Ray field provides an overview ofUncle Vanya, discussing the manner in which Chekhov was able resurrect one of his biggest flops, The Wood Demon, as a new play that would come to be regarded as one of his masterworks.

Uncle Vanya (Diadia Vania) can be seen as the last of Chekhov's earlier plays, all based on a problematic, male antihero. It was published in 1897 and first performed in 1899, after The Seagull, and was written, or reconstituted, out of the wreck of The Wood Demon, between 1892 and 1896. It is thus, also, the second of Chekhov's mature plays, its acts not broken into scenes, its Act IV an anti-climax of embarrassed departure, its tone hovering between cruel comedy and pathos. The basic plot, two thirds of the text, and the characters are carried over from The Wood Demon: comparing the two plays is a lesson on how a flop...