The Cherry Orchard, and Other Plays

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Jan 2009 · The Floating Press

About this ebook

The Cherry Orchard was written by Chekhov as a comedy, but directed by Stanislavski as a tragedy on its premier. The play has maintained the dual nature of these intentions ever since. An aristocratic family return to their estate on the eve of auction. Though alternatives present themselves, the family is apathetic and their property is sold. The play addresses the vast changes to the Russian social casts at the time, and the general cultural futility experienced by the aristocracy and bourgeoisie in their shifting roles.

About the author

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in the provincial town of Taganrog, Ukraine, in 1860. In the mid-1880s, Chekhov became a physician, and shortly thereafter he began to write short stories. Chekhov started writing plays a few years later, mainly short comic sketches he called vaudvilles. The first collection of his humorous writings, Motley Stories, appeared in 1886, and his first play, Ivanov, was produced in Moscow the next year. In 1896, the Alexandrinsky Theater in St. Petersburg performed his first full- length drama, The Seagull. Some of Chekhov's most successful plays include The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, and Three Sisters. Chekhov brought believable but complex personalizations to his characters, while exploring the conflict between the landed gentry and the oppressed peasant classes. Chekhov voiced a need for serious, even revolutionary, action, and the social stresses he described prefigured the Communist Revolution in Russia by twenty years. He is considered one of Russia's greatest playwrights. Chekhov contracted tuberculosis in 1884, and was certain he would die an early death. In 1901, he married Olga Knipper, an actress who had played leading roles in several of his plays. Chekhov died in 1904, spending his final years in Yalta.