Chekhov Shorts

This collection features Chekhov’s best-known short plays in brand new translations: three farces, two comic duologues and a monologue, all of them referred to by Chekhov as ‘vaudevilles’ and all written in the late 1880s before any of his great full-length plays. ‘I don’t much care for theatre,’ he wrote at the time, ‘but I do enjoy vaudevilles.’

The Bear, The Proposal and The Wedding are all farces on the preposterous business of courtship and marriage. A Tragic Figure and Swansong are com...