Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904), a Russian physician, short-story writer, and playwright, wrote hundreds of stories that delved beneath the surface of Russian society, exposing the hidden motives of his characters and the ways in which prevailing social forces influenced their lives. This collection contains five of his most highly regarded stories, all from his maturity, and set in a variety of Tsarist Russian milieux.
Included are "The Black Monk" (1894), "The House with the Mezzanine" (1896), "The Peasants" (1897), "Gooseberries" (1898), and "The Lady with the Toy Dog" (1899). In ...
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Chekhov's THREE SISTERS repeats, in terms of a handful of people, the spasms of a dying society.

Isben's THE MASTER BUILDER is the tragedy of the modern romantic, caught between desire and reality.

Shaw's MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION shocked England and America; this play was the first honest attempt in our era to deal with prostitution.

O'Casey's RED ROSES FOR ME is about a Protestant worker of Dublin who is a symbol of the ravaging conflicts in Ireland--and in man.

Williams's <...
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At a time when the Russian theatre was dominated by formulaic melodramas and farces, Chekhov created a new sort of drama that laid bare the everyday lives, loves and yearnings of ordinary people. Ivanov depicts a man stifled by inactivity and lost idealism, and The Seagull contrasts a young man's selfish romanticism with the stoicism of a woman cruelly abandoned by her lover. Wi...
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