The Complete Plays

CHRONOLOGY OF CHEKHOV’S LIFE

1860. January 17 (Old Style) / 29 (New Style). Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, third son of the shopkeeper and choirmaster Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov and Yevgeniya Yakovlevna Morozova, is born in Taganrog, a port of the Sea of Azov. He is the grandson of a serf who managed to purchase his liberation.

Aleksandr Ostrovsky’s play Thunderstorm wins an award from the Academy of Sciences.

1861. Tsar Alexander II abolishes serfdom, but without providing enough land for the emancipated serfs.

1862. Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons is published.

Academic freedom restored to Russian universities.

1863. Flogging with birch rods abolished by law.

Konstantin Stanislavsky is born, as Konstantin Alekseev, son of a wealthy textile manufacturer.

Nikolay Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done?, the gospel of nihilism, is written in prison.

1864. Zemstvos, self-governing rural councils, are created.

1865. Lev Tolstoy begins to publish War and Peace.

1866. An attempted assassination of the tsar prompts a wave of political reaction, especially in education and the press. Chekhov, as a student, will suffer from the new emphasis on Greek, Latin, and grammar.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment published.

1867–1879. Chekhov’s primary and secondary education in Taganrog in very rigorous schools. He gives lessons, frequents the theater, edits a student newspaper, writes plays now lost.

1868. Dostoevsky’s The Idiot is published serially.

1871. Dostoevsky’s The Devils is published.

1872. Special court set up to try treason cases.

1873. Only 227 factories in all of Russia.

Nikolay Nekrasov begins to publish his populist poem Who Can Be Happy in Russia?

1874. Trade unions made illegal.

All males over twenty-one, regardless of class, now liable for conscription into the armed forces.

1875. Chekhov writes comic journal The Stutterer to amuse his brothers in Moscow.

Tolstoy begins to publish Anna Karenina.

1876. Chekhov’s father goes bankrupt and moves the family to Moscow, leaving Anton in Taganrog.

1877. Chekhov visits Moscow where he finds his family in penury.

The Russians fight the Turks in the Balkans, ostensibly to free the Christian Slavs from Moslem oppression. An armistice, signed in 1878, greatly reduces the Turkish presence in the Balkans, but the Congress of Berlin humiliates Russia by reducing its spoils to part of Bessarabia.

1878. Chekhov writes plays now lost: Without Patrimony, He Met His Match, and The Hen Has Good Reason to Cluck.

Public outcries against the government and acts of terrorism increase.

1879. Chekhov finishes high school and in June moves to Moscow, where he enrolls in the medical school of the University of Moscow on a scholarship. Starts to write cartoon captions for the humor magazine Alarm Clock.

Dostoevsky begins to publish The Brothers Karamazov.

1880. March. Chekhov’s first short story, “Letter of a Landowner to His Learned Neighbor Dr. Friedrich,” is published in the comic journal The Dragon-fly.

1880–1887. Chekhov writes for Moscow and St. Petersburg comic journals under pen names including Antosha Chekhonte, Doctor Who’s Lost His Patients, Man without a Spleen, and My Brother’s Brother.

1881. Chekhov writes play later known as Platonov (not published until 1923).

Tsar Alexander II is assassinated; his son, Alexander III, initiates a reign of political repression and social stagnation.

Dostoevsky dies.

1882. Platonov is turned down by the Maly Theatre. Chekhov publishes “Late-blooming Flowers.”

The imperial monopoly on theater in Moscow and St. Petersburg is abolished. Several private theaters are opened.

Troops are used to suppress student uprisings at the Universities of St. Petersburg and Kazan.

1883. Chekhov publishes “Fat and Lean,” “At Sea,” and “Christmas Eve.”

1884. Chekhov finishes his medical studies and starts general practice in Chikino, outside Moscow. Publishes his first collection of stories, Fairy Tales of Melpomene, under the name Antosha Chekhonte. His only attempt at a novel, The Shooting Party, serialized in Daily News. Writes one-act play, Along the High Road, which is censored and not published until 1914.

December. Symptoms of Chekhov’s tuberculosis diagnosed.

1885. Chekhov’s first trip to St. Petersburg. Meets the publisher Aleksey Suvorin and the painter Isaak Levitan, who become close friends. Romances with Dunya Efros and Nataliya Golden. Publishes “The Huntsman,” “Sergeant Prishibeev,” and “Grief.”

1886. Chekhov begins writing for Suvorin’s conservative newspaper New Times. Puts out a second collection of stories, Motley Tales, signed both An. P. Chekhov and Antosha Chekhonte.

The eminent Russian writer Dmitry Grigorovich encourages him to pursue his literary career in a more serious fashion. Publishes “The Witch,” “The Chorus Girl,” “On the Road,” and the first version of the comic monologue The Evils of Tobacco.

1887. Chekhov publishes third collection of short stories, In the Gloaming, and fourth collection, Innocent Conversations, which include “Enemies,” “Typhus,” “The Siren,” and “Kashtanka.” Also writes one-act Swan Song.

November 19. Ivanov, a full-length play, performed at Korsh’s Theatre, Moscow. It receives a mixed press.

1888. First serious long story, “The Steppe,” published in St. Petersburg magazine Northern Herald, initiating a new care taken with his writing. One-act farces The Bear and The Proposal produced to acclaim. In the Gloaming wins the Pushkin Prize of the Academy of Sciences.

Student uprisings at the Universities of Moscow, Odessa, Kharkov, and Kazan are put down by the military. The government decrees that all Jews must live within the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Poland and the western provinces of Russia.

Tolstoy publishes his play of peasant life The Power of Darkness, but the censor will not allow it to be staged.

Maksim Gorky is arrested for subversion, and is henceforth under police surveillance.

1889. The Social Democratic Working-man’s Party is founded.

“A Dismal Story,” one of the first of Chekhov’s mature stories, published in Northern Herald.

January 31. Premiere of the revised Ivanov at Alexandra Theatre, St. Petersburg.

October. Chekhov’s play The Wood Goblin finished. Played at Abramova’s Theatre in December. The play is poorly received by the critics; he is scolded for “blindly copying everyday life and paying no attention to the requirements of the stage.”

1890. According to a letter to Sergey Dyagilev, Chekhov reworks The Wood Goblin into Uncle Vanya, which will not be published until 1897. Chekhov publishes collection Glum People, which includes “Thieves” and “Gusev.” Writes one-act comedies, The Involuntary Tragedian and The Wedding.

April-October. Travels through Siberia to Sakhalin Island, where he visits prison camps and carries out a census. Sails in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

1891. Six-week trip to Western Europe. Publication of the novella The Duel and “Peasant Women.” Buys a small farmstead in Melikhovo.

1892. Chekhov settles in Melikhovo with his family.

Work begins on the Trans-Siberian Railway, to be completed in 1905.

Sergey Witte becomes Minister of Finance, and turns Russia into a modern industrial state, increasing industrialism, railways, and Western trade by 1899.

1892–1893. Severe famines in the grain-growing provinces in the south and along the Volga.

Chekhov acts as head of the district sanitary commission during the cholera epidemic, combats the famine, treats the poorest peasants for free.

Publishes eleven stories, including “My Wife,” “The Grasshopper,” “Ward No. 6,” as well as the one-act farce The Celebration.

1893. Dalliance with Lika Mizinova, whom he decides not to marry, but who sees herself as a prototype for Nina in The Seagull. The Island of Sakhalin published serially. Publishes “An Anonymous Story” and “Big Volodya and Little Volodya.”

1894. Second trip to Italy and to Paris. Health worsens. Publishes “The Student,” “Rothschild’s Fiddle,” “The Head Gardener’s Story,” “The Literature Teacher,” “The Black Monk,” and “At a Country House.”

Alexander III dies and is succeeded by his son, the conservative and vacillating Nicholas II.

1895. The Island of Sakhalin published. Chekhov meets Lev Tolstoy at his estate Yasnaya Polyana.

Chekhov writes The Seagull, publishes “Three Years,” “Ariadne,” “His Wife,” “Whitebrow,” “Murder,” and “Anna Round the Neck.”

1896. Chekhov sponsors the construction of a primary school in the village of Talezh. Serial publication of “My Life” and “The House with a Mansard.”

October 17. The premiere of The Seagull at the Alexandra Theatre in St. Petersburg fails. Chekhov flees during the second act.

October 21. Relative success of the play at its second performance.

1896–1897. Strikes of factory workers lead to a law limiting adult work to eleven and a half hours a day.

1897. The first All-Russian Congress of Stage Workers meets in Moscow to argue questions of trade conditions and artistic principles.

Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko found the Moscow Art Theatre.

Chekhov sponsors the construction of a primary school in the village of Novosyolky. Participates in the All-Russian census of the population. Father dies.

March-April. Hospitalized with first acute attack of pulmonary tuberculosis. Reads Maurice Maeterlinck.

September. Travels to France for medical treatment.

Uncle Vanya, Ivanov, The Seagull, and one-act plays published, as well as stories “Peasants,” “The Savage,” “At Home,” and “In the Cart.”

1898. Thirteen thousand students at Moscow University go on strike to protest repressive moves on the part of the administration; orders are given to enlist them in the army.

May. Chekhov returns from abroad. Relations with Suvorin strained in connection with the Dreyfus trial.

September. Settles in Yalta after suffering a pulmonary hemorrhage. Publishes the stories “Calling on Friends,” “Gooseberries,” “About Love,” “A Case History,” and “Ionych.”

December 17. The Seagull, staged by Stanislavsky, is revived with great success at the Moscow Art Theatre.

1899. Theatres in Kiev, Kharkov, and Nizhny Novgorod play Uncle Vanya. Chekhov decides to turn it into a short novel, but does not. Offered to the Maly, Uncle Vanya is considered offensive to professors and is turned down.

Tolstoy’s Resurrection and Gorky’s Foma Gordeev published.

Chekhov attends a performance of The Seagull in Yalta. Sells all rights to his works to the publisher A. F. Marks for 75,000 rubles (in current purchasing power, approximately $81,000). Begins to edit his complete works. Awarded Order of St. Stanislas, second class, for work in education. Publishes “On Official Business,” “Lady with Lapdog,” “The Darling,” and “The New Villa.”

June. Sells his estate in Melikhovo. Has a house built in Yalta.

October 26. Premiere of Uncle Vanya at the Art Theatre.

1900. January. Elected to honorary membership in the Literary division of the Academy of Sciences. Publishes “In the Ravine” and “At Christmas.”

April. The Art Theatre plays Uncle Vanya and The Seagull in Sevastopol, in the presence of the author.

August-December. Writes Three Sisters. Finishes the play in Nice.

1901. January-February. Trip to Italy.

January 31. Premiere of Three Sisters at the Moscow Art Theatre with considerable success.

May 25. Marries the actress Olga Knipper, who plays Masha.

The Marxist journal Life, which publishes Gorky, is banned. Gorky is expelled from Nizhny Novgorod.

1902. Chekhov publishes “The Bishop.” Complete works published in eleven volumes. Awarded Griboedov Prize of Society of Dramatic Authors and Opera Composers for Three Sisters. Begins The Cherry Orchard.

March. Olga Knipper suffers miscarriage.

August. Resigns in protest from the Academy of Sciences when Gorky’s election is nullified at the tsar’s behest.

Gorky writes The Lower Depths.

1903. At a Congress in London, the Social Democratic Working-man’s Party is taken over by the radical Bolshevist wing, led by Vladimir Lenin.

Second edition of Chekhov’s complete works published in sixteen volumes.

Publishes his last story, “Betrothed,” in the magazine Everybody’s.

June. The censor rules that his plays cannot be performed in people’s theaters, low-priced theater for the working class.

September. The Cherry Orchard is finished. Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislavsky are enthusiastic. Chekhov attends rehearsals.

An atrocious pogrom occurs in Kishinyov, with 47 dead and 2,000 families ruined.

1904. Chekhov’s health deteriorates.

January 14 or 15. Attends a rehearsal of The Cherry Orchard.

January 17. Premiere at the Art Theatre, where a celebration in his honor is held.

Spring. A new, grave attack of tuberculosis.

April 2. First performance of Orchard in St. Petersburg a great success, greater than in Moscow, according to Nemirovich and Stanislavsky.

June 1. Publication of the play in a separate edition by Marks.

June 3. Departure for Germany with Olga Knipper.

July 2/15. Dies in Badenweiler.

July 9/22. Buried in Novo-devichy cemetery in Moscow.

The Mensheviks drive the Bolsheviks from the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Working-man’s Party, but drop out the following year, leaving the field to the Bolsheviks.

The Russo-Japanese war breaks out.

1909. First performance of a Chekhov play in English: The Seagull, translated by George Calderon, at the Glasgow Repertory Theatre.