Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-995ml Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T18:48:35.839Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

THREE SISTERS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2009

Get access

Summary

This play shows a concentration and ordering of detail in all departments of theatre only equal in Chekhov's playwriting to The Cherry Orchard. It was his strong alignment with a particular playhouse and company of actors which encouraged this development, and this was the first play he had written in its entirety with a fair confidence in how it was going to be handled in the theatre. Nemirovich-Danchenko commented, ‘Chekhov did something in his play that is usually censured by the shrewdest dramatic critics: he had written a play for definitely designated actors.’ But to satisfy so exact a skill as Chekhov was acquiring, we may rather praise than blame him for using the tools he knew.

The coming together of Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko to found the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898 was an event of major importance for the modern theatre. The happy accident of a dedicated theatre's finding its own playwright when the time was ripe for the new realism meant that Chekhov could establish his style and experiment within it with effects of oblique humour and submerged feeling which only he could conceive. Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, having eliminated much of the older tradition of ‘projected’ acting and self-exhibition in their direction of The Seagull, had turned a failure into a success by maintaining a quality of theatrical honesty and a loyalty to the intentions of the play as a whole. Never had a dramatist more needed this kind of sympathetic treatment.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1971

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • THREE SISTERS
  • J. L. Styan
  • Book: Chekhov in Performance
  • Online publication: 15 December 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511554230.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • THREE SISTERS
  • J. L. Styan
  • Book: Chekhov in Performance
  • Online publication: 15 December 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511554230.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • THREE SISTERS
  • J. L. Styan
  • Book: Chekhov in Performance
  • Online publication: 15 December 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511554230.005
Available formats
×