Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchscenes, murmur. The curtain goes up. Fine: through the arch onecan see the supper table (the wedding). The band plays flourishes.The groomsmen come out: they are drunk, and so you see theythink they must behave like clowns and cut capers. The horseplayand pot-house atmosphere reduce me to despair. Then Kiselevskycomes out: it is a poetical, moving passage, but my Kiselevsky doesnot know his part, is drunk as a cobbler, and a short poetical dialogueis transformed into something tedious and disgusting: thepublic is perplexed. At the end of the play the hero dies because hecannot get over the insult he has received. The audience, growncold and tired, does not understand this death (the actors insistedon it; I have another version). There are calls for the actors and forme. During one of the calls I hear sounds of open hissing, drownedby the clapping and stamping.On the whole I feel tired and annoyed. It was sickening thoughthe play had considerable success ….Theatre-goers say that they had never seen such a ferment in atheatre, such universal clapping and hissing, nor heard such discussionsamong the audience as they saw and heard at my play. And ithas never happened before at Korsh’s that the author has been calledafter the second act.66