The Seagull

Chekhov's first great play: a country estate, a failed shooting, and artists who love the wrong people.

Specifications & Metrics

author

Anton Chekhov

type

Drama

era

Russia (1895–1896)

language

Russian

setting

Sorin's estate by a lake

source text

Chekhov's own country-house observation

acts

4 acts

Relative Scale in Plays

Core Principles & Analysis

• Its 1896 premiere in St Petersburg was famously a failure.
• The 1898 Moscow Art Theatre revival with Stanislavski saved it — and founded the MAT's repertoire.
• The dead seagull and Treplev's play-within-the-play frame its theme of unanswerable art.

Sources

• Wikipedia: The Seagull