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The Seagull.
Anton Chekhov.
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Anton Chekhov. The Seagull.
ContentsPurchase the entire Coradella Collegiate Bookshelf on CD at
http://collegebookshelf.net
About the author
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (b. January 29, 1860 in Taganrog,
Russia - d. July 14 or July 15, 1904 in Badenweiler, Germany),
major Russian playwright and master of the modern short story.
He qualified as a doctor in 1884 although he rarely prac-
tised. In his hundreds of stories and novellas, which he wrote
while practicing medicine, Chekhov adopts something of a
clinical approach to ordinary life.
After a successful production of The Seagull by the Mos-
cow Art Theatre, he wrote three more plays for the same com-
pany: Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.
In 1901 he married Olga Leonardovna Knipper (1870-1959),
an actress who performed in his plays.
The movement toward Naturalism in theatre that was
sweeping Europe reached its highest artistic peak in Russia in
1898 with the formation of the Moscow Art Theatre (later
called the Moscow Academy Art Theatre). Its name became
synonymous with that of Chekhov, whose plays about the
day-to-day life of the landed gentry achieved a delicate po-
etic realism that was years ahead of its time. Konstantin
Stanislavsky, its director, became the 20th century’s most in-
fluential theorist on acting.
Chekhov visited western Europe in the company of A.S.
Suvorin, a wealthy newspaper proprietor and the publisher of
much of Chekhov’s own work. Their long and close friend-
ship caused Chekhov some unpopularity, owing to the politi-
cally reactionary character of Suvorin’s newspaper, Novoye
vremya (“New Time”). Eventually Chekhov broke with
Suvorin over the attitude taken by the paper toward the no-
torious Alfred Dreyfus affair in France, with Chekhov cham-
pioning Dreyfus.
Chekhov died of tuberculosis and is now buried in
Novodevichy Cemetery.
Anton Chekhov. Th