By Anton Chekhov - Center Stage

Nex t Stage Resource Guide 

Reparations de Bébés 

© Stephen Borko 

By Anton Chekhov 

Translated by Paul Schmidt 

Directed by Irene Lewis 

Sep 15–Oct 29, 2006 

The Head Theater

Irene Lewis Artistic Director 

Michael Ross Managing Director 

Contents 

Setting the Stage 2 

Cast/Director’s Note 3 

Chekhov 4 

Writing with Light 5 

Snapshots Out of Time 10 

“Love” Letters 13 

Glossary 14 

Annotated Bibliography 18 

The Next Stage Resource Guide 

is published by: CENTERSTAGE Associates 

700 North Calvert Street 

Baltimore, Maryland 21202 

Editor Aaron Heinsman 

Contributors Dina Epshteyn, Kathryn Leiby, Irene 

Lewis, Steve Lichtenstein, Gavin Witt 

Art Direction/Design Bill Geenen 

Design Jason Gembicki 

Government Support 

Anne Arundel County Executive and County Council 

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& The Arts 

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Foundation & INDIVIDUAL Support 

Anonymous 

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The Jim & Patty Rouse Charitable Foundation 

The Sheridan Foundation 

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The Three Sisters 

By Anton Chekhov 

Translated by Paul Schmidt 

Irene Lewis Director 

Robert Israel Scenic Designer 

Candice Donnelly Costume Designer 

Mimi Jordan Sherin Lighting Designer 

Eric Svejcar Composer/Music Director 

David Budries Sound Designer 

John Carrafa Choreographer 

J. Allen Suddeth Fight Director 

Gavin Witt Production Dramaturg 

Dina Epshteyn Associate Production Dramaturg 

Harriet Bass Casting Director 

Sponsored by 

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agreement between LORT and 

Actors’ Equity Association, the 

union of professional actors and 

stage managers in the United 

States. 

The Director and Choreographer are 

members of the Society of Stage 

Directors and Choreographers, Inc., 

an independent national labor union. 

The scenic, costume, lighting, and 

sound designers in LORT theaters 

are represented by United Scenic 

Artists, Local USA-829 of the IATSE. 

CenterStage is a constituent of Theatre Communications 

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professional theater, and is a member of the League of 

Resident Theatres (LORT), the national collective bargaining 

organization of professional regional theaters. 

Presented by special arrangement with Helen Merrill LLC. 

The 2006–07 Season is dedicated to Nancy Keen Roche.

Set ting the Stage 

The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov 

by Kathryn Leiby, Community Programs & Education Intern 

Characters: 

Andrey Sergeiyevitch Prozorov 

Natasha Ivanovna—his fiancée, later his wife 

Olga, Masha, and Irina—his sisters 

Fyodor Ilyitch Kulygin—Masha’s husband, a teacher 

Alexander Ignateyevitch Vershinin—lieutenant-colonel 

Baron Tuzenbach—lieutenant in the army 

Vassily Vassilyevitch Solyony—captain 

Ivan Romanovitch Chebutykin—army doctor 

Alexei Petrovitch Fedotik—second lieutenant 

Vladimir Carlovitch Rohde—second lieutenant 

Ferapont—janitor at County Council offices 

Anfisa—the Prózorovs’ nurse 

Setting: 

Act 1: Spring (May 5) 

Act 2: Winter—1.5 years later 

Act 3: Summer—1.5 years later 

Act 4: Fall—3 months later 

For the Prozorov family, May 5 th is a day of celebration and sadness. It is Irina Prozorov’s birthday, which 

is always a cause of festivity. This year, though, it also marks the one-year anniversary of her father’s 

death. Nonetheless, Irina is happy to shed her mourning black for a white party dress. Her sisters, Olga 

and Masha, and her brother, Andrey, are doing their best to throw her a party. Guests include officers from 

the regiment garrisoned in town; Masha’s husband Kulygin, the local schoolteacher; and Natasha, the local 

girl that Andrey’s sweet on. Each member of this eclectic group seems to have a different idea of how the 

afternoon’s merriment should proceed; and, even in the joyous atmosphere of good spirits and laughter, the 

ties of family and friendship may not be enough to prevail. 

Set in a Russian provincial city at the turn of the last century, Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters shows a 

family aching for change. Chekhov viewed life as a struggle between who we were and who we become. 

He showed us a world filled with people who want more than their lives can give them and know that they 

may never be able to attain it. 

After spending their childhood years in Moscow, the Prozorov siblings moved with their father, a general, 

to what seems to them like the ends of the earth. Since the general’s death, the family has done their best 

to keep life as he would have wanted it, but have had some bumps on the way. Brother Andrey was to be 

a famous scholar, but has begun to let himself go. Olga teaches unhappily at the local girls’ school, Masha 

married too young, and Irina hopes that hard work might fill her life with purpose. She is surrounded 

by doting military men, from earnest Baron Tuzenbach to rebellious Captain Solyony, from the paternal 

Chebutykin to the gentle and inseparable Lieutenants Fedotik and Rohde. When Colonel Vershinin, the 

regiment’s new commander, arrives with his tales of the capital, the sisters press endlessly for information, 

living vicariously through his stories and continuously dreaming of their return to Moscow. Hope may 

blossom brightly, but disappointment looms with it. ● 

Next Stage: The Three Sisters | 2

The Three Sisters 

C ast 

(in alphabetical order) 

David Adkins* Vershinin 

Christine Marie Brown* Masha 

Willy Conley Fedotik 

Gene Farber* Solyony 

Kristin Fiorella* Natasha 

Mary Fogarty* Anfisa 

Joe Hickey* Kulygin 

Mahira Kakkar* Irina 

Laurence O’Dwyer* Chebutykin 

Andy Paterson* Rohde/Voice of Fedotik 

Stacy Ross* Olga 

Matt Bradford Sullivan* Tuzenbach 

Evan Thompson* Ferapont 

Tony Ward* Andrey 

Alina Lightchaser Musician/Servant 

Bradley Wayne Smith Musician/Servant 

Debra Acquavella* Stage Manager 

Mike Schleifer* Assistant Stage Manager 

* Member of Actors’ Equity Association 

Set ting 

Place: The Prozorov’s home in the 

Russian Provinces, ca. 1900 

Time: 

Act I: Spring 

Act II: Winter, 18 months later 

15-minute intermission 

Act III: Summer, 18 months later 

Act IV: Autumn, 3 months later 

Olga Knipper, 1899. The photograph prompted 

Chekhov to comment: “There’s a little demon lurking 

behind your modest expression of quiet sadness.” 

Chekhov wrote the 

role of Masha in Three 

Sisters for Olga Knipper, 

then his lover and soon to be his wife. It became 

her signature role, so much so that the final words 

she spoke onstage, at a benefit for her 90 th birthday, 

were lines of Masha’s that she’d made almost 

legendary—lines of poetry from Pushkin’s Ruslan 

and Ludmilla that Masha repeats throughout the 

play. That said, you won’t hear those particular 

verses in our production. While millions of Russian 

school kids, then and now, might memorize and 

recognize those lines, they are alien, not familiar, to 

us. Where the author had counted on recognition 

from his audience, we’d find only incomprehension. 

So much of Chekhov is about looking into his plays 

and seeing yourself, yet how many of us would hear 

that quotation and know its source, or recognize 

the subtle evocations of thwarted love suggested 

by images of a golden chain and an educated cat? 

So instead of making Chekhov exotic and 

distant, I’m hoping this production will 

help make him more immediate and 

alive. You’ll hear quotations that you 

might recognize. And we can all share 

a chuckle that Chekhov decided to give 

Andrey’s first-born son a name you’d 

only give to a dog. 

— Irene Lewis, Director 


Chekhov 

1860–1904 

By Gavin Witt, Production Dramaturg 

When Anton Chekhov was born in the Black expanse of the steppes. The population surged to the cities 

Sea backwater of Taganrog, anywhere from 

20 to 40 million Russians lived in slavery as 

serfs, the legal property of landowners, the 

imperial family, or the Church. The czar freed the 

serfs by proclamation in 1861, two years before four million 

“You ask ‘What is life?’ 

That is the same as asking 

‘What is a carrot?’ 

A carrot is a carrot and 

we know nothing more.” 

in search of work. There were conflicts of expansion with 

Turkey, Japan, and China; and there continued a diplomatic 

and military quadrille of shifting allegiances with the nations 

of Europe. There were wild swings from political reform—or 

the semblance of reform—to reactionary repression. While an 

American slaves gained their freedom. Russia, mired in tradition, 

harnessed to a rigidly stratified society, governed by an imperial 

autocracy, and entrenched in a centuries-old agricultural 

economy, embarked on an all-out effort to industrialize and 

compete. Webs of railways were thrown across the infinite 

elite of about 100,000 enjoyed a steadily rising standard of 

living and all modern luxuries, many of Russia’s 120 million or so 

citizens lived in nearly medieval conditions. As for the serfs, they 

emerged from slavery into a poverty made even more abject by 

the burden of debt. >>> 


“Any idiot can face a crisis — it’s day-to-day living that wears you out.” 

It was an era of contradictions, juxtapositions, 

and astonishing transformation. 

Writing with Light 

It is noteworthy 

that, throughout 

The Three Sisters, 

Lieutenant Fedotik 

is rarely without 

his camera. 

by Gavin Witt, Production Dramaturg 

The shutterbug snapping candids has 

become a thoroughly modern figure, yet 

it is one with a long provenance. When 

Chekhov conceived and wrote his play, in 

those years around 1900, photography 

as a pastime and amateur enjoyment 

had exploded. Photography moved in a 

mere lifetime from the arcane specialty 

of scientists and professionals to the 

inescapable clutches of the hobbyists. 

Technical advances, cheap access, and 

successful marketing made cameras 


“Nothing lulls and inebriates like money; when you have a lot, 

the world seems a better place than it actually is.” 

>>> 

Chekhov’s lifetime witnessed Russia’s emergence from a 

benighted past towards some measure of modernity. Scientific, 

cultural, medical, philosophical, literary, musical, technological 

progress all battled with stagnation—a deeply conservative 

resistance to change of any kind. Railways crisscrossed the 

interior, but industrial progress was slow to follow. In addition 

to emancipation, there were other gestures of political reform. 

But for every step toward moderation and inclusion, harsh 

repression would follow—and by 1900 Marx was not the only 

one insisting that a specter haunted the monarchies of Europe. 

Idealistic calls for a better world, led by the noblesse oblige of 

Tolstoy and his circle, merely decorated the surface of a boiling 

cauldron of resentment, steeped in poverty and seething with 

the threat of imminent revolution—which bubbled over in 

violence only a year after Chekhov’s death. >>> 

popular with middle class families from 

America to Russia, where everyone from 

provincial families to the Grand Duchess 

Anastasia quickly became inseparable 

from a Kodak Brownie. Today’s incessant 

snapping of camera phones is the logical 

descendant of the process Chekhov 

wryly records in his play. And so, to 

document the many juxtapositions and 

wide gulfs of life in Chekhov’s Russia, we 

have an abundance of photographs— 

amateur and professional alike. 

The word photography itself—a combination of Greek 

words meaning to write with light —appeared around 

1839. Written in light. Inscribed with lightning. An apt 

name—and an apt image for Chekhov’s delicate, 

mournful comedy: momentary, revealing, 

potentially shattering, and just as ephemeral. ● 


“The only reviewer who ever made an impression on me was Skabichevsky, 

who prophesied that I would die drunk in the bottom of a ditch.” 

>>> 

Cultured Russians looked to Germany and France, while the 

populace at large clung to folk traditions. Like the imperial 

double-headed eagle, Russia looked both East and West at the 

same time; a division embodied in another duality of Moscow 

and St. Petersburg. Moscow: Russian, “Eastern,” chaotic, 

dingy; Petersburg: European, “Western,” tidy, orderly. The 

broad bourgeois boulevards of St. Petersburg, thronged with 

gladsome gadding gallants, contrasted with the noisome tangle 

of Moscow’s winding alleys, narrow lanes, and onion domes. 

And the countryside, so placid beneath the brush of the painter 

Ilya Repin and so ruthlessly chronicled in Chekhov’s short 

stories, offered along with its majestic landscapes a panoply 

of superstition, corruption, misery, poverty, cruelty, laziness, 

incompetence, and ignorance. 

Amidst these changes and these oppositions, Chekhov’s own 

life offered comparable contrasts and, in a mere 44 years, 

transformations as remarkable. Regarded by the time of his 

death as a master of Russian literature and a pioneer of modern 

drama, his funeral attended by tens of thousands, Chekhov was 

one of six children born to a barely solvent grocer—himself the 

son of a former serf—in a town most of the way to nowhere. At 

16, Anton was left to fend for himself when his father, bankrupt, 

took the rest of the family and fled to Moscow. In fact, he had to 

fend for the whole family: while finishing school, the teenager 

tutored and sold off the family’s meager remaining possessions 

in order to send money to his parents and siblings. 

By 19, having won a scholarship to medical school, Chekhov 

followed the others to Moscow and became the head of his 

family. There, he not only gained his degree as a doctor and 

started to show the first symptoms of tuberculosis, he also 

continued supporting his entire family—making money writing 

short, mostly comic, stories for publication. As an enviable 

and lucrative writing career took shape, however, Chekhov 

the scientific humanist asserted himself as well. He made a 

remarkable voyage of thousands of miles to a prison camp on 

the Siberian island of Sakhalin, where he personally interviewed 

10,000 prisoners. The results, published, became a rallying cry 

for prison reform and established his credentials as a champion 


“We go to great pains to alter life for the happiness of our descendants 

and our descendants will say as usual: 

things used to be so much better, life today is worse than it used to be.” 

of the downtrodden—as did his volunteering as a doctor during 

cholera epidemics, famines, and other crises. Yet he also stood 

resolutely by his friend and publisher Suvorin, among the most 

viciously reactionary men in the land. 

With medicine as his wife and writing as his mistress—as he 

phrased it—Chekhov pursued a punishing schedule. He wrote 

incessantly, championed causes, traveled the world, and carried 

on multiple affairs with besotted women who pursued him 

in vain. At the same time, he was almost misanthropic in his 

hunger for solitude; and as his fame and popularity grew, so 

did his aversion to being celebrated in any way. He was gentle 

and kind to animals, children, or the sick, but was also a coarse 

practical jokester—who loved best to laugh at his own expense. 

He sought privacy, but bought and built property, the grocer’s 

son no more. His intimates were nobility, literary and cultural 

leaders, the cream of society; yet he also sought out the needy 

and the overlooked, using his medical skill to tend impoverished 

peasants for free. 

Gradually, comic squibs gave way to more ambivalent and 

ambitious stories, and the early vaudeville sketches to fulllength 

dramas—unheralded at first, as Chekhov struggled to 

reconcile, or serve, competing impulses of tone and outlook. 

After the disastrous premiere of The Seagull, he even vowed to 

give up writing theater entirely. But then came one of those rare 

moments of world-changing alchemy and a partnership that 

altered everything. The fledgling Moscow Art Theater sought to 

spearhead a new approach to theater—to apply new, modern 

ideas to create a new drama for a new age. To accompany 

their radical new approach to acting and staging they required 

new writing to embody their ideals. Mr. Stanislavsky, meet Mr. 

Chekhov. The theater remounted The Seagull, triumphantly, 

and fresh horizons beckoned. Chekhov, Stanislavsky, and the 

Moscow Art Theater came to be associated inseparably, yet they 

were often at odds over the plays, which Chekhov insisted be 

played as farces while Stanislavsky, he complained, turned them 

all into plangent tragedy. >>> 


“A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer. 

He is a man who has signed a contract 

with his conscience and his sense of duty.” 

>>> 

Another partnership that emerged from the association was 

Chekhov’s relationship with the actress Olga Knipper, for whom 

he wrote the role of Masha in The Three Sisters and whom he 

finally married. After decades of dalliances and hesitations and 

reluctance and furtive affairs, Chekhov succumbed to wedded 

bliss. Only, of course, to introduce new contradictions by 

spending more time away from his wife than with her. No easy 

domesticity for this pair, as she remained in Moscow rehearsing 

and performing while he sought healthy climates and a cure. It 

was a distance both seemed to accept as conveniently imposed. 

For haunting each of Chekhov’s achievements, perhaps driving 

his unflagging efforts, was the terrible, undeniable medical 

reality of his consumption. Long before an official diagnosis, long 

before he brought himself to admit it or accepted care, Chekhov 

had suffered from an advancing case of tuberculosis that 

was increasingly accompanied by a host of other debilitating 

ailments, inside and out. Of course, he was sufficiently a man 

of science to know his death sentence for precisely what it 

was; lest he have any doubts, he had watched his brother die 

of the same wasting scourge. But on he forged, only gradually 

giving way to the bloody coughs and the urgent need to rest in 

a warm, dry climate. So having conquered Moscow artistically, 

and immortalized his adopted city in The Three Sisters, he first 

retired to the house he built in Yalta, then retreated to a German 

spa. It was there, with a final sip of champagne, that he died 

in 1904. Ever the centerpiece of odd juxtapositions, ever alive 

to the absurd, ever the cynical optimist, ever the most private 

of public figures, how Chekhov would have loved his final 

accidental gestures. Shipped back to Moscow for burial in a 

refrigerated train car marked “Oysters,” his coffin was confused 

with that of a dead general and the throngs who came to mourn 

him followed the wrong cortège. 

In his maturity, Chekhov was hailed as a standard-bearer of 

literary Naturalism—the objective, quasi-scientific observation, 

dissection, and recording of human behavior in literature. And 

in some ways, so he was. Of course, he always insisted on the 

comic, farcical elements of his plays—even, or especially, in 

the unexpected and out-of-the-way little accidental gestures 


“Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; 

when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.” 

everyone else overlooked. His theatrical writing rejected the 

careful plotting of the well-made play so in fashion in his 

day and rejected even the basic linear structures of classical 

theater. He wrote quite proudly of these rejections, in fact. 

True to his many contradictions—as writer-doctor, comedianclinician, 

reformer-misanthrope, philanderer-misogynist, and 

a faithful skeptic—his writing balanced contrasting impulses; 

elements of Naturalism could co-exist with aspects of 

Symbolism. 

Whatever the category, there’s no trouble discerning in 

Chekhov’s writing the seeds of what would become so much 

modern drama, from Ionesco to Beckett, Maeterlinck to Mamet, 

O’Neill to Shepard. Freudian subtext, psychological realism, 

Absurdism, Existentialism, and more—they are all there. 

Nothing happens, or seems to happen. Nothing happens, and 

everything happens. Just life, unexpected and incomplete. ● 

“Do you know for how many 

years I shall be read?” 

asked Chekhov. “Seven.” 

“Why seven?” 

asked Ivan Bunin. 

“Well,” Chekhov answered, 

“seven and a half then.” 

Above left: Chekhov’s birthplace. 

Above right: crowds of mourners at his funeral. 


“It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense. 

Only fools and charlatans think they know and understand everything.” 

Snapshots Out of Time 

Army Life and Codes of Honor 

Writing about The Three Sisters, Chekhov mentioned that he 

wanted to avoid caricatures of two things: provincial life, and 

military officers. Historically, service—or the desire to avoid 

service—in the czar’s army might have accounted for more 

emigration from imperial Russia than any other factor. Until 1874, 

draftees served basically for life. Officers had become notorious 

for being incompetent and brutal. When not fighting wars of 

imperial expansion, the army was regularly pressed into service 

to repress domestic uprisings and impose security on their own 

countrymen. Instead of this negative stereotype, or the empty 

cliché of spur-jingling heel-clickers, Chekhov implored his actors 

“to play the parts of simple, charming, decent people.” As he 

wrote the company, “The services have changed, you know. 

They’ve become more cultured, and many of them are even 

beginning to understand that their peace-time role is to carry 

culture into out-of-the way places.” 

While conditions in the army may have improved by 1900, 

the need for soldiers never slackened. Draftees were tattooed 

or branded to prevent their escape from service. And the idea 

of a deaf officer was not unlikely at all—especially in the 

artillery. Enlisted and officer alike were not necessarily invalided 

out of service, and many continued to serve even missing eyes 

or limbs. 


“They say that in the end truth will triumph, but it’s a lie.” 

“Laevsky cocked his pistol when the time came to do so, 

and raised the cold, heavy weapon with the barrel upwards. He forgot to 

unbutton his overcoat, and it felt very tight over his shoulder and under 

his arm, and his arm rose as awkwardly as though the sleeve had been 

cut out of tin. Fearing that the bullet might somehow hit [his opponent] 

by accident, he raised the pistol higher and higher, and felt that this too 

obvious magnanimity was indelicate and anything but magnanimous…. 

Thank God, [Laevsky thought,] everything would be over directly, and all 

that he had to do was to press the trigger rather hard….” 

From The Duel, by Chekhov 

Memoirs of a Russian Maiden 

Another reality of military life 

was the duel. Made legal in 1894 when Nicholas II 

became czar, dueling formed as much a part of the military 

regime as it did the heart of a literary trope. With time on their 

hands, an overblown sense of their own importance, a code 

of honor to uphold, and drinking and gambling the common 

preoccupations, officers would challenge one another to pistol 

duels with some regularity. These were often quite harmless, 

as Chekhov amusingly recorded in his short story, The Duel; 

and when fought between fellow officers, the penalties were 

minimal. In the case of a soldier dueling a civilian, matters were 

more serious and could result in imprisonment. 

After the army detachment had gone, and with it 

most of the officers, [town] grew quiet again. The 

military band left by steamer…and our dear old Fedor 

once again sat on his chair in the middle of the club 

and filled the room with the resounding arpeggios 

of his accordion…. And so the hustle and bustle came 

to an end; peace and quiet came…once again. Many 

of our ladies began to complain of boredom. As for 

myself, [I was] glad that all the commotion was 

over and that the glamorous officers were no longer 

coming to the island. Mama also needed a break from 

the endless receptions. I began to dream more often 

of going to Petersburg…. But how could I get there? I 

had no answer to that question. 

From Bygone Days, the memoirs of Emiliia Pimenova 


“Love” Letters 

To Mikhail Chekhov [his brother] 

Yalta 

26 October, 1898 

Dear Michel, 

[…]As for your insistence on marriage, what can I say? Marriage 

for love is the only kind of marriage that’s interesting. Marrying 

a girl only because she’s nice is like buying something you don’t 

need at a market merely because it is pretty. The point around 

which family life revolves is love, sexual attraction, one flesh. 

Everything else is dreary and unreliable, no matter how cleverly 

it is calculated. Therefore, the point is one of finding a girl you 

love, not one you think is nice. As you see, a mere bagatelle is all 

that’s holding us back. 

Anton and Olga 

Yours, 

A. Chekhov 

To Anton Chekhov 

Yalta 

24 May, 1901 

Dear Antosha, 

I will now permit myself to state my opinion about 

your marriage. To my mind, the whole business of 

weddings is appalling! And you would be much better 

off without all that unnecessary fuss. If a certain 

person loves you, she’s not going to leave you and 

there is no sacrifice entailed on her part, nor the 

slightest selfishness on yours. How could you ever think 

such a thing?...You can always get hitched later on. Tell 

that to your Knippschütz [Olga] from me…. In any case, 

do what you think is right; it might well be that I am 

being partial in this particular case. But you yourself 

brought me up not to have any prejudices. 

Yours, 

Maria 

To Maria Chekhova [his sister] 

Axyonovo 

4 June, 1901 

Dear Masha, 

The letter in which you advised me not to get married was 

forwarded to me…and I received it here yesterday. I don’t know 

if I’ve made a mistake or not, but I got married mainly because, 

first, I’m over forty; second, Olga comes from a highly moral 

family; and third, if we have to separate, I’ll do so without 

the least hesitation, as if I had never gotten married. Another 

important consideration is that my marriage has not in the 

least changed either my way of life or the way of life of those 

who lived and are living around me. Everything, absolutely 

everything will remain just as it was, and I’ll go on living alone 

in Yalta as before. 

Yours, 

Anton 


Glossary 

Compiled by Gavin Witt, Production Dramaturg 

“forget thy wrath, Aleko”—Solyony quotes from, and refers to 

the hero of—The Gypsies, an epic poem by legendary Russian 

poet Alexander Pushkin—who, incidentally, died in a duel. 

Aleko is a hot-blooded youth who falls in love with a very 

pretty—and very married—young gypsy woman. She cannot 

resist the handsome Aleko, and their illicit affair comes to an 

abrupt and violent conclusion at the hands of her husband. 

In 1893, at 19, then-student Sergei Rachmaninoff composed 

an opera, Aleko, based on The Gypsies. See Pushkin entry in 

additional material on page 16. 

“Balzac was married in Berdichev”—Balzac was an influential 

French novelist and one of the founders of literary Realism in 

Europe. In 1850, already dying, he did indeed travel to Berdichev 

(or Berdyczow) in Poland, where he married a wealthy woman 

with whom he’d long corresponded. He died three months 

later. Merely a coincidence, no doubt. 

“Our new battery commander”—Lt. Col. Vershinin commands 

an artillery battery—a group of field guns and their support, 

about 285 men—the equivalent of an infantry company within 

the larger regiment. 

“Moscow burned down too”—When Napoleon invaded Russia 

in 1812, the Russians burned everything to deprive the French 

troops of their conquest. When they finally burned Moscow as 

well, Napoleon’s army began its disastrous and deadly retreat 

back to France. 

Carnival—pre-Lenten festivities much like Mardi Gras, 

celebrated in Russian folk tradition with parties, music, and 

costume parades. 

Copernicus—15 th -century astronomer and mathematician who, 

studying the solar system, first suggested that the sun and 

not the earth was the center of the cosmic dance. With Galileo, 

one of the founders of modern astronomy. Vershinin equates 

Copernicus with Columbus for the latter’s part in disproving 

the flat-earth theories of his day. 

Dobrolyubov—influential Russian liberal, a literary and social 

critic in the mid-19 th Century. 

epidemic—widespread outbreak of a highly contagious 

disease simultaneously affecting a large number of people 

in a community or region. As a doctor, Chekhov several times 

helped provide medical care during regional epidemics—most 

notably of cholera. 

Gogol—Russian master of satirical comedy, most famous for 

The Inspector General and his absurdist short stories. 

highfalutin—pretentious or fancy; pompous 

Lermontov—Solyony fancies himself in the mold of the Russian 

Romantic poet Mikhail Lermontov, a Byronic figure who died in 

a duel before he was 30. Chekhov, however, was quite clear in 

his notes that any resemblance to Lermontov was entirely in 

Solyony’s head. See additional material on page 17. 

Moscow—the principal city of eastern, or Slavic, Russia, as 

distinguished from the western, or European, St. Petersburg. 

Unlike St. Petersburg’s regular street plan, broad boulevards, 

and urbane sophistication, Moscow in Chekhov’s day was 

notoriously unkempt, disordered, and chaotic. 

naphtha—A highly volatile, flammable liquid distilled from 

petroleum, coal tar, and natural gas and used as fuel or as a 

solvent—a fairly dangerous choice of hair-care products. 

rubles—basic unit of currency in Russia (consisting of 100 

kopeks per ruble). In 1901, a generous annual salary was 150 

rubles; the money Andrey has lost gambling represents a very 

hefty sum. 

samovar—a metal urn with a spigot, heated by spirits or coals, 

traditionally used to heat water for tea. The gift Chebutykin 

presents is inappropriately elaborate, embarrassing Irina. 

sophistry—an intentionally false but logically plausible 

argument usually intended to deceive someone. 

“there’s a storm coming”—Only four years after the premiere 

of The Three Sisters, the 1905 Revolution broke out all over 

Russia in response to the dire need for social and economic 

reform at all levels. Tuzenbach alludes to the fairly obvious 

stirrings of revolt, which ultimately led to the Bolshevik 

Revolution and the overthrow of the czar in 1917. 

“wearing a white dress”—as distinguished from the mourning 

black Irina would have been wearing for the past year in honor 

of her father’s death. See additional material on page 15. 

“don’t whistle like that”—Superstition held that by whistling 

inside the house, you might “whistle your money away.” 

Eugene Onegin—In the midst of Chekhov’s Act III, Vershinin 

sings a passage from Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin—the 

famous basso aria sung in the opera’s own third act by Prince 

Gremin, who has married Onegin’s true love, Tatiana. “Love 

is appropriate to any age,” Gremin sings; “its delights are 

beneficent.” The opera, one of Tchaikovsky’s masterworks, 

was based on the poem of the same name by Pushkin. 


Glossary 

Continued 

>>> 

Additional Allusions and Expanded Context 

Mourning 

The opening scene of The Three Sisters presents not only 

youngest sister Irina’s birthday celebration, but the one-year 

anniversary of the death of the sisters’ father—a significant 

landmark in the highly structured language of mourning at 

the time. 

The mourning for parents ranks next to that of 

widows. It lasts in either case twelve months— 

six months in crape trimmings, three in plain 

black, and three in half mourning. It is, however, 

better to continue the plain black to the end 

of the year, and wear half-mourning for three 

months longer. 

cities, St. Petersburg and Moscow, in 1851. It took a year and a 

half to build the 402-mile route between the two cities, one 

of the straightest railways in the world. The first train to try 

the new line set off from St. Petersburg and spent almost 22 

hours en route to Moscow. In 1891, Czar Nicholas II inaugurated 

the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the longest 

continuous railway on the earth. In 1901, the nearly 800-mile 

railway journey to Moscow from Perm, the likely setting of The 

Three Sisters, would have been a considerable journey in time 

and logistics alone. 

At the end of the six months crape can be put 

aside, and plain black, such as cashmere, worn, 

trimmed with silk if liked, but not satin for that 

is…never worn by those who strictly attend to 

mourning etiquette. 

Many persons think it is in better taste not 

to commence half-mourning until after the 

expiration of a year, except in the case of young 

children, who are rarely kept in mourning 

beyond the twelve months. 

—Victorian Mourning Customs from Collier’s 

Cyclopedia, 1901 

Railways in Russia 

Russia includes an enormous expanse of territory that, even 

today, takes eight days to cross by rail. Like the United States, 

much of Russia was made accessible only when the country’s 

rail system was built in the 19 th Century. The first Russian 

train started from the then-capital St. Petersburg on October 

30, 1837. The first national railroad was just 19 miles long, 

connecting St. Petersburg with the suburb of Tsarskoye Selo. 

The first Russian main line connected the country’s two leading 

Dueling in 19 th -century Russia 

In a typical duel, each party acted through a partner or 

associate known as the second. The second’s primary duties 

were to deliver the challenge for the offended party, oversee 

the logistics of the actual duel (place, time, and weapons)— 

and at least to go through the motions of trying to reconcile 

the parties without violence. 

Once a challenge was issued, the offending party had the 

option to apologize, in which case the matter was honorably 

resolved. If he elected to fight, he was entitled to choose 

the weapons, the time, and the place of the encounter. Most 

duels in Russia in the 19 th Century were fought with muzzleloading 

dueling pistols, with the duelists taking turns firing at 

a measured distance. Up until combat began, apologies could 

be given and the duel stopped. After combat began, it could be 

stopped at any point after honor had been satisfied. 

Until 1894, duels were illegal; participants were, at least 

technically, guilty of attempted murder if everyone survived, or 

murder if anyone was killed. This included not only the duelists 

themselves, but seconds and anyone else taking part. Officers 

taking part in duels could be demoted and have to wear a 

white fatigue uniform cap denoting their punishment; some 

lesser-ranking officers were known to dress to pretend they 

had been in duels, to impress the ladies. >>> 


Glossary 

Continued 

>>> 

Duels were a popular part of literature at the time. Pushkin 

published one story, The Shot, that offered a perspective on 

the action: 

I was calmly enjoying my reputation, when 

a young man belonging to a wealthy and 

distinguished family joined our regiment. Never 

in my life have I met with such a fortunate 

fellow! Imagine to yourself youth, wit, beauty, 

unbounded gaiety, the most reckless bravery, 

a famous name, untold wealth. My supremacy 

was shaken. I took a hatred to him. His success 

in the regiment and in the society of ladies 

brought me to the verge of despair. I began to 

seek a quarrel with him. At last, at a ball, seeing 

him the object of the attention of all the ladies… 

I whispered some grossly insulting remark in his 

ear. He flamed up and gave me a slap in the face. 

We grasped our swords; the ladies fainted; we 

were separated; and that same night we set out 

to fight. 

[…]”Don’t you agitate yourself,” laughed Von 

Koren. “You can set your mind at rest; the duel 

will end in nothing. Laevsky will magnanimously 

fire into the air—he can do nothing else; and I 

daresay I shall not fire at all. To be arrested and 

lose my time on his account–the game’s not 

worth the candle.” 

“By the way, what is the punishment for 

dueling?” 

“Arrest, and in the case of the death of 

your opponent a maximum of three years’ 

imprisonment in the fortress.” 

“The fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul?” 

“No, in a military fortress, I believe.” 

“Though this fine gentleman ought to have a 

lesson!” 

The dawn was just breaking. I was standing 

at the appointed place with my three seconds 

[when] I saw him coming in the distance. We 

advanced to meet him. The seconds measured 

twelve paces for us. …It was decided that we 

should cast lots. The first number fell to him, 

the constant favorite of fortune. He took aim, 

and his bullet went through my cap. It was now 

my turn. His life at last was in my hands…. 

—from The Shot by Pushkin 

And from Chekhov’s own pen: 

Whether he killed Von Koren next day or left 

him alive, it would be just the same, equally 

useless and uninteresting. Better to shoot him 

in the leg or hand, wound him, then laugh at 

him, and let him, like an insect with a broken leg 

lost in the grass–let him be lost with his obscure 

sufferings in the crowd of insignificant people 

like himself. 

Laevsky went to Sheshkovsky, told him all 

about it, and asked him to be his second; then 

they both went to the superintendent of the 

postal telegraph department, and asked him, 

too, to be a second, and stayed to dinner with 

him. At dinner there was a great deal of joking 

and laughing. Laevsky made jests at his own 

expense, saying he hardly knew how to fire off 

a pistol, calling himself a royal archer and 

William Tell. “We must give this gentleman a 

lesson” he said. 

Pushkin 

Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin was born in Moscow in 1799, 

the great-grandson of an African who had emigrated to Russia 

and served Czar Peter the Great. His first published poem 

appeared in 1814, before he’d even graduated. >>> 


Glossary 

Continued 

>>> 

After graduating, he continued to write and made a name for 

himself among liberal circles with poems touting freedom and 

revolution. He also began work on his first major work, Ruslan 

and Ludmila—based on Russian folktales he’d heard as a young 

man. By 1820, his political poems led to exile to South Russia, 

where he started what would become his monumental novel 

in verse, Eugene Onegin. 

Transferred to Odessa in 1823, he joined the social whirl and 

engaged in love affairs with two married women. There he 

also began what would become the epic poem The Gypsies. 

However, his political views got him exiled again, to his family’s 

estate in north Russia. 

He remained under surveillance in this new exile for two more 

years, all the while continuing his literary pursuits—including 

writing Boris Godunov. Despite being implicated indirectly in 

the Decembrist Uprising of 1825, Pushkin ultimately won the 

Czar’s reprieve—though his freedom was constrained and each 

word he wrote overseen by police censors. 

Despite these constraints, Pushkin continued to write and 

publish, and even managed to get married. His wife’s beauty 

won her many admirers, the Czar included, and Pushkin 

became increasingly jealous. He had good reason, for, in 1834, 

his wife met a handsome French royalist émigré in Russian 

service, named D’Anthes, who pursued her so openly that, 

after two years, it had become a very public scandal. After 

challenging D’Anthes, Pushkin met him for a duel on January 27, 

1837. D’Anthes fired first, and Pushkin was mortally wounded. 

He died two days later. 

Pushkin works adapted into operas include: Ruslan and 

Ludmila (Glinka); The Gypsies (Alek, Rachmaninov); Eugene 

Onegin and The Queen of Spades (Tchaikovsky); Boris Godunov 

(Mussorgsky); and The Golden Cockerel (Rimsky-Korsakov). 

Lermontov 

Mikhail Yurevich Lermontov was a Russian poet and novelist 

born in 1814, son of a retired army captain. Taken up after his 

mother’s death by his wealthy grandmother, who stood by him 

through the rest of his life, Lermontov began writing poetry 

as a teenager at an elite boarding school for nobility. He later 

attended the notoriously liberal Moscow University. 

While his early verses mostly imitated English Romantic poet 

Byron, Lermontov first won public attention with his poem 

“On the Death of the Poet,” written to protest Pushkin’s death. 

For his poem, which accused the government of complicity, he 

was exiled to the Caucasus, where he had recuperated from 

illness as a child. While there, he was inspired by much of the 

exotic and alien land—writing, drawing, and absorbing the 

Caucasian milieu. 

As a result of zealous intercession by his grandmother, 

Lermontov was allowed to return to the capital in 1838. He 

cultivated a skeptical, devil-may-care attitude, while his 

published poems and his political views earned him favor 

among writers, journalists, and society women. His 1840 novel, 

A Hero of our Time, was partly autobiographical, telling of a 

disenchanted and bored nobleman devoted only to seeking 

new sensations—including a deadly climactic duel. The novel 

became an overnight sensation, and cemented Lermontov’s 

literary reputation. 

Also in 1840, however, Lermontov was tried and sentenced 

for his duel with the son of the French ambassador; he was 

sent, on the Czar’s orders, to an infantry regiment preparing 

for dangerous military operations. Forced to take part in 

bloody hand-to-hand battles, Lermontov distinguished himself 

admirably and was allowed leave for medical treatment. 

While on leave, he quarreled and was challenged to another 

duel—where the 26-year-old poet was shot and killed, just like 

his hero Pushkin. His death won from Czar Nicholas I the curt 

response, “a dog’s death for a dog.” The natural enemy of the 

Crown and the State, Lermontov was beloved by many for his 

embrace of freedom both personal and political. ● 


Annotated Bibliogr aphy 

Compiled by Dina Epshteyn, Associate Production Dramaturg 

For more information on Anton Chekhov, his life and work: 

Bartlett, Rosamund. Chekhov: Scenes from a Life. London, UK: The Free Press, 2005. 

—An impressionistic sketch of Chekhov’s life and environment. 

Rayfield, Donald. Anton Chekhov: A Life. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1997. 

—A newer, full biography including the latest information released from Soviet archives. 

Troyat, Henri. Chekhov. New York, NY: E.P. Dutton, 1986. 

—The first truly comprehensive American biography of Chekhov. 

Anton Chekhov and His Times. Edited by Andrei Turkov. Translated from the Russian by Cynthia Carlile and Sharon McKee. 

Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 1995. 

—Provides first-hand material as well as commentary on Chekhov from his contemporaries. 

Letters of Anton Chekhov. Edited by Simon Karlinsky. Translated by Michael Henry Heim. New York, 

NY: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1973. 

—Chekhov’s life in the first person: a selection of his letters to various friends, family members, and colleagues. 

For more information on Russian culture and history: 

Figes, Orlando. Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2002. 

—A thorough cultural history of Russia from 1700 to 1970. Includes glossary and chronology. 

Hasler, Joan. The Making of Russia: From Prehistory to Modern Times. New York, NY: Delacorte Press, 1969. 

—A history of Russia with great sections on everyday life, the social classes, and politics. 

Hosking, Geoffrey. Russia: People and Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. 

—An extremely detailed history of Imperial Russia, exploring all aspects of cultural and political life from 1552 to 1917. 

Before the Revolution: St. Petersburg in Photographs: 1890-1914. Compiled by Mikhail P. Iroshnikov, Liudmila A. Protsai, and Yury B. 

Shelayev. New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, 1991. 

—Striking photographic record of St. Petersburg around the time of The Three Sisters, with commentary. 

A Portrait of Tsarist Russia: Unknown Photographs from the Soviet Archives. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1989. 

—A photo record of Imperial Russia with explanatory text. 

Russia Through Women’s Eyes: Autobiographies from Tsarist Russia. Edited by Toby W. Clyman and Judith Vowles. New Haven, CT: 

Yale University Press, 1996. 

—First-hand accounts from women about their lives in 19th-century Russia. 

If you have any trouble using this study guide—or for more 

information on CENTERSTAGE’s education programs—call us 

at 410.986.4050. Student group rates start at just $15. Call 

Group Sales at 410.986.4008 for more information, or visit 

www.centerstage.org. 

Material in our Next Stage resource guide is made available free of charge for 

legitimate educational and research purposes only. Selective use has been made 

of previously published information and images whose inclusion here does 

not constitute license for any further re-use of any kind. All other material is 

the property of CENTERSTAGE, and no copies or reproductions of this material 

should be made for further distribution, other than for educational purposes, 

without express permission from the authors and CENTERSTAGE. 

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