ABSTRACT
After the first performance the play was taken off for about two weeks due to Mrs Knipper’s illness, and then it played to full houses until the end of the season. At this time A.P. Chekhov was in Yalta. When they telegraphed him and wrote to him to tell him about the play’s success, it took a long time before he believed it: he thought that they were hiding the truth from him out of friendship. He only came to Moscow in the spring but the Theatre was not open then.
