ABSTRACT
. . .How does it happen that plays once avoided as lugubrious and shapeless now appear to be etched in light? Chekhov's fame, of course, has been growing steadily; moreover, the general loosening of dramatic forms has served to make his centrifugal plays more intelligible. But, as these treasonable columns have stubbornly maintained, the basic reason for his sudden divination on the New York stage is the similarity between this period in America and the apathetic conditions under which he was working in Russia. Stagnation in our artistic life comes from different sources. But the results are no less deadening. After a period in which the vitality of the country has been dissipated in speculation and the inflation of business and industry, and in which the spirit of adventure has trickled out of art - after a period of general emotional flattening in which the only possible disputes can be over ‘who writes better and who writes worse’ and the only leadership in the theatre and literature comes from shrewdly operated business offices - Chekhov is writing of things we understand.
