Introduction

Chekhov: Three Sisters

In this course Professor Valleri Robinson (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) explores Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, written in 1900 and first performed in 1901 at the Moscow Arts Theatre. In the first lecture, we provide some background context to Three Sisters, including Chekhov’s writing of the play and its critical reception. In the second lecture, we think about the representation of time in the play, particularly in relation to the theme of memory and forgetting. In the third lecture, we think about the play’s representation of space, particularly in relation to who controls which spaces in the play, before turning in the fourth lecture to the play’s representation of love, both familial and romantic.

Introduction

In this lecture we provide some background context to Three Sisters, focusing in particular on: (i) its date of composition; (ii) the importance of the fact it was written specifically for the Moscow Arts Theatre; (iii) the actors’ initial reactions to the play when Chekhov first read it to them in 1900, but the extent to which the play grew on them as time went on; (iv) Chekhov’s refinement of the play between his initial reading in 1900 and the play’s premiere in January 1901; (v) the play’s success; (vi) the two translations of the play that will be used in this course: those of Marina Brodskaya and Laurence Senelick; (vii) other literary sources that will be used in this course: Chekhov’s letters to his actor-wife Olga Knipper; and (viii) an answer to one of the questions that students often ask about the play: why are there so many characters?