The Cherry Orchard

For decades after its first performance in 1904, Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard fomented controversy among producers, actors, critics, and audiences. Along with its intrinsic textual richness, linguistic power, and subtlety, the play is saturated with many different, apparently incompatible, elements; it constantly shifts from comedy to pathos, its language concomitantly oscillating from music hall vulgarity to prose poetry. Chekhov assigned a personal way of speaking to each character, divorcing consequence from action, cause from effect. Despite the controversy generated by its paradoxical nature, however, The Cherry Orchard has become a milestone in twentieth-century drama. . In this astute analysis of Chekhov's last play, Donald Rayfield argues that The Cherry Orchard can be best understood when read as a culmination of the dramatist's major plays, particularly The Seagull (1896) and Three Sisters (1901). Stressing that Chekhov the playwright is inseparable from Chekhov the story writer, Rayfield points up instances in which the author "reuses" material from such classic stories as "A Visit to Friends," "Panpipes," "The Black Monk," and "The Bride.". An engaging history of