ABSTRACT
Anton Chekhov spent about ten months in writing The Cherry Orchard, his last great masterpiece, which he had been carefully turning over in his mind for three years. He had constantly to interrupt his writing because of ill-health. This chapter focuses on some extracts from his letters show the great difficulties Chekhov experienced in writing the play, constantly battling against his worsening health and the harassing requests made by the two directors of the Moscow Art Theatre and his wife, Olga Knipper, to finish the play before the new season. It examines the indomitable spirit with which he persisted in completing his ‘gay and lighthearted’ comedy, in which he condensed the social history not only of Russia, but also of the whole Western world: the landowning nobility, their serfs, the business tycoons, and the revolutionaries, without stripping them of their humanity or their individuality, and he did it all with the fun and panache of genius.
