of
these plays have been previously published in book form in England or
America.

It is not the business of a translator to attempt to outdo all others in
singing the praises of his raw material. This is a dangerous process and
may well lead, as it led Mr. Calderon, to drawing the reader's
attention to points of beauty not to be found in the original. A few
bibliographical details are equally necessary, and permissible, and the
elementary principles of Chekhov criticism will also be found useful.

The very existence of "The High Road" (1884); probably the earliest
of its author's plays, will be unsuspected by English readers. During
Chekhov's lifetime it a sort of family legend, after his death it became
a family mystery. A copy was finally discovered only last year in the
Censor's office, yielded up, and published. It had been sent in 1885
under the nom-de-plume "A. Chekhonte," and it had failed to pass. The
Censor, of the time being had scrawled his opinion on the manuscript,
"a depressing and dirty piece,--cannot be licensed." The name of the
gentleman who held this view--Kaiser von Kugelgen--gives another reason
for the educated Russian's low opinion of German-sounding institutions.
Baron von Tuzenbach, the satisfactory person in "The Three Sisters,"
it will be noted, finds it as well, while he is trying to secure the
favours of Irina, to declare that his German ancestry is fairly remote.
This is by way of parenthesis. "The High Road," found after thirty
years, is a most interesting document to the lover of Chekhov. Every
play he wrote in later years was either a one-act farce or a four-act
drama. [Note: "The Swan Song" may occur as an exception. This, however,
is more of a Shakespeare recitation than anything else, and so neither
here nor there.]

In "The High Road" we see, in an embryonic form, the whole later method
of the plays--the deliberate contrast between two strong characters
(Bortsov and Merik in this case), the careful individualization of each
person in a fairly large group by way of an introduction to the main
theme, the concealment of the catastrophe, germ-wise, in the actual
character of the characters, and the of a distinctive group-atmosphere.
It need scarcely be stated that "The High Road" is not a "dirty" piece
according to Russian or to German standards; Chekhov was incapable of
writing a dirty play or story. For the rest, this piece differs from the
others in its presentation, not of Chekh