Anton Chekhov: The Seagull (1896)

Translation: Stephen Mulrine, 1997
Edition: Nick Hern Books, 1997
Review number: 826

It may seem strange today, but the initial response to The Seagull was so negative that it made Chekhov resolve to retire from drama. (It was the way that Stanislavsky and the Moscow Arts Theatre took up the play a few years later that persuaded him to change his mind.) The reasons for the failure lay in the expectations of the audience and actors rather than in the play itself; the audience wanted star vehicles, and The Seagull isn't one; the star billed did not appear, annoying her vociferous fans.

The plot is all about unrequited love; just about all the characters love someone who doesn't care for them. The only equal relationship is the affair between successful author Trigorin and actress Arkadina, which is not exactly one with much love in it. The central characters in the play are Arkadina's son, Kostya, who is an aspiring author, and local girl Nina, whom he loves but who prefers Trigorin because he might be able to arrange for her to get a part in a play in Moscow. The play contains a lot of discussion of drama, and includes excerpts from the play Kostya has written for Nina, in which she takes the part of the World Spirit. It is an experimental, Symbolist play; Kostya wants to move drama on, but his work is fairly typical of second rate avant garde literature.

As the title indicates, there is an important (and far more subtle) symbol in Chekhov's play, as well; the seagull accidentally shot by Kostya. The only other important literary seabird prior to this that I can think of is the albatross killed by the ancient mariner in Coleridge's poem, and this too brings bad luck. Even ignoring traditional ideas (I have no idea what significance a seagull might have in Russian folklore), it is easy to see that such a bird symbolises freedom and is connected to the power of the sea, and the dead bird represents the end of Kostya's hope that Nina might love him, among other things, and the recall of the motif in the final act brings on Kostya's famous suicide.

The plot of The Seagull is more melodramatic than those of Chekhov's last three plays, but marks an important step in terms of naturalism by comparison with what was going on around him. It is easy to see why, with its combination of this realism with the central symbol, this play is compared to Ibsen (with perhaps The Master Builder being particularly similar), though I don't think that Chekhov particularly liked being classified with the Norwegian author.

Nikolai Gogol: The Government Inspector (1836)

Translation: Stephen Mulrine, 1997
Edition: Nick Hern Books, 1997
Review number: 698

Gogol's most famous legacy may be this farce about corruption and stupidity in the local government in Tsarist Russia, but he was in fact not a political radical. He even wrote an attack on the abolition of serfdom, and spent much of his life embarrassed by the enthusiasm with which would be reformers reacted to the play. He proposed allegorical interpretations of what he had written, which would have lessened its impact if anyone had accepted them.

The plot, suggested by Pushkin, is fairly simple. The small, nameless, provincial town in which the play is set has discovered that the imperial government is sending an inspector, incognito, to look into the efficiency and probity of its institutions. Since the whole of the town's administration is corrupt, from the mayor and judge to the hospital, this causes consternation. When they hear of a young man from St Petersburg who is staying in one of the town's inns, they assume that he must be the inspector. They flatter and bribe him, but of course the joke is that he is not really the inspector at all. Shorn of its satirical elements, this plot was reused in an episode of Fawlty Towers; it's potential for farce is huge.

It is possible, of course, to attack the way in which a system is abused without wanting to destroy the system itself, but I think that it is more likely that Gogol got carried away. He was not the only one, either; the Tsar himself intervened to speed up the processes of the censorship office so that the first production of The Government Inspector could go ahead remarkably quickly. (He was the most liberal Tsar Russia ever had, and he clearly had a sense of humour.) However, aspects of the play must amount to an attack on the local governmental institutions themselves. The system - or more widespread corruption within the system - was after responsible for the appointment of such an appalling group of officials in the first place.

The reason I have for thinking that Gogol got caught up in the comedy of his theme into actually writing a radical satire is that the names of the officials are derogatory terms such as "slapdash". My favourites are just silly; the not very bright characters Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky remind an English speaking reader of Tweedledum and Tweedledee by more than just their names. Towards the end of his life, Gogol also wrote something which implies more or less what I have been suggesting, that he wanted to ridicule all that was bad in Russia, but the laughter this produced was unexpectedly overwhelming.

Nineteenth century Russian literature has a reputation for being profound and a little dull. The Government Inspector is neither. It is extremely funny, and that has ensured its survival.

Anton Chekhov: Three Sisters (1900)

Edition: Nick Hern, 1994
Review number: 189

Chekhov's mature plays are famous for the way that nothing happens. This generalisation is not, of course, totally accurate, but it is certainly the case that what plot there is (here such incidents as an unsuitable marriage, a fire, a duel, the removal of the town's army contingent) take place off stage, and are there principally to point something out in the personalities of Chekhov's characters. To use the word "plot" to describe the incidents in The Three Sisters is really a bit of an overstatement; while it is clear that each event is carefully planned by Chekhov, they have a random, disconnected air - just like incidents in real life.

The three Prozorov sisters live in a small town with their brother, Andrei. After the death of their father, one of them has married a schoolteacher, the youngest two are still unmarried. They are bored with provincial life, and look forward to the day when they will move to Moscow (which is the place where all their unattainable dreams take place). But Andrei marries a local girl, and she gradually takes over the Prozorov house and the sisters' illusory hopes fade away.

The three sisters, Irina, Olga and Masha, are very different women (respectively, archetypically innocent, home-making and sensual), and it has been suggested that they represent the different sides to the nature of any real woman. Because of the way they grow up together, though, siblings are often very different - complementary, even - in temperament, so it is not necessary to put such a symbolic interpretation on what is surely intended to be a strongly realist play.

Chekhov's great plays all deal with a family's decline in fortune; the Prozorovs are not so high in the social scale as the aristocratic families of Uncle Vanya or The Cherry Orchard, but they are clearly gradually losing social status.

It is Chekhov's examination of character that makes this a great play; he took the ideas of the late nineteenth century Russian novel and applied them to the stage. That medium, with its association with melodrama and its exaggerated plots and one dimensional characters must have seemed the last place where an emphasis on character rather than action would work; yet, in the hands of Chekhov and Ibsen, it does.