SOURCE: "The Sound of the Breaking String," in The Breaking String: The Plays of Anton Chekhov, Schocken Books, 1983, pp. 289-301.

In the following excerpt from a work that was first published in 1966, Valency places Chekhov in the context of the social and cultural upheavals of his time.

Chekhov's drama, like Ibsen's, represents a world in transition. In Ibsen's Norway, wherever that might be, the impact of modern thought in the latter half of the nineteenth century brought about a relatively peaceful revolution. In Russia the idea of the state was formulated along particularly rigid lines, and the transition from the old to the new was accompanied by impressive rites of passage. In his Autobiography, Gorky speaks with something like awe of an old policeman's description of the invisible thread that issued from the heart of the Tsar and wound through his ministers down to the least of his...