Comedy vs. Tragedy

Anton Chekhov wrote his last play, The Cherry Orchard, as a comedy about a wealthy family that loses its beloved home and orchard to a man who was born a serf on their estate. A comedy is one of the two kinds of drama (the other is tragedy), one that is meant to amuse and typically ends happily. Chekhov referred to The Cherry Orchard as a farce, which is a type of comedy characterized by broad humor, outlandish incidents, and often vulgar subject matter. When Konstantin Stanislavsky decided to produce the play at the Moscow Art Theater in 1904, however, he stated in a letter to Chekhov, as quoted in Stages of Drama: Classical to Contemporary Theater: "It is not a comedy, not a farce as, you wrote it is a tragedy no matter if you do indicate a way out into a better world in the...