The Complete Plays

by Anton Chekhov, Laurence Senelick (Translator)

For the first time, all of Anton Chekhov's drama in English in a single volume.

This stunning new translation presents the only truly complete edition of the playwright who is in the pantheon of the greatest dramatists in history. Anton Chekhov is a unique force in modern drama, his works interpreted and adapted internationally and beloved for their understanding of the human condition and their brilliant wit. This volume contains work that has never previously been translated, including the newly discovered farce The Power of Hypnosis and the first version of Ivanov , as well as Chekhov's early humorous dialogues. No less important, Laurence Senelick, who has staged many of these plays, has freshly translated them to bring into English Chekhov's jokes, the deliberate repetitions of his dialogue, and his verbal characterizations. Senelick has also annotated the works to bring clarity for the general reader and has included variants of the plays. His translations infuse new life into such classics as The Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Literature, Classics, Russia, Theatre, Russian Literature

992 pages, Hardcover

First published December 12, 2005

About the author

Antón Chéjov (Spanish)

Dramas, such as The Seagull (1896, revised 1898), and including "A Dreary Story" (1889) of Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, also Chekov, concern the inability of humans to communicate.

Born ( Антон Павлович Чехов ) in the small southern seaport of Taganrog, the son of a grocer. His grandfather, a serf, bought his own freedom and that of his three sons in 1841. He also taught to read. A cloth merchant fathered Yevgenia Morozova, his mother.

"When I think back on my childhood," Chekhov recalled, "it all seems quite gloomy to me." Tyranny of his father, religious fanaticism, and long nights in the store, open from five in the morning till midnight, shadowed his early years. He attended a school for Greek boys in Taganrog from 1867 to 1868 and then Taganrog grammar school. Bankruptcy of his father compelled the family to move to Moscow. At the age of 16 years in 1876, independent Chekhov for some time alone in his native town supported through private tutoring.

In 1879, Chekhov left grammar school and entered the university medical school at Moscow. In the school, he began to publish hundreds of short comics to support his mother, sisters and brothers. Nicholas Leikin published him at this period and owned Oskolki (splinters), the journal of Saint Petersburg. His subjected silly social situations, marital problems, and farcical encounters among husbands, wives, mistresses, and lust; even after his marriage, Chekhov, the shy author, knew not much of whims of young women.

Nenunzhaya pobeda , first novel of Chekhov, set in 1882 in Hungary, parodied the novels of the popular Mór Jókai. People also mocked ideological optimism of Jókai as a politician.

Chekhov graduated in 1884 and practiced medicine. He worked from 1885 in Peterburskaia gazeta.

In 1886, Chekhov met H.S. Suvorin, who invited him, a regular contributor, to work for Novoe vremya, the daily paper of Saint Petersburg. He gained a wide fame before 1886. He authored The Shooting Party , his second full-length novel, later translated into English. Agatha Christie used its characters and atmosphere in later her mystery novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd . First book of Chekhov in 1886 succeeded, and he gradually committed full time. The refusal of the author to join the ranks of social critics arose the wrath of liberal and radical intelligentsia, who criticized him for dealing with serious social and moral questions but avoiding giving answers. Such leaders as Leo Tolstoy and Nikolai Leskov, however, defended him. "I'm not a liberal, or a conservative, or a gradualist, or a monk, or an indifferentist. I should like to be a free artist and that's all..." Chekhov said in 1888.

The failure of The Wood Demon , play in 1889, and problems with novel made Chekhov to withdraw from literature for a period. In 1890, he traveled across Siberia to Sakhalin, remote prison island. He conducted a detailed census of ten thousand convicts and settlers, condemned to live on that harsh island. Chekhov expected to use the results of his research for his doctoral dissertation. Hard conditions on the island probably also weakened his own physical condition. From this journey came his famous travel book.

Chekhov practiced medicine until 1892. During these years, Chechov developed his concept of the dispassionate, non-judgmental author. He outlined his program in a letter to his brother Aleksandr: "1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of political-social-economic nature; 2. total objectivity; 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects; 4. extreme brevity; 5. audacity and originality; flee the stereotype; 6. compassion." Because he objected that the paper conducted against [a:Alfred Dreyfu

Reviews

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chekov was an astoundingly prolific author, “publishing as many as one hundred and sixty-six stories between 1886 and 1887 while practicing medicine.” He’d been writing for magazines, newspapers, and periodicals since 1979 when he entered medical school, hoping to supplement his family’s meager income.

”On a visit to St. Petersburg [in 1885], Chekov had been embarrassed by the acclaim that greeted him, because he recognized that much of his output had been hasty and unrevised. ‘If I’d know that that was how they were reading me,’ he wrote his brother Aleksandr, on January 4, 1886, ‘I would not have written like a hack.’”

If Chekhov became more considered in his writing, his production never flagged. Senelick’s glorious contribution to scholarship on Chekhov includes some works never before translated, but also gives us a thorough understanding of the evolution of Chekhov as a dramatist.

The “Untitled Play” included first in this volume is one Chekhov wrote while still in high school. It suffered innumerable rewritings, unsuccessful submissions, tearing up (!) by the author, but survived because Anton’s younger brother Mikhail had made two copies: one was kept in a safety-deposit box. It is remarkable for its length: there are only four acts, but the first act has twenty-two scenes, runs for fifty pages, and hosts twenty characters, not including the servants. “It’s interest,” Senelick tells us, “lies primarily in its being a storehouse of Chekov’s later themes and characters: the cynical doctor, the cynosure attractive woman, the parasitic buffoons, the practical housewife, and the failed idealist.” The themes are reworked again and again: “most intricately reworked of all, the threat of losing the estate to debts was to become the connecting thread and constitutive symbol of “The Cherry Orchard.””

But pieces of that first play has provided material for playwrights and directors including “A Country Scandal,” “A Provincial Don Juan,” “Ce Fou Platonov,” “Fireworks on the James,” “Wild Honey” (Michael Frayn version), “ Player Piano” (Trevor Griffith’s version), and “Platonov” (David Hare’s version), among others. It makes one laugh, the riches to be mined in a failed play by a man, boy really, who had never before written a play meant to be performed on a stage.

Senelick includes in this collection “all the plays performed during [Chekhov’s] lifetime and posthumous works, performed or not.” He includes variants to the plays, some edited for the censor, some because the play didn’t need the extra words. But with the variants we can see the process of creation and distillation. Senelick did his own annotations and translations, and gives reasons for his word or phrasing choices. The plays I have seen performed do not use his words, but I think the sense comes through in any case. A play must have a little flexibility, though I think Senelick is right when he says that in some cases exact words must be used as written, since sometimes a word or a phrase is repeated like a chorus, meant to develop the meaning of a play over time for the audience.

What a rich experience it must be for students at Tuft’s Fletcher School to have someone direct their plays who knows so much about how a play has come to be, how it has been performed, and how it has been modified. It can't be often that a director has such a deep background in scholarship.

Anyway, included in this volume are short monologues, including one that is my very favorite, entitled “The Evils of Tobacco.” Senelick gives two versions of the monologue, each placed roughly chronologically when they were published. One is very early in Chekov’s “stage” career, and another version, continually revised over the years, is placed at the end, right before “The Cherry Orchard.” Successful professional comedians perform endless versions of the same monologue until they have it pared to its funniest and most striking essentials, and it seems Chekhov did the same here.

The piece is a miracle of parody: a distinguished educator is asked to give a lecture on a popular topic for a charity benefit. Shortly after his introduction, the lecturer merely mentions the word tobacco and is sent off onto a tangent of several minutes. He brings himself back with an exceedingly brief, boring, and overly scientific couple sentences about tobacco and veers off topic again, ranging into the territory of his health, his preferred food choices, and how his marriage is going. It is short, and it is masterful--the result of a long career thinking about, writing, and staging humorous pieces. Do not miss this.

The biography of Chekhov at the beginning of this volume is notable for its depth of knowledge and understanding of Chekhov’s oeuvre. It is short and assured, and gives information that is indispensable for a greater understanding of how, what, and why Chekhov wrote.

[Kassandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is somewhat heartening to realize that if Chekhov had died at the age of 35, rather than 44, his contributions to the theater would be remembered, if at all, as overly broad satire that leaned heavily on the prejudices and popular culture references of his time, place, and milieu--a 19th Century Seth MacFarlane, if you will. He mastered short fiction more quickly, so that is not the only way he would have been remembered, but in drama his reputation rests almost entirely on four late plays, "The Seagull," "Uncle Vanya," "Three Sisters," and "The Cherry Orchard." Thus this collection suffers from its own completeness.

This is not to say that there are not plays worth reading, and perhaps staging, among the earlier works. "The Wood Goblin," which can be and has been read as an early draft of "Uncle Vanya," is underrated, even by the editor and translator of the collection. "Tatyana Repina" is formally bold. Overall, the translations of the better plays have a verbal snap that is lacking in some of the earlier translations, and the inclusion of textual variants and explanatory footnotes on linguistic and cultural topics gives good guidance to anyone considering an adaptation.

So did Chekhov's death by tuberculosis rob the 20th century of further great plays? It is impossible to say. It is perhaps at least as likely that, had he lived to see them, he would have been as bewildered and frightened by the events of 1905 as most other Russians of his class, with his literary output suffering as a result. When it comes to someone whose literary friendships spanned the political spectrum from Ivan Bunin to Maxim Gorky, any guess is contestable.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chekhov is often cited as a “difficult” playwright. Yet the difficulty is not interpretation, the difficulty is putting your finger on why his seemingly simple plays are so effective – why they’re considered so revolutionary, why they’re considered some of the most important plays in Western drama history and the fountainhead of 20th century theatre.

The answer is in the precision of Chekhov’s classic plays. His skill is in his subtle setting of the tone and the tightness of the dialogue – hardly a syllable is wasted. The spectacle and exaggeration of the popular melodramatic theatre are suppressed or completely removed. His natural presentation was (and is) revolutionary and his characters are reflective of the people at the time. (It should be noted that Turgenev’s A Month in the Country was staged in 1872, and Ibsen’s Pillar of Society was staged in 1877.)

Overall, I have much respect for Chekhov’s plays, but his style does not appeal to me. Naturalism has won over the stage (and film). Chekhov’s art is a brilliant stroke against the overwrought melodrama of the period (and, honestly, any period – it never goes away). But I prefer a more imaginative – some might say bombastic – stage art with richer colors and movements. Fortunately, the stage is big enough for all these tastes.

I’ve read all of Chekhov’s major plays over my lifetime. Here are my reviews as I re-read them:

Humorous Dialogues and Parodies ** – Chekhov displays an absurdist’s wit in these 12 short plays/skits. Alas, though, humor is the most contemporary of the arts, depending deeply on context and culture. Many of Chekhov’s satires prove hard to follow without an understanding of the politics, theatre and characters in and around Moscow in the late 1800s. Some of these will make you grin, but that’s about it.

The Seagull *** -- Like Chekhov’s later play, The Cherry Orchard, the seeming simplicity of the plays belies the underlying layers of complexity. Everything – the speeches and the actions – are mostly indirect. The play is the building of a subtext to everything the characters say and do.

Furthermore, the characters all seem to wish to be someone else, though the person they want to be assures them they are nothing like who they are thought to be. Arkadina and Dorn may be the only characters who are happy with who they are (though in Arkadina’s case that doesn’t make them necessarily a better person).

Overall, I like The Cherry Orchard better than The Seagull. The Cherry Orchard is a bit more humorous, with more interesting characters. The Seagull seems to reek of teenage angst, especially the ending suicide. I feel a sense of tissue-clutching melodrama in it all – the spurned lover, the misunderstood artist, unable to face the hard, cruel world, ends it all. The suicide seems out of proportion to the situation.

All that said, this is an important play in drama history that everyone should read/see.

[Note: This review is primarily based on the Tom Stoppard translation.]

The Cherry Orchard **** -- The Cherry Orchard is deftly written, replete with lively, memorable characters, and a unique blend of comedy and pathos. It’s quietly revolutionary, depicting a change of the guard – the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of bourgeois mercantilism.

It’s hard for me, however, to have much sympathy for the declining aristocracy who contributed nothing to society and lived off the sweat and bread of the poor. So I lack empathy for the people at the core of the play and their bloated staff who cared for nothing but their own indolent, self-indulgent opulence. Frankly, they seem vacuous and annoying, weakly and ineffectually flailing at the troubles around them.

Much is written about the difficulty in interpreting the play. I find that puzzling. I don’t see the difficulty. It is rather straightforward. Chekhov doesn’t leave much unsaid, though the audience is obviously curious about how the characters’ lives will continue.

The difficulty is not interpretation, the difficulty is putting your finger on why this seemingly simple play is so effective – why it’s considered so revolutionary, why it’s considered one of the most important plays in Western drama history and the fountainhead of 20th century theatre.

It is oft cited as the first truly modern play – psychological, focused on the bourgeois, and lite on plot. (It’s rather amusing how many late 19th century/early 20th century plays I’ve read lately that are touted as having little or no plot.) Yet Turgenev’s A Month in the Country, staged in 1872, and Ibsen’s Pillar of Society, staged in 1877, both preceded Chekhov by decades and covered this territory. I’ll leave this to more knowledgeable critics than myself.

A random thought: This is presented as a domestic tragedy, but what if it were like Kafka’s Metamorphosis? Everyone recalls Gregor’s transformation into a bug, but few comment on the end. Gregor’s thoughts while becoming the beetle (which, by the way, I think is simply a metaphor for a debilitating and eventually fatal illness) are about his family – how can he continue to take care of his father, his mother and his sister? He is their sole means of support.

But after his death they become stronger and able to care for themselves. They find they are not helpless. What if The Cherry Orchard had an Act V in which the characters find this strength within themselves – freed from the debilitating weight of maintaining the orchard (and the appearance) and the helplessness of their class, they find new powers within themselves to survive and grow? Just a thought.

The Bear – Chekhov (5/08)
Ivanov – Chekhov (5/08)
The Celebration – Chekhov (5/08)
The Wedding – Chekhov (5/08)
The Seagull – Chekhov (5/08)
The Cherry Orchard – Chekhov (7/08)
Uncle Vanya – Chekhov (7/08)

[Laila Collman · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Last winter at the Moscow opera I saw a young man burst into tears under the influence of good music...isn't that a fine thing?"

The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, the Three Sisters, and the Cherry Orchard are simply incredible. This collection also shows revisions to Chekhov's works, which is quite interesting from a writer's perspective.

[Franklin Starks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dead Translation

[Jimgosailing · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got this edition for two reasons:
one - it has The Wood Goblin (or Demon in some translations), the precursor to Uncle Vanya
Two: Laurence Senelick is the translator and I’d recalled his essay in the Norton Critical Edition of Chekhov’s plays being particularly informative.

Senelick’s introductory essays for individual plays in this book are the best I have read. Insightful, informative, thoughtful.

Preface:
“The plays are heavily annotated, not merely to provide explanations of obscure names and terms, but also to point out jokes and subtleties in the original and to explain why I made the translation choices I did.

I’ve included variants. Plays in pre-Revolutionary Russia had to undergo two censorships, one for publication and one for performance…censorship required deletions or rewrites…Trofimov’s remarks about social conditions in The Cherry Orchard were never restored in Chekhov’s lifetime….The fewest variants appear in Uncle Vanya, since it was a thorough-going revision of a pre-existing play, The Wood Goblin.
- Laurence Senelick


See notes for individual plays under that play’s title (Vanya; Three Sisters; The Cherry Orchard; The Seagull; The Wood Demon)

From 2025 JHU course with Lynne:
“Tennessee Williams once described Chekhov as ‘a quiet and delicate writer whose huge power was always held in restraint.’ Williams’s quote expresses his admiration for Chekov’s understated style and the profound impact of his work.”

“his women weep but rarely slam doors” - Hilton Als

[Jenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laurence Senelick's translation is fabulous and as the only person to have translated all of Anton Chekhov's works into English, he is an authority on the playwright. This is not the first time Dr. Senelick has translated Chekhov's plays, but it is his most recent edition. Speaking several languages, Senelick is in an excellent position to be a master translator and I think his translations are essential to any student of modern drama.

The only regret I have about the complete edition is that it lacks the critical essays, such as Bely's great essay, which Dr. Senelick includes in the shorter Norton critical edition of Chekhov's plays. Hence, it is worth referring to both editions.

[Sam Schimek · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is, by far, the best translation of Chekhov that I have read. It is also actually complete. Most editions have his major plays (Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, The Seagull) and one other of a random assortment of lesser-know plays. While, like almost everyone, I have trouble at times keeping names straight , the characters are wonderful.

Don't skip the short "Vaudevilles." These short plays have some of the best character comedy.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

They do mean complete! It includes sketches, initial drafts, variations, etc. along with commentary on each piece. I skimmed a lot of the "humorous dialogues" and such and focused on the main course--The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. I cannot really comment on the translation other than to say I found it very readable. I enjoyed all, but I prefer his short stories.

[Chad Nevett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this book will always be in the "currently reading" section since it's so massive and complete that I doubt I will ever read it completely. It contains pretty much every piece Chekhov ever wrote for the stage including lots of variations. That I will never read it completely is a testament to just how much is there.

[Chas · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a long time to get through this collection, but what's fascinating about slogging through Chekhov's experiments, juvenilia, humor sketches, and miscellany is what enormous achievements The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard, an the long road it took for him to get there, artistically.

[Diana Polansky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great translation...and you see some of his earlier plays which are essentially drafts of his later plays

[Brendan Shea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this Senelick chap is quite the translator!

[J4]

Purchased to answer a question. To get a better insight as to why Dr. Cornell West is so passionate about Chekhov?

[Cole · Rating 5 out of 5]

this world will break your back. in russia it will just be colder while it happens. chekhov is an all-time favorite.

[Kristin]

re-reading some.

[Shefali]

Plays by Anton Chekhov (25/3/2000)

[Salvatore · Rating 5 out of 5]

You already knew this but this man can write. Plus I must have gained arm muscles lugging this volume on the subway. Double trouble!