Plays by Anton Chekhov, Second Series

About

This collection presents a second set of Chekhov's plays in Julius West's translations — including The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, and additional shorter works — continuing the portrait of Russian provincial and aristocratic life in the years before its collapse. The Cherry Orchard (1904), Chekhov's final play, follows an aristocratic family who cannot bring themselves to save their estate from auction; Chekhov called it a comedy, while Stanislavski insisted it was a tragedy. The disagreement is itself instructive: Chekhov's plays exist in a tonal register that resists classification, rendering comedy and sorrow as simultaneously present. Three Sisters' famous longing — 'To Moscow! To Moscow!' — has entered the language as shorthand for desire deferred indefinitely.