'The Bear'
As usual, Chekhov's earliest reference to his work-in- progress was offhandedly negative: 'Having nothing to do, I wrote a vapid little Frenchy vaudevillette (vodevil chik) entitled The Bear' (to I. L. Leontiev-Shcheglov, 22 February 1888). No sooner had it appeared in print, than Chekhov's friends insisted that he submit it to the censor and recommended the perfect actors to play it. The censor was not amused, disturbed by the 'more than strange plot,' 'the coarseness and indecency of the tone of the whole play,'2 and forbade production. But he was overruled by a superior bureaucrat who, by suppressing a few lines, rendered it suitable for the public. It had its premiere at Korsh's on 28 October 1888, with the clever ingenue Nataliya Rybchinskaya as Popova and Chekhov's boyhood friend Nikolay Solovtsov as Smirnov. Solovtsov, a tall, ungainly fellow with a huge voice, had probably been in Chekhov's mind for the role of the bear as he wrote it.
The Bear was, from the start, a runaway success: the audience roared with laughter and interrupted the dialogue with applause, and the newspapers praised it to the skies. Theatres all over Russia added it to their repertoires and the best Russian actors clamoured to play in it. In Chekhov's lifetime it brought him in regular royalties and has held the stage throughout the Soviet era.
The Bear's comedy proceeds from the characters' lack of self-knowledge: the widow Popova fancies herself incon- solably bereaved, a fugitive from the world, while Smirnov takes himself to be a misogynist to the core. It updates Petronius' ancient tale of the Widow of Ephesus, which Christopher Fry later turned into ,4 Phoenix Too Frequent. That ribald fable tells of a widow whose grief for a dead husband melts under the ardour of the soldier guarding a crucified corpse; she eventually colludes with him to substitute her own deceased spouse for the body stolen during their love-making. Chekhov puts the pony Toby in place of the corpse, as a token of the transference of the widow's affection; he also doubles the comic reversal.
Both Popova and Smirnov are alazons in the classic sense: figures made comic by pretending to be more than they actually are. If the languishing Popova derives from the Petronian source, Smirnov is a descendant of Moliere's Alceste, professing a hatred of society's hypocrisy but succumbing to a woman who exemplifies that society. The two poseurs come in conflict, and the roles reverse: the grieving relict snatches up a pistol and, like any case- hardened bully, insists on a duel while the gruff woman- hater finds himself incapable of facing down his female opponent. (It was the improbable duel that most outraged the critics.) It is in the cards that the frail widow and the brute in muddy boots will fall into one another's arms by the final curtain.
'The Proposal'
'A vulgarish and boringish vaudevillette, but suitable for the provinces' was how Chekhov disparaged The Proposal, even while he asked friends to intercede with the censors on its behalf. Inspired by the success of The Bear, he was anxious to get his next farce on the boards. It had its first production at the Krasnoe Selo Theatre on 9 August 1889, with a cast of Pavel Svobodin (who had created Shabelsky) as Lomov, Mariya Ilinskaya as Nataliya and the great comic actor Varlamov as Chubukov. It was greeted with unbroken laughter, not least from the Tsar who congratulated the actors. The Proposal shared The Bear's fate as a favourite curtain-raiser and benefit play in the provinces for years.
Botched proposals are a Chekhov specialty. The cross- purposes of the 'imaginary invalid' Lomov, incongruously decked out in tails and gloves, and Nataliya in her apron, mount to a boisterous, breathless pitch here. Chekhov understood how to accelerate the basic misapprehensions into a barrage of insults, and how, after building to a climax, to reinvigorate the action by introducing a fresh contretemps (which he may have learned from Turgenev's Luncheon with the Marshal). Later, the final interview of Tusenbach and Irina in Three Sisters, and Lopakhin's failure to propose to Varya in The Cherry Orchard will show Chekhov modulating the tone to one of shattered hopes and mutually conflicting illusions.
'Tatyana Repina'
Tatyana Repina is an anomaly among Chekhov's one-acts: it can be understood only in relationship to another play by someone else. In 1889, Suvorin wrote a 'comedy' founded on an actual occurrence: the suicide eight years earlier of the young actress Yevlaliya Kadmina. Jilted by her lover, she poisoned herself and came on in the last act of Ostrovsky's Vasilisa Melentieva, whose heroine is also supposed to die of poison. Kadmina perished in gruesome torments before the eyes of a Kharkov audience, and thus won posthumous notoriety. Chekhov considered her an 'extraordinary celebrity' and even solicited her photograph.
Suvorin's Tatyana Repina follows the facts fairly closely. Tatyana Repina, a high-spirited and talented provincial actress, is thrown over by her lover who hopes to repair his ruined fortunes by marrying an heiress. Deeply hurt, publicly insulted by a gross Jewish financier, seeing nothing to live for, Tatyana takes poison before going on stage and dies during the last act of Ostrovsky's play as her friends look on, aghast. From a modern standpoint, Chekhov's enthusiasm for this sensationalist play is hard to comprehend; yet he was lavish with his praise and offered copious advice in his letters. He predicted a success that came to pass in both capitals, and got embroiled in the Moscow rehearsals as an intercessor between actors and author, when Suvorin was busy staging Chekhov's Ivanov in Petersburg.
Chekhov's one-act is therefore a kind of private joke, the 'what happens after the curtain goes down,' that St. John Hankin perfected in his Dramatic Sequels. Chekhov purports to be amused by the epidemic of suicides that followed in the wake of Tatyana Repina's success, and he depicts the marriage taking place between the dead actress's lover and his rich heiress. The hieratic formality of the Orthodox wedding ceremony reproduced with considerable authenticity, blended with the trivial remarks of the bystanders, provides the structure. The counterpoint between the sonorous Church Slavonic with its portentous vows and the mundane chitchat of the wedding party produces a sour and sardonic effect. Eventually, the church choir has to compete with a worldly chorus of 'Voices' who begin to spread the news of the suicide epidemic, passing along fragments of tattle. Neurotic females are condemned for this copy-cat felo de se at the same time the choir is intoning its 'Lord have mercys' and 'Amens'.
Gradually, the bridegroom's bad conscience overwhelms him and he begins to imagine that Tatyana is there beside him in the church, while her colleagues from the theatre pray for her soul's rest and make disdainful comments about her seducer. When the wedding party finally departs, the remaining clergymen are startled by a woman in black who staggers out from behind a column; she has poisoned herself a la Repina and incoherently wavers between fatalism and the desire to be saved.
lady in black: . . . Everybody ought to take poison . . . (Groans and rolls on the floor.) She's in her grave, while he ... he ... To offend a woman is to offend God ... A woman has perished . . .