SOURCE: "Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard," in The Critical Review, No. 16, 1973, pp. 56-72.

In the essay below, Hahn interprets The Cherry Orchard as a comedy in the classical sense, with social and cultural significance. Hahn asserts: "The often comic characters in the play inhabit a world that is nonetheless felt to be humanly and historically serious."

The Cherry Orchard is the last of Chekhov's plays, one he always insisted was a comedy. The Three Sisters, he agreed, was a drama; but with his last play he had done something else:

What has emerged from me is not a drama but a comedy, sometimes even a farce … the last act is gay, the whole play is gay, light … why on the posters and in the advertisements is my play so persis tently called a drama? Nemirovich and Stanislavsky see in it a meaning different from what I intended. They never...