San Antonio College Library

"Platonov" is the title given to the English version of an 1878 unnamed play by Checkhov about a disillusioned and philandering provincial schoolmaster. The lead character is Mikhail Platonov, a disillusioned provincial schoolmaster. The play is set in a dilapidated country house in the Russian provinces. Landowner Anna Petrovna, Sofia Yegorovna, wife of Anna Petrovna's stepson, and one of his colleagues fall in love with the married Platonov. He...

As a schoolboy, Anton Chekhov stole into the local theater at night, dressed as his father, and marveled at the plays of Shakespeare and Moliere. Mesmerized by the characters on the stage, he went on to write his own tragicomedies: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. Setting the playwright in context to his personal life, social, historical and political events, other writers of influence, and more, the reader will...

"Richard Gilman examines each of Chekhov's full-length plays, showing how they relate to each other, to Chekhov's short stories, and to his life. He also places the plays in the context of Russian and European drama and the larger culture of the period. Gilman interweaves biographical narrative with textual commentary and with a discussion of stage-craft and dramaturg - Chekhov's techniques for influencing viewers, the scenic framing of the action,...

A study of the author as man, as dramatist and as physician.