SOURCE: "Introduction," in Chekhov's Three Sisters, Bristol Classical Press, 1995, pp. v-xxviii.

In the essay below, McVay draws on comments by Chekhov in his correspondence regarding art in general and Three Sisters specifically in order to illuminate the play.

Chekhov's richest and greatest play has inspired a bewildering variety of interpretations since its premiere at the Moscow Arts Theatre on 31 January 1901. Three Sisters (Tri sestry) has been viewed both as tragedy and as comedy, as a poignant testimony to the eternal yearning for love, happiness, beauty, and meaning, or as a devastating indictment of the folly of inert gentility and vacuous day-dreaming. Its characters have been deemed worthy embodiments of the universal 'human condition', keenly experiencing hope, disappointment, frustration, loneliness, and the passage of time—or passive products of pre-revolutionary Russian privilege, remnants fit only for the scrap-heap of history.

That the play has proved puzzling is hardly surprising...