In the Library
Three Sisters
Anton Chekhov, 1901
- Form
- Form Play
- Reading time
- Reading time 1.5 hours
- Translated by
- Translated by Julius West
- Chapters
- Chapters 5
- Length
- Length 21k words
£1.99
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About the book
Olga, Masha, and Irina sit in their provincial garrison town and speak of Moscow as if Moscow were a country they had been promised and then exiled from. Anton Chekhov premiered this play at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1901, his fourth and last full-length play before The Cherry Orchard, written while tuberculosis was already shutting his lungs. The brother gambles. The fire takes the town. The army marches out, the band recedes, and the sisters remain on the porch they have not managed to leave. Chekhov refused to call the play a tragedy and called it a comedy instead, knowing that the deepest dramatic form he could give Russian provincial life was the slow comedy of plans that never become acts.