The Plays of Anton Chekhov: Critically Hailed Translations That Rescue the Lost Humor for American Audiences

by Anton Chekhov, Paul Schmidt

These critically hailed translations of The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters and the other Chekhov plays are the only ones in English by a Russian-language scholar who is also a veteran Chekhovian actor.

Without compromising the spirit of the text, Paul Schmidt accurately translates Chekhov's entire theatrical canon, rescuing the humor "lost" in most academic translations while respecting the historical context and original social climate.

Schmidt's translations of Chekhov have been successfully staged all over the U.S. by such theatrical directors as Lee Strasberg, Elizabeth Swados, Peter Sellars and Robert Wilson. Critics have hailed these translations as making Chekhov fully accessible to American audiences. They are also accurate -- Schmidt has been described as "the gold standard in Russian-English translation" by Michael Holquist of the Russian department at Yale University.

Swan song --
The bear --
The proposal --
Ivanov --
The seagull --
A reluctant tragic hero --
The wedding reception --
The festivities --
Uncle Vanya --
Three sisters --
The dangers of tobacco --
The cherry orchard.

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

387 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1905

About the author

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 Alfred Dreyfus, his friendship with Suvorin ended

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4) overall for the collection. 

This volume containing the most recognized stage work by Anton Chekhov - quite often refreshing in Paul Schmidt's translation - should be a sufficient heads-up to directors that there's more to Chekhov than meets the eye - and that, just because he was Russian, that doesn't mean that he was primarily drowning his sorrows in vodka.

He is often quite genuinely funny. With a concerted look at his output, it's not all that hard to draw that unique humor from its 'hiding place'.

'Swan Song' (3):
Mildly interesting brief play about an actor. (Like some of Chekhov's style throughout his work, this could be better in the playing than in its feel on the page.)

'The Bear' & 'The Proposal' - (5 each):
Two genuinely hilarious one-act plays, each with a delicious reversal that flies in the face of everything that preceded. Perfect examples of Chekhov (and translator Schmidt) parading the foolishness that humans can engage in due to contradictory natures. (Years ago, I was in a student production of 'The Proposal' and can vouch for it being enjoyable to perform.) 

'Ivanov' (3.5); 'The Seagull' (4); then later, 'Uncle Vanya' (3.5):
Strangely, what seems to unite these three full-length plays is that, essentially, they are all the same play. Though there is a very slight difference in a number of the positions that characters hold in life, the dissatisfaction / disillusionment / ennui which, as a group, they are experiencing is more or less of a piece (even somewhat word-for-word). 

What's perhaps most interesting - esp. in 'The Seagull' - is noticing how Schmidt finds ways to accent the comedy intended on Chekhov's part but which is sometimes absent in productions of his work. (The Sidney Lumet film of 'The Seagull', for example, is... pretty bad; misguidedly somber.) There are moments here that are wonderfully duplicitous in their humor:

Masha: I'm very grateful to you for being nice to me. Send me your books, and be sure you autograph them. Only please, don't write "Best wishes" or anything. Just write: "For Masha, who doesn't know where she came from or why she goes on living." Goodbye.

'A Reluctant Tragic Hero' (3); 'The Wedding Reception' (3.5); 'The Festivities' (3):
Chekhov reverts back to the mildly entertaining with these three short plays, the middle one being the most effective (for its element of surprise).

'Three Sisters' (4): 
Once again we are back with a group of grumpy folk but here - armed with the women who comprise the play's title - Chekhov is allowed an avenue for more growth as a playwright, as the sisters effortlessly glide against and with and off of each other. (YouTube has a capture of a 1966 production starring Geraldine Page, Sandy Dennis and Kim Stanley - three terrific actors in a version that nevertheless unfortunately feels... slow. ~ as does the 1970 film directed by Laurence Olivier.) 

'The Dangers of Tobacco' (3.5):
A monologue: a lecture ostensibly about the play's title... although the lecturer somehow never really gets around to staying on topic. 

'The Cherry Orchard' (5):
Along with the earlier 'The Bear' and 'The Proposal', this feels like Chekhov's best work for the stage. (I recall seeing a Lincoln Center production, with Meryl Streep as the maid Dunyasha.) 'TCO' is helped immensely by the fact that there's a bit more actual plot - and a genuine tension derived from the fact that, for most of the play's length, we're not sure of the fate of the land on which the main characters live. 

As well, Chekhov seems to progressively (in his stage work) permit more of his true self to come out:

Lopakhin: ... And you just try to get anything accomplished: you'll see how few decent, honest people there really are. Sometimes at night I can't sleep, and I think: Dear God, you gave us this beautiful earth to live on, these great forests, these wide fields, the broad horizons... by rights we should be giants.

It's not difficult to see how actors can take to Chekhov like moths to a flame: He gives his characters *just enough* as a character base, allowing them free rein for exploration and vibrant 'coloring within the circle'.

[AJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

In each of the larger plays, in what is a deliberate move by Chekhov, the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. There is for me no specific scene or line in most of them where I can say “this is brilliant,” but by the end of each I found myself deeply moved. Our absurd little lives are in extreme focus: the dreams and ambitions of people that pale against the backdrop of all the wasted lives of the past and the hopelessness of the future. But there is a compassion and a deep love for humanity here, eternally suffering and struggling against the deck that has been stacked against all of us, and against our own insufficiencies and limitations. Chekhov had profound knowledge of the human experience.

[Kobe · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. thought the four act plays were decent, but the single act plays really took me by surprise because i just adored them so much.

[Justin Pickett · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Marry you? I intend to shoot you!” (p. 32).

A varied set of plays, including several masterpieces. Written in ordinary language and focused on normal, everyday life, the plays range from the downright hilarious (e.g., The Bear) to the profoundly insightful (e.g., The Seagull, The Cherry Orchard).

“You know perfectly well it’s not crime and criminals that are destroying the world; it’s petty little emotions like envy, all these silly squabbles that end up with good people hating one another.” (p. 222)

Common themes that run through the plays include jealousy, depression, boredom, suicidal ideation, alcoholism, and feelings of wasted life. There is also a surprising philosophical fascination with the future, with conservation and climate, and with trends of social and economic progress.

“Remember, human beings are constantly progressing, and their power keeps growing. Things that seem impossible to us nowadays, the day will come when they’re not a problem at all, only we have to work toward that day.” (p. 357).

The Schmidt translations of the plays are mostly great. However, I would strongly recommend reading The Cherry Orchard in Constance Garnett’s version, which is more beautiful and better fits (because of its old fashioned style of prose) the play’s theme of generational change. Here is a quick comparison of the two translations:

SCHMIDT: “If there’s one thing that’s clear to me, it’s this; if we want to have any real life in the present, we have to do something to make up for our past, we have to get over it, and the only way to do that is to make sacrifices, get down to work, and work harder than we’ve ever worked before.” (p. 361)

GARNETT: “It is clear that to begin to live in the present we must first expiate our past, we must break with it; and we can expiate it only by suffering, by extraordinary unceasing labour.”

OTHER MEMORABLE QUOTES

“For the last twenty-five years, all he’s been doing is keeping some better man out of a job.” (p. 212)

“You know the difference between a doctor and a lawyer? A lawyer robs you blind, but a doctor robs you blind and kills you while he’s at it.” (p. 56)

“A beginning writer, unless he’s lucky, feels completely out of place—awkward, useless, nervous.” (p. 133)

“Then a man comes along, sees her, and ruins her life because he has nothing better to do.” (p. 135)

“You’re the final page of my life story! Myjoy, my pride, my happiness…” (p. 143)

[Sasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cherry Orchard, 1/6

I thought this was excellent. I'm just coming off Ibsen, who's sorta punch-you-in-the-face powerful, so I was underwhelmed a bit too, but I think it's a really elegant, subtle play with a lot going on. It's specifically about this huge transition from old to modern Russian culture, right? (I hope so.) An elegy for the old way, and a "Here we go" for the new. I thought it was eloquently done.

Not gonna change my life. Which Hedda Gabler may actually have done, in some small way. But I totally dug it.

--------------------

Uncle Vanya, 1/22

I liked this more, and I wonder if maybe it's just because I'm getting a tiny bit more used to Chekhov; I understand his sortof idiosyncratic use of anguished, expository soliloquy better, and his weird sense of humor, and his quiet form of depression. Vanya's cool, anyway. Some remarkably prophetic stuff on the environment here, by the way. (Although I somewhat suspect the translator of politically charging it.)

Nice echo to Dorothea and Casaubon in Middlemarch, too, btw.

"People are freaks, you know? You spend all your time with them, before you know it you're a freak yourself." (Act one)

"I used to think freaks were sick, but I've changed my mind. Now I think being a freak is the normal human condition. I think you're completely normal." (Act four)

Minor confusion: I, ah, I missed the gun in Act One. Where the fuck does that show up? I mainly read this play because of a weird minor obsession with Chekhov's Gun that I've recently developed, and now I didn't even notice it. Can anyone bail me out here?

Update: The gun doesn't show up in Act One, and Uncle Vanya isn't where we got the term "Chekhov's gun" from. It was from Chekhov's letters, where he mentioned words to that effect a couple times. The Wikipedia page used to say it originated here, and then there were like ten more pages that quoted the Wikipedia page, and what I'm saying, kids, is that the internet used to think that Uncle Vanya was what started the "Chekhov's gun" thing. But don't worry, I fixed it. Seriously, I personally fixed that Wikipedia page. I'm a true hero.

[Vesna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Chekhov's stories, but perhaps even more his plays. I compared several translations and still find Elisaveta Fen's from the 1950s to be the best. All major plays are included in this early Penguin edition.

[Brenna Donahue · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is still my favorite translation, especially as an actor. Gotta love Chekhov!

[Bbrown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plays, short stories, novellas—Chekhov is recognized as a master of all these forms. Is any other author so highly regarded in as broad a range of media? However, I must confess that I was a bit disappointed while reading this collection. It didn’t lack depth, but it did lack breadth. Chekhov wrote some very good plays, but there is so much repetition: nearly every play has a melancholy tone, a theme of the current generation suffering while hoping that the next generation will have it better, almost all of them feature an alcoholic, an unrequited love, an unhappy marriage, people being financially irresponsible, and his male leads have a penchant for shooting themselves (not that this last element comes as a surprise, since, come on, it’s Chekhov).

I’m left thinking that an exhaustive collection like this is not the best way to experience Chekhov’s plays, as it makes it impossible to ignore the common elements that he constantly reuses. Rather, I’d recommend just reading a select few of Chekhov’s plays instead of all of them at once. My favorites are The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, and Swan Song. The Seagull has a bit of a metanarrative, with a battle between new theater and old made manifest in a dysfunctional family. Uncle Vanya is the best of the plays at depicting the class differences that Chekhov explored so frequently. Finally, Swan Song, my personal favorite, is a one-act play you can read in less than ten minutes but that still packs an emotional punch.

The plays I’ve mentioned aren’t Chekhov’s only plays of value, to be sure, and many of his other plays have great lines, or great characters (giving characters believable complexity is certainly one of Chekhov’s strengths), but I think reading The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, and Swan Song gives you a good sampling of Chekhov’s work. If I had read a collection only containing those, I think I would be giving it a 4/5. As it stands, the repetition undercut my enjoyment, and the average strength of the plays in this collection is brought down by some uninteresting comedies. Therefore, 3/5. I look forward to checking out Chekhov’s short stories and novellas, but I’m hoping they have a bit more range than the works on offer here.

P.S. I thought the Schmidt translations were good, and I bet they would help make performances of these plays energetic and enjoyable.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was 2002. I was a student at Jawaharlal Nehru University, where politics was poetry, theatre was theology, and chai breaks were sacred rituals. The JNU Natyamandali Club—our temple of expression—was where we debated Brechtian distance one minute and blocked out Greek choruses the next. Shakespeare thundered in the corridors. Shaw strutted with irony. We were young, intense, armed with opinions, and addicted to the stage. Then came Chekhov.

And he sat with us in the middle of all that noise, so quiet that at first we didn’t even notice him. But oh, when we did—when we read him—everything changed.

The Plays of Anton Chekhov arrived in my hands like a whisper at a rally. At first glance, it felt oddly underwhelming—no heroes, no villains, no plot twists that made you gasp. Just people. Talking. Hoping. Failing. Loving. Waiting. Talking again. If Shakespeare staged the wars of kings and Shaw interrogated society, Chekhov watched ordinary people slowly unravel over tea. And it was that quiet devastation that hooked me.

Our club was trying to choose a play for the winter semester showcase. The usual suspects—Julius Caesar, Pygmalion, Waiting for Godot—all had their loud, loyal fan clubs. I stood there clutching Chekhov like a secret weapon. No one makes dramatic inertia this heartbreaking. No one.

The Cherry Orchard was the first to gut me. The sale of a family estate should not reduce a reader to tears, right? And yet, as Madame Ranevskaya laughed through her grief and Trofimov pontificated with dreamy revolution in his eyes, I found myself aching. It wasn’t just the passing of property—it was the end of an era, the death of memory, the soft collapse of meaning. Chekhov didn’t shout. He sighed. And somehow that was louder than any soliloquy.

Then came Three Sisters. Oh, the sisters! Olga, Masha, Irina—yearning, stagnating, suffocating under the weight of their dreams. “To Moscow, to Moscow!” they cried, not as an actual destination but as a hymn to lost purpose. We rehearsed scenes from it for weeks, and each repetition made the tragedy more potent. It was uncanny how Chekhov could make stillness feel like movement, silence feel like a scream.

Uncle Vanya hit closer home. The bitterness, the miscommunication, the wasted years—we saw ourselves, our families, our professors even, in those characters. “What could have been,” Vanya mutters. We’ve all muttered it. Repeatedly. Often.

What was miraculous about Chekhov, especially at an age when we were all trying too hard to say something, was that he gave us permission to say nothing. He allowed us to linger in the unresolved. In Chekhov, the drama is in the absence of drama. The climax is anti-climax. The laughter is tinged with unbearable melancholy. It was everything we didn’t know we needed—and everything we were too afraid to admit we felt.

Performing him, or even just reading him aloud, became a form of personal and collective therapy. We slowed down. We paused more. We learned to listen. And in a campus buzzing with manifestos and movements, Chekhov’s radical offering was simple, painful humanity.

Even now, decades later, I return to those pages. Not for plot. Not for fireworks. But for the delicate ache of being human. Chekhov doesn’t console. He recognises. He nods. He sighs with you.

Reading The Plays of Anton Chekhov at the JNU Natyamandali Club in 2002 wasn’t just a literary encounter. It was a coming-of-age. A confrontation with subtlety. A masterclass in restraint. And in that dusty room filled with youthful ego and theatrical ambition, it was Chekhov who reminded us that sometimes, the most powerful stories are the ones that end not with a bang—but with a whisper.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of me feels like it's wrong to read all of an author's work at once; even though you are able to notice themes and trends across his writing, it's also much more obvious when he relies too heavily on one technique or topic. That was sort of the case in my reading this: in the beginning, I was immensely pleased, having expected Chekhov to be much more dry and old-fashioned (thank god for this incredible translation.) I found the first few one-acts and plays to be delightful and truly funny. But as I kept reading, I noticed the repetitiveness of a lot of the plays - I kept mixing up characters from different plays because they were often incredibly similar; most of the plays featured guns on stage; love was always featured in multiple couples and was almost always unrequited.

I understand that this is the inevitable byproduct of any author with a real point-of-view and tone, but reading these in one chunk made it uncomfortably obvious and by the end of things, The Cherry Orchard, I was a little bored with Chekhov. For that reason, I didn't see the TRUE MASTERPIECE and GLORY of that particular play; I preferred The Seagull and the comedic one-acts almost certainly because they were featured earlier in this chronological collection. By the end of things, I found both the action of the play and of the characters to be fairly predictable.

Nonetheless--and again, this may have to do with the translation--these plays are still well worth reading, if only for the numerous allusions to them in any serious discussion of theatre. I personally didn't find that the characters spoke SO REALISTICALLY, SO TRUE TO LIFE, but these are still incredibly readable and often funnier than you'd expect.

[Kerri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I rated and reviewed each play individually to help me keep track. Some are hilariously funny, many share the same themes, but it was interesting watching the progression through the works. The only one I couldn't review was The Dangers of Tobacco, which was a monologue.

I give it 3 stars. There's this juxtaposition between his mannerisms and his actual words about the state of affairs of his life and his overbearing, terrible wife. A giant plea for HELP while still being submissive to the situation. It is easy to visualize even without seeing, because he is literally just standing there talking, there's not a lot of movement, and only one character to keep track of.

Over all, of all the plays in this book, my favorite was The Three Sisters. But a lot of the short one act ones gave me some good laughter which I wasn't expecting, since I didn't know beforehand that Chekhov started as a comedic writer. It definitely shows in many of them.

[Dani · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I prefer seeing these performed.

[Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is there not to like about the works of Chekhov? He is a genius at making the reader realize the humanity of everyone, including the antisocial and the strange. Chekhov realizes that humans clash and that different humans do not necessarily pay attention to other humans This is evident in the conversations of the three plays that I read -- Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. These conversations are often broken off and disjointed as characters fail to pay attention or are disgusted or change the subject. I think that this type of dialogue is an example of Chekhov's ability to notice what people will listen to and what they will not and about the subtlety of messaging. Of course, all this conversation is aided by the excellent English of the translation which does not shy away vulgarity and is quick and conversational and usually pretty much on the surface or in denial of the reality surrounding the characters.

I also learned why Chekhov called two of these plays "comedies." These are Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard. It is because exaggerated and comic things occur in the course of the action. For example, Uncle Vanya's shooting at (and missing) the professor or the kind of slapstick that occurs in Act III of The Cherry Orchard. It is not that the plays are not serious. It is that sometimes they contain extreme elements -- as when Trefimov falls down the stairs in the Cherry Orchard -- and the humorous bits occur in settings that are sad, but not actually tragic in a classical sense. Can we say that the foreclosure of the estate in The Cherry Orchard is a tragedy in view of the denial and false attitudes of the characters in regard to it? Can we say that Uncle Vanya is a tragedy when life returns eventually to what Vanya and his niece wanted it to return to?

The Three Sisters does not seem comic, although it has melodrama aplenty. It contains a sad death (in my opinion) and frustrated expectations or hopes. It is filled with selfishness and lack of concern for others on the part of all of the characters. Chekhov described it as "dramatic," but I would choose the word "bleak." Never has boredom and dissatisfaction with life been expressed better.

Reading the plays together also made me realize some of Chekhov's themes or techniques. For example, trees feature, as does a character who is a true "fool" who is unaware of his own pretensions or lack of intelligence (the professor in Uncle Vanya and, accountant in The Cherry Orchard, and the high school teacher in The Three Sisters). Chekhov also seems fond of including an ingenue -- Irina in The Three Sisters and Amy in The Cherry Orchard.

Additionally, Chekhov provides a sense of what it was like to live in Russia at the time when the plays were written. I do not mean Dostoyevsky's profundities (I use the word seriously). I mean the every-day-ness of currents in society -- discontents, political movements, and so forth -- that are a background to the lives of the characters, but do not really affect them. Just like today's reader of Chekhov's plays. Very well done!

[Omran Al Jallaf · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Chekov’s the real deal. The plays are joyful to read despite often involving tragic events. He finds the irony and humor in big existential themes, which makes even the saddest of endings leaving the reader on a hopeful note. His characters I found to be as closest to perfect in terms of portraying the human experience. They examine their feelings of disappointment and dissatisfaction with the status quo; they fear their lives are unfulfilled that leads them to intense boredom (relatable) with undesirable results. This is usually attributed to a variety of factors like unrequited love, expectations of marriage and family, financial and estate troubles, and the decline of the aristocracy in favor of the working class - vividly representing Russia’s movement into the 20th century. Funnily enough, my personal favorite was Ivanov and not any of the big four that are more widely known, but would still return to them again in the future possibly.

[June · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

I am not a play-reader, but I really enjoyed this Chekhov compilation. As is common (I’ve found) of Russian literature, many of these plays contained meditations on the meaning of life, the value of living, et cetera. In particular, ‘Uncle Vanya’ and ‘The Cherry Orchard’ take as their primary subjects the boredom of village life and lack of satisfaction far enough that characters wish for death simply as an escape from monotony.

I enjoyed the dramas the best; however, I also thought Chekhov displayed his ability to write comedy very well in ‘The Proposal’ and in the monologue ‘The Dangers of Tobacco.’

O, nihilism!

Favorites/ uncle vanya, the cherry orchard, the dangers of tobacco, the seagull

Okay, good, fine/ three sisters, the proposal, ivanov, swan song, a reluctant tragic hero (made me laugh, compensating for other deficiencies)

Eh, hard to get through, didn’t care for/ the wedding reception, the bear, the festivities,

[Brady · Rating 5 out of 5]

So different than plays I’ve ever known, I wouldn’t say they’re plot focused so much as mood-focused. They don’t focus on any epic events or wars, but mostly on everyday lives of people, and often don’t have “happy endings”.

Favorites:
The Cherry Orchard
Uncle Vanya
Three Sisters

[Saanvi · Rating 5 out of 5]

realism, swag

[Chris Bassett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chekhov and his unfunny “comedies”. At least reading a few of these makes “Love and Death” by Woody Allen that much funnnier.

[Rachel J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is little doubt surrounding Chekhov's genius. I am using this volume for an eleventh grade English summer class I'm teaching, and despite the habitual teenage listlessness before great works of literature, they have to come to a positive consensus on these plays. Dare I say they even appreciated them! Highly recommended without second thought.

[RuS2m · Rating 4 out of 5]

Сходил на книжный клуб по Чехову в этом месяце. Мы разбирали его пьесы с точки зрения формализма и оказалось что во всех его маленькие пьесы могут супер нетривиально трактоваться и это очень диссонировало с ощущением Чехова как «легкого» писателя со школы

[Kelsey Hennegen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The one-act scenes are superb and ridiculous, the emotional swings and passions that roil to the point of absurdity. The Bear, The Proposal, The Festivities are just divine in their comedic tragedy. These Vaudeville acts present satirical glimpses at ordinary life, and in them, Chekhov explores class, identity, posturing/perception, love, hatred, loss. And it is all so fraught and surging, like all the elements of living are happening on the surface.

I absolutely love the play Ivanov. The titular character reminds me of Dostoevsky's Underground man. Ivanov's spiritual yearning, exhaustion, loss of meaning in life; his boredom, inaction. He's a victim of his own self awareness, own self contemplation. His undoing is his inability to perpetuate self delusion.
In contrast, we have Dr. Lvov, whose 'honesty' is beyond obtuse. He's abrasive, an isolating parade of his own self-deemed virtuosity. For Lvov, good and evil are categories with clarity, certainty. But this very certainty is the source of his myopia.
There's an irony here because Lvov's certainty is his folly, but, without it, Ivanov is left suffering and in free fall.
In addition to the major tension of Ivanov and Lvov, Kosykh's illumination of solipsism, vanity, the need to be seen, heard by others is so spot on. The Count and Babakina's tumultuous relationship highlights the hollow, posturing, filtered through the self and what the external means TO ME nature of interaction. In this way, it reminds me a bit of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Illyich.
These tensions, devastating absurdities comprise the comedic elements, the triviality of life.

This collection, of course, includes Chekhov's four major plays: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Cherry Orchard, and Three Sisters. I spent a long time reading and analyzing The Seagull and came to appreciate such a depth to the character Nina, so much so that I've really come to love her and through that respect and appreciation of her arc, I've deepened my love of the play as a whole. Uncle Vanya offers explorations of yearning, work, the grappling for purpose, boredom, revelations on class. Where Nina flees, escapes the onus of Kostya's suffering (which he frames as his love for her, his need and expectation to place his angst on another) in The Seagull, Sonya is trapped in the increasingly claustrophobic, narrowing Uncle Vanya. Once devoid of hope and immobilized by unrequited love, Sonya is tethered to bearing the weight of the suffering of those around her. I love the exploration of purpose, consciousness, history, progress in The Three Sisters. And such evolution is evident in Chekhov by 1900, when this play was first written.

[Christopher Waller · Rating 5 out of 5]

The five major plays of Anton Chekhov (Ivanov, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and the Cherry Orchard) remind me most of the Beethoven Late Quartets. By this I mean that Chekhov wrote hundreds and hundreds of short stories (of which I've probably only read thirty or forty), a number of novellas, plenty of one-acts, but in some way Chekhov was able to distill his entire style and perspective into five late works written in an intimate and introspective medium.

Ivanov: Ivanov is the sort of person who recognizes all of his flaws but still unerringly acts on them. But this makes Lvov's unpleasant broadsides, dogmatic and inflexible, all the more inaccurate, as he never sees the person he is attacking, and treats himself as beyond reproach. Already the trademarks of Chekhov's playwriting style have begun to form: characters reacting to events, talking past one another, trapped in their own perspectives without any ability to entertain how anyone around them is feeling, with interruptions either breaking up productive conversation or causing the entire momentum of the dialogue to devolve into complete chaos.

Quote: "No, Doctor, each of us is much too complicated for anyone to judge another on external impressions. Don't be so sure of yourself all the time."

The Seagull: If Ivanov is Beethoven's 12th, The Seagull is Beethoven's 13th, plunging headfirst into modern initiative, full of symbol and metaphor, and imbued with a mystical and almost mythic quality. Chekhov handles this balance just right, never giving in completely to symbolist impulses but never rejecting them as Arkadina does. This is a play of characters... Arkadina, Sorin, Trigorin, Konstantin, Nina... each of them feels like a real person, each of them has their own desires, and even though they exhibit all the same flaws as the Ivanov characters, they each have moments where they can temporarily escape and interact with each other in tender ways.

Quote (Act 1): "There was a time, all I ever wanted was two things: get married and be a writer. And I never did either one"
Quote (Act 2): "Every word you and I are saying right now, every sentence, I capture and lock up in the back of my brain. Because someday I can use them!"
Quote (Act 2): "I'll go on being nice and talented, nice and talented, until the day they bury me, and my friends will stand around my grave and say: 'Here lies Trigorin. He was a good writer, but Turgenev was better.'"
Quote (Act 4): "Human beings, lions, eagles, quail . . . you horned deer, you wild geese, you spiders and you wordless fish who swim beneath the wave . . . starfish, stars in heaven so distant the human eye cannot perceive them, all living things, all, all, all . . . have ended their allotted round and are no more"

Uncle Vanya: The Beethoven's 14th equivalent. The shift from Ivanov to the Seagull in terms of characterization is complete: Sonya, Vanya, Astrov, and Yelena are four of the most compelling characters in fiction. These people don't talk past one another, they talk in conflict with one another. They hold resentments pent up for decades as real people do. And, as in real life, these resentments explode at inopportune times. I like to imagine Telegin playing the guitar duet from Shostakovich's Gadfly as Sonya unfurls her final monologue, probably my favorite monologue in any play I've read.

Quote (Act 1): "They brought in the signal man from the railroad yard, dumped him on my table, expected me to operate right then and there, and just as I was giving him anesthesia he goes and dies on me"
Quote (Act 1): "You have to be a barbarian to burn all that beauty in your stove, to destroy something that can never be replaced. We were born with the ability to reason and the power to create and be fruitful, but until now all we've done is destroy whatever we see. The forests are disappearing one by one, the rivers are polluted, wildlife is becoming extinct, the climate is changing for the worse, every day the planet gets poorer and uglier. It's a disaster!"
Quote (Act 2): "You're a sensitive person, you have a kind voice, and more than that, you're... you're a beautiful human being, more than anybody I know. Why do you want to waste your time drinking?"
Quote (Act 3): "We thought you were some kind of higher being! We memorized your scholarly articles! And now it's all clear! You write about art? You don't know a goddamn thing about art! I was so proud of everything you wrote, and now I can see it wasn't worth shit! You've cheated us all!"
Quote (Act 4): "Maybe a couple of hundred years from now people will realize how stupid we were, what a mess we made of our lives... Maybe then they'll even know how to be happy."
Quote (Act 4): All of Sonya's final monologue.

Three Sisters: Three Sisters returns to the characterization of Ivanov. It feels like some sort of purgatory. The imagery in the character's voices stretches out, the effect cannot be pinpointed in one line, they function cumulatively. In particular, Act 1 does most of the thematic heavy lifting: the ideas reverberate throughout the rest of the play.

Quote (Act 1): "Man must work, work in the sweat of his brow. No matter who he is, that's the whole point of his life."
Quote (Act 1): "They tried to protect me from hardship, but I don't think they quite managed. And now the time has come, there's a storm gathering, a wild, elemental storm, it's coming, it's almost over our heads! And it will clean out our society, get rid of laziness and indifference, and this prejudice against working and this lousy rotten boredom. I intend to work, and in twenty-five or thirty years we will all work! All of us!"
Quote (Act 1): "Things that seem important to us, serious and significant things... the time will come when they'll all be forgotten -- or they won't see so important anymore. (Pause) And the interesting thing ia, there's no way we can guess what will be considered important and serious, and what will be considered petty and silly."

The Cherry Orchard: Much like Beethoven's 16th, the Cherry Orchard sums up an artist's vision at the end of the life, as if to say, "listen to me, this one last time!" Chekhov's obsession with sound effects reaches a brilliant pinacle here, with that mythical harp string breaking -- such a modern sound ushering out the old era with both the mythical import of proclamation and the unbearable sadness of reverberating desolation. It doesn't hurt that Lopakin and Liubov Andreyevna are two truly excellent characters.

Quote (Act 2): "Excuse me, but you people... I have never met anyone so unbusinesslike, so impractical, so... so crazy as the pair of you! Somebody tells you flat out your land is about to be sold, you don't even seem to understand!"
Quote (Act 3): "You seem so sure of what's truth and what isn't, but I'm not. I've lost any sense of it, I've lost sight of the truth. You're so sure of yourself, aren't you, so sure you have all the answers to everything, but darling, have you ever really had to live with one of your answers."
Quote (Act 4, Stage Directions): "In the distance we hear a sound that seems to come from the sky, a sad sound, like a string snapping. It dies away. Everything grows quiet. We can hear the occasional sound of an axe on a tree."

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Americanized set of Chekhov plays may strike some as less poetic than other translations, but given that it was created with the intention of giving American actors a chance to find the vital rhythms and remarks of Chekov within their own language, I can hardly fault Paul Schmidt for his vernacular choices. After all, Chekhov wrote for the popular audience of his time. We are meant to not get lost in flowery language during his plays, only powerful language and interaction.

Of all the translations offered here, I'd say that his version of Three Sisters is the best, as he perfectly synthesizes the troubles of the men and women longing for change, longing for opportunity in a closed society. He makes the most of Chekhov's interwoven dialogue in all his translations, but his work is best done when capturing the differences between soldiers and ladies, or country folk and city folk.

And of course he gives simple turns to Chekhov's simple comedic moments, particularly in the man's short sketches and in Uncle Vanya, a very bare and fairly hilarious play all around (though I often think I'm in the minority on that score).

So this volume is definitely for people who love Chekhov, who love other versions of his plays, and will appreciate a new take for a newer generation of actors.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most modern of modern playwrights and “the most human of men” as declared by Ms. Fen, his translator, Chekhov had the curious habit of showing the tragic everyday activities in his comedies, while also presenting the eye-rolling absurdities of Russian life in his vaudevillian jests and serious drama. The enthusiasm for the future generations found in each of the featured four-act plays go beyond the postmodern pastiche of Stoppard and Sorokin to another hundred years or so (whatever postpomo will be named) to reflect upon the uncertainties of Chekhov’s pre-revolutionary present as well as the emergent now happening to theatre audiences throughout the ages - it is a wonder why most acting troupes continue to have sets and costumes reveal the turn of the twentieth century while his artwork screamed how much the same old situations always is. I’d be curious to see what a twenty-first (or second if I should live so long) century Moscow Art Theatre would make of the spoof “new art form” forced out of Trepliov’s mind to represent such a future.

[Arlene S · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read some, not all, of the plays in this edition, chiefly "Cherry Orchard" and "Uncle Vanya". This edition translated by Paul Schmidt, and called by some a definitive translation because of contemporary American language. Schmidt says "this is an American translation, not simply another English translation." Some pieces Chekhov titles "comedies, but I found most of them somewhat dreary -- Russian pessimism or perhaps it is what Schmidt calls "heartbreaking ridiculousness of everyday behavior"? Chekhov's writing favors mood over plot.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It had been a while since I've read anything by Chekhov and truly enjoyed discovering him again. This translation offered a look at how humorous Chekhov really was. I read this with my book club and we had lots of fun reading parts at our meeting. The stories hold up well and we were surprised to realize that Chekhov was an environmentalist. The reader does get one more look at the life of the idle rich and how pointless by our ways their lives seemed. These are classic stories/plays and are worth another read.

[Holli Arnold · Rating 1 out of 5]

Within this translation I read four plays, "The Cherry Orchard", "Uncle Vanya", "Three Sisters", and "The Seagull". I am not a fan of Chekhov or of Russian literature in general. These plays all had a melancholy tone...focusing on the hopeless, boring, wasted lives of the aristocracy during their class demise. Not sure why he wrote separate multiple plays since they all are about the life of the idle rich and how pointless their lives are. Occasionally, he throws in some immature, unrequited love, and some dysfunctional family relationships. There is nothing redeeming about Chekhov.

[Hock Tjoa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some years ago I read the plays of Chekhov and marveled that he had combined language and settings like Jane Austen's with melancholy, "triste," to create plays that moved and affirmed life despite all. These plays are the antidote to the search for conflict and "the arc" that bedevils contemporary American drama.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read: The Bear and The Seagull
Bear is hilarious
Seagulls tragic, insightful (uncomfortably so) on act of writing.
Vanya crams so much humanity into its pages, it nearly bursts at the seams.

[K. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not at all what I remembered. Review to follow.