz, George Bernard Shaw
Frances Gray,lohn Arden
Julian Hilton, George Büchner
David Hirst, Edward Bond
Helene Keyssar, Feminist Theatre
Bettina L. Knapp, French Theatre 1918 -1939
Charles Lyons, Samuel Beckett
Susan Bassnett-McGuire, Luigi Pirandello
Margery Morgan, August Strindberg
Leonard C. Pronko, Eugene Labiche and Georges Feydeau
Jeanette L. Savona, Jean Genet
Claude Schumacher, Alfred Jarry and Guillaume Apollinaire
Laurence Senelick, Anton Chekhov
Theodore Shank, American Alternative Theatre
James Simmons, Sean O'Casey
David Thomas, Henrik Ibsen
Dennis Walder, Athol Fugard
Thomas Whitaker, Tom Stoppard
Nick Worrall, Nikolai Gogol and Ivan Turgenev
Katharine Worth, Oscar Wilde
Further titles are in preparation
MACMILLAN MODERN DRAMATISTS
ANTON
CHEKHOV
Laurence Senelick
Professor of Drama,
Tufts University
M
MACMILLAN
© Laurence Senelick 1985
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmit
ted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of
the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended).
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
First published 1985
Published by
Higher and Further Education Division
MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS L TD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
Typeset by
Wessex Typesetters Ltd
Frome, Somerset
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Senelick, Laurence
Anton Chekhov.-(Macmillan modern dramatists)
1. Chekhov, A.P.-Dramatic works
I. Title
891.72'3 PG3458.z9D7
ISBN 978-0-333-30882-0 ISBN 978-1-349-17981-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-17981-7
To the memory of James Arnott
Contents
List of Plates VlII
Editors' Preface X
1 A Life 1
2 At the Play 16
3 Journeyman Efforts 28
Without Patrimony 28
Ivanov 34
The Wood Demon 41
4 The One-Act Plays 50
On the Highway 53
On the Harmfulness of Tobacco 54
Swan Song 55
The Bear 56
The Proposal 58
Tatyana Repina 59
A Tragedian In Spite Of Himself 62
The Wedding 63
The Jubilee 65
The Night before the Trial 67
Contents
5 The Seagull 70
6 Uncle Vanya 88
7 Three Sisters 102
8 The Cherry Orchard 117
9 The Theatrical Filter 135
Re/erences 151
Bibliography 158
Editions and Translations 0/ Chekhov 163
Index 165
vii
List of Plates
1. Georges Wilson as Borkin and Jean Vilar as Platonov
in Ce Fou de Platonov at the Theatre National
Populaire, Paris, 1956. (From The World. Photo:
Agnes Varda)
2. Meyerhold's production of The Proposal in 33
Swoons, Moscow, 1935. Igor Ilyinsky as Lomov and
Logina as Natasha.
3. Michael Chekhov, the dramatist's nephew, in A
Tragedian in Spite 0/ Himsel/, Majestic Theatre, New
York,1935.
4. Simov's setting for Acts One and Two of The Seagull at
the Moscow Art Theatre, 1898.
5. The Seagull at the Moscow Art Theatre, 1898. End of
Act Three: Stanislavsky as Trigorin (second from left),
Olga Knipper ·as Arkadina (seated), Vishnevsky as
Dorn (far right), Artyom as Shamrayev (kneeling).
6. Stephen Haggard as Treplyov and Peggy Ashcroft as
Nina in Komisarjevsky's production of The Seagull,
New Theatre, London, 1936.
viii
List 0/ Plates
7. Josef Svoboda's design for The Seagull, directed by
Otomar Krejca at the Narodni Divadlo, Prague, 1960.
8. Retsuke Sugamote as Nina in the first act of The
Seagull, directed by Andrei Serban for the Shiki
Theatre Company, Tokyo, 1980.
9. The final curtain of Uncle Vanya at the Moscow Art
Theatre, 1900. Mariya Lilina as Sonya (left) and
Vishnevsky as Vanya.
10. Sybil Thorndike as Marina and Laurence Olivier as
Astrov in Uncle Vanya at the National Theatre,
London, 1962. (Photo: Angus McBean. Courtesy:
Harvard Theatre Collection)
11. Michel St-Denis' Three Sisters at the Queen's Theatre,
London. From left to right: Frederick Lloyd
(Chebutykin), Michael Redgrave (Tusenbach), Peggy
Ashcroft (Irina), John Gielgud (Vershinin), Leon
Quartermaine (Kulygin). (Photo: Houston Rogers)
12. Design for the Three Sisters at the Gorki Art Theatre,
Moscow, 1940. (Photo: Motley Books Ltd.)
13. Ivan Moskvin as Yepikhodov in the original produc
tion of The Cherry Orchard Moscow Art Theatre,
1904.
14. Stanislavsky as Gayev and Lilina as Anya in The
Cherry Orchard, Moscow Art Theatre, 1904.
A Note on Translations
All translations from Russian are my own, except where
otherwise noted.
LS
IX
