The Seagull (1896)
Konstantin, Nina and the writer Trigorin; failed in St Petersburg but triumphed at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898
Literature · Playwrights
Anton Chekhov
1860–1904 · Russian
Realism; modern short story and drama
Anton Chekhov, a doctor from Taganrog, was a master of both the short story and the stage. His four major plays, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, staged by Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, replaced melodramatic action with atmosphere, subtext and unfulfilled longing. He died of tuberculosis in Germany aged 44.
How to spot them
- ▸'Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress'
- ▸Three sisters longing to go 'To Moscow!'; the sound of axes in the cherry orchard
- ▸'Chekhov's gun': a gun shown in the first act must go off later
- ▸Moscow Art Theatre, Stanislavski, and the seagull emblem; wife Olga Knipper
- ▸Born in Taganrog; lived at Melikhovo and Yalta; died at Badenweiler
Key works
Uncle Vanya (1899 (Moscow Art Theatre))
Vanya and his niece Sonya toil on the estate for the pompous Professor Serebryakov
Three Sisters (1901)
Olga, Masha and Irina Prozorov dream of returning to Moscow from their provincial garrison town
The Cherry Orchard (1904)
Madame Ranevskaya's estate is bought by Lopakhin, son of a former serf; his last play
The Lady with the Dog (1899)
Short story of an affair between Gurov and Anna that begins in Yalta
Ward No. 6 (1892)
Story of a provincial doctor who ends up confined in his own asylum ward
Sakhalin Island (1893–1895)
Non-fiction survey of the penal colony he visited in 1890
Key ideas
- Drama of mood and subtext, in which the important events often happen offstage
- 'Chekhov's gun': every element introduced in a story should serve a purpose
- Blended comedy and pathos; he insisted The Cherry Orchard was a comedy, against Stanislavski's reading
Quick-fire facts
- •Born on 29 January 1860 (17 January Old Style) in Taganrog on the Sea of Azov, grandson of a serf
- •Qualified as a doctor at Moscow University in 1884 while supporting his family by writing humorous sketches, often as 'Antosha Chekhonte'
- •Won the Pushkin Prize in 1888
- •In 1890 he crossed Siberia to survey the penal colony on Sakhalin Island
- •Married the Moscow Art Theatre actress Olga Knipper in 1901
- •Died of tuberculosis at Badenweiler in Germany on 15 July 1904 after drinking a glass of champagne
- •His body was returned to Moscow in a railway wagon marked for oysters
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Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Anton Chekhov
- Donald Rayfield — Anton Chekhov: A Life