SOURCE: “The Ghosts of Chekhov's Three Sisters Haunt Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart,” in Modern American Drama, edited by June Schulueter, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990, pp. 229-45.

In the following essay, Karpinski notes the similarities between The Three Sisters and Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart, which include a trio of females, the domestic setting, and humorous elements.

In Mississippi Writers Talking, Beth Henley identifies herself more with an older tradition of playwrights than with her contemporaries (in a prose style that may cause the gentle reader to doubt the assertion):

I mainly read old things. I missed a lot of reading when I was young, so I like to read more classical stuff … They told me, “They're not doing three-act plays anymore,” and I went “They're not? Wow! Back when I was reading plays they were doing them.”¹

The name of Anton Chekhov is prominent in...