The Three Sisters was written late in Chekhov's life, staged just three years before he died. At the time, he had a solid reputation for his short fiction, and his previous play, Uncle Vanya, had been a critical and popular success for the Moscow Arts Theatre. Chekhov's fame as a playwright during his lifetime was neither widespread nor universally positive. Today he is considered a primary figure in the Realist movement that swept Russian drama in the beginning of the century, and, like a forerunner in any movement, his work was sometimes misunderstood. One of the most painful criticisms must have been the rejection of Russian literary giant Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace and "The Death of Ivan Ilych." Early in his career, Chekhov idolized Tolstoy's writing, but when he went to see him in the winter that The Three Sisters was first performed...