SOURCE: Gilman, Richard. “The Seagull: Art and Love, Love and Art.” South Atlantic Quarterly 91, no. 2 (spring 1992): 257-87.

In the following essay, Gilman explores the twin themes of love and art in The Seagull.

Some preliminary notes, ideas, observations, questions, and reminders for an essay on the play.

Its title is the most nearly symbolic of those for any Chekhov play, but like its closest rival, The Cherry Orchard's trees, the bird isn't symbolic in any pseudo-poetic or anxious way.

The chief “subjects” are art and love, never far from each other thematically. Or perhaps a better way of putting this is in the form of questions: What does it mean to be in love? What does it mean to be an artist? And to be both in love and an artist?

This is Chekhov's first play that doesn't have a dominant figure, a protagonist whose fate, and...