The Cherry Orchard

Chekhov's last play: an aristocratic family loses its estate and beloved orchard to a former serf's axe.

Specifications & Metrics

author

Anton Chekhov

type

Drama (comedy by the author's billing)

era

Russian fin de siècle (1904)

language

Russian

setting

A Russian estate, early 1900s

source text

Chekhov's own life at a mortgaged estate

acts

4 acts

Relative Scale in Plays

Core Principles & Analysis

• Premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1904, months before Chekhov's death.
• Chekhov called it a comedy; Stanislavski's production staged it as tragedy.
• The sound of the axe falling on the orchard closes the play's world.

Sources

• Wikipedia: The Cherry Orchard