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The Cherry Orchard was the last play Anton Chekhov wrote before his untimely death, in 1904. The play is in many ways an elegy for an old Russia that was in the process of dying at the turn of the century, with the new Russia powerless to be born.
Get all the key plot points of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard on one page. From the creators of SparkNotes.
His most successful plays were Ivanov, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, and The Cherry Orchard. These owe their initial success to director Konstantin Stanislavsky, the founder of the Moscow Art Theatre and the father of “method acting,” a technique which influenced actors like Marlon Brando and James Dean.
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Themes
- Style
- Historical Context
- Critical Overview
- Criticism
- Further Reading
- Sources
Anton Chekhov was born in Taganrog, Russia, on January 16, 1860. His grandfather had been a serf who had been able to earn enough to buy his freedom and purchase a small home. In 1876, however, Chekhov’s father, a grocer, was forced to move the family to Moscow because of their many debts and the repossession of their home. Chekhov remained behind ...
Act One
The Cherry Orchardopens in the nursery of Lyuba Andreyevna Ranevsky’s estate. Although it is only about 2:00 A.M., it is close to daybreak, for it is May, when northern Russian days are long and the sun rises very early. Lopakhin, a businessman, and Dunyasha, a maid, anticipate the arrival of Mrs. Ranevsky, who is returning home from a self-imposed, five-year exile with her daughter, Anya, and her governess, Charlotte Ivanovna. Lopakhin speaks of his peasant background and his admiration for...
Act Two
The scene shifts to outside a chapel near the orchard. Sunset approaches. Charlotte, Yasha (who is Firs’s ambitious grandson), and Dunyasha sit on a bench. Nearby, Yepikhodov plays a guitar. After Charlotte ponders her heritage, Yepikhodov stops playing to remark on fate and his uncertainty about shooting himself. When Charlotte and the clerk leave, Dunyasha confesses her love for Yasha, but she is overcome by the smoke of his cigar and also leaves the scene. Mrs. Ranevsky, Gayev, and Lopakhi...
Act Three
It is night, the day of the auction, during a party at Mrs. Ranevsky’s estate. Couples enter the drawing room from the ballroom, where a band plays and guests dance. They await the return of Gayev, who, with money borrowed from the Countess, had gone to town to try to save the estate. A forced gaiety keeps the mood superficially buoyant. Pishchik’s complaints about his debts are blunted by Charlotte’s clever ventriloquism and magic tricks, but Mrs. Ranevsky’s apprehension surfaces in her conf...
Anya
SeeAnya Ranevsky
Charlotte
SeeCharlotte Ivanovna
Dunyasha
Dunyasha is the maid in the Ranevsky household who dreams of being an aristocratic lady. She parodies the ladies of the household, and compares herself to them. She must give up her dreams of marrying Yasha (Mrs. Ranevsky’s manservant) when he returns to Paris with Mrs. Ranevsky. She agrees to marry Yepikhodov instead.
The Cherry Orchardis about an aristocratic family that is unable to prevent its beloved estate from being auctioned off. More symbolically, it is about the growth of the middle class in Russia and the fall of the aristocracy. The once-wealthy family’s estate and beloved orchard is purchased by a man who once served as a serf on the estate. Though C...
Comedy vs. Tragedy
Anton Chekhov wrote his last play, The Cherry Orchard, as a comedy about a wealthy family that loses its beloved home and orchard to a man who was born a serf on their estate. A comedy is one of the two kinds of drama (the other is tragedy), one that is meant to amuse and typically ends happily. Chekhov referred to The Cherry Orchard as a farce, which is a type of comedy characterized by broad humor, outlandish incidents, and often vulgar subject matter. When Konstantin Stanislavsky decided t...
Comic Moments
There are many comic situations in the play. Leonid Gayev’s constant calling out of imaginary “FOR THE ORDINARY PERSON THIS IS A TRAGEDY” billiard shots, and his chatter create some wonderful comic moments: his salute to the one-hundred-year-old bookcase (“Dear highly esteemed bookcase, I salute you”), and his addiction to hard candy are a few examples. Simon Yepikhodov, also known as Twenty-two Calamities, is a character included purely for comic effect. His boots squeak, and, as he states:...
Point of View and Empathy
The point of view in this play is third-person, allowing the audience to see the events in the story from outside any particular character but without any insights into their inner thoughts or motivations. The audience often experiences empathy for these characters. Empathy is a shared sense of experience, including emotional and physical feelings, with someone or something other than oneself. When, at the end of the play, the axes begin the job of chopping the orchard down; the reader/viewer...
Politics
In 1904, the year The Cherry Orchardwas first produced, Russia was in a state of upheaval. The Japanese declared war on Russia on February 10, 1904, following Russia’s failure to withdraw from Manchuria and its continuing penetration of Korea. The Japanese defeated Russia at the Yalu River on May 1, 1904; by October of that year the Japanese had forced Russia to pull back its forces. This war was the beginning of tensions in Asia and the establishment of Japan as a military force. On the home...
Transportation and Industry
The Trans-Siberian Railroad’s link from Moscow to Vladivostok opened in 1904. This is the longest line of track in the world, spanning 3,200 miles between the two cities. In the United States, the first New York City subway line of importance opened on October 27, with the Interborough Rapid Transit, known as the IRT, running from the Brooklyn Bridge to 145th Street with stops in between. This system would grow to become the world’s largest rapid transitsystem, covering more than 842 miles. T...
Marie Curie discovered radium and polonium in uranium ore in 1904; these two new radioactive elements helped to fuel the nuclear age in the decades to come. Also in 1904, German physicists Julius Elster and Hans Friedrich Geitel invented the first practical photoelectric cell, which led to the invention of radio. The first wireless radio distress
Anton Chekhov intended The Cherry Orchardas a farce, yet when Konstantin Stanislavsky’s Moscow Art Theater decided to produce the play, it was presented as a tragedy, according to Stanislavsky’s view of the play. Chekhov was so frustrated by the failure of Stanislavsky and other commentators to share his vision of the play as a farce that he burned...
John Fiero
Fiero is an accomplished actor as well as a noted collegiate educator. In this essay he discusses Chekhov’s skill as a writer of comedy and The Cherry Orchard’s status as a misperceived comedy masterpiece. Henri Bergson, the French philosopher, theorized in the essay collection Comedy,that laughter springs from our perception of “something mechanical encrusted upon the living.” The comic figure, Bergson maintained, is rigid or inflexible in circumstances that demand a resiliency of the mind o...
WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
1. The Bear (1888) and The Marriage Proposal (1889), the best of Chekhov’s early one-act farces or “curtain raisers,” tap the purely comic and make an interesting contrast to his more complex and subtle comedies like The Cherry Orchard. 2. Miss Julie (1888), an early naturalistic drama by August Strindberg, investigates the tragic consequences of breaking class barriers in the sexual liaison of Miss Julieand her father’s valet, Jean. 3. The Three Sisters, Chekhov’s immediate predecessor to Th...
V.S. Pritchett
In the following excerpt from his book, Chekhov: A Spirit Set Free, Pritchett outlines the historical background of and Chekhov’s sources for The Cherry Orchard, characterizing the play as “Chekhov ‘s farewell to Russia and his genius.” Pritchett is an English literary figure, and is considered a modern master of the short story and a preeminent literary critic. He writes in the conversational tone of the familiar essay, approaching literature from the viewpoint of a lettered but not overly s...
Bergson, Henri. “Laughter,” in Comedy,edited by Wylie Sypher, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1956. Bruford, W. H. Chekhov and His Russia: A Sociological Study,Archon Books (Hamden, CT), 1971. Fergusson, Francis. The Idea of a Theater: A Study of Ten Plays, Princeton UniversityPress, 1972. Hahn, Beverly. Chekhov: A Study of the Major Stories and Plays...
Field, Bradford S., Jr., Gilbert, Miriam, and Klaus, Carl H. Stages of Drama: Classical to Contemporary Theater,Scott, Foresman, 1981.
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning. Who wrote “The Riddle Song” by Traditional Transcriptions?
From: Plays, by Anton Tchekoff. 2d series, tr. with an introduction by Julius West. New York, Scribner's, 1917. 277 p. 20 cm. CONTENTS: On the high road.--The proposal.-The wedding.--The bear.--A tragedian in spite of himself.--The anniversary.--The three sisters.--The cherry orchard. The action takes place on Mme. RANEVSKY'S estate.
People also ask
When did Chekhov write the Cherry Orchard?
Is the Cherry Orchard a comedy?
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Why is the Cherry Orchard called the first great expressionist play?
Dec 10, 2021 · The Russian playwright, Anton Chekhov, penned a work which caused much debate among critics. The point of contention: Is it a comedy or a tragedy? This question has surrounded The Cherry Orchard[1] since it first premiered at the Moscow Art Theater in January 1904. [2] .
