ccess as soon as it was given on the stage of the Artists'
Theatre in Moscow. Of all Tchekoff's plays, this one conforms most
nearly to our Western conventions, and is therefore most easily
appreciated here. In Trigorin the author gives us one of the rare
glimpses of his own mind, for Tchekoff seldom put his own personality
into the pictures of the life in which he took such immense interest.

In "The Sea-Gull" we see clearly the increase of Tchekoff's power of
analysis, which is remarkable in his next play, "The Three Sisters,"
gloomiest of all his dramas.

"The Three Sisters," produced in 1901, depends, even more than most of
Tchekoff's plays, on its interpretation, and it is almost essential to
its appreciation that it should be seen rather than read. The atmosphere
of gloom with which it is pervaded is a thousand times more intense when
it comes to us across the foot-lights. In it Tchekoff probes the depths
of human life with so sure a touch, and lights them with an insight so
piercing, that the play made a deep impression when it appeared. This
was also partly owing to the masterly way in which it was acted at the
Artists' Theatre in Moscow. The theme is, as usual, the greyness of
provincial life, and the night is lit for his little group of characters
by a flash of passion so intense that the darkness which succeeds it
seems well-nigh intolerable.

"Uncle Vanya" followed "The Three Sisters," and the poignant truth of
the picture, together with the tender beauty of the last scene, touched
his audience profoundly, both on the stage and when the play was
afterward published.

"The Cherry Orchard" appeared in 1904 and was Tchekoff's last play. At
its production, just before his death, the author was feted as one of
Russia's greatest dramatists. Here it is not only country life that
Tchekoff shows us, but Russian life and character in general, in which
the old order is giving place to the new, and we see the practical,
modern spirit invading the vague, aimless existence so dear to the
owners of the cherry orchard. A new epoch was beginning, and at its dawn
the singer of old, dim Russia was silenced.

In the year that saw the production of "The Cherry Orchard," Tchekoff,
the favourite of the Russian people, whom Tolstoi declared to be
comparable as a writer of stories only to Maupassant, died suddenly in
a little village of the Black Forest, whither he had gone a few weeks
before in the hope of recovering his lost