50 Fun Facts About Anton Chekhov

Besides writing, what was Anton Chekhov's profession?

"Medicine is my lawful wife," he said, "and literature is my mistress."

In which port city on the Sea of Azov was Chekhov born in 1860?

His father ran a grocery store there and directed the parish choir.

The Seagull was booed at its St Petersburg premiere in what year?

The Moscow Art Theatre revived it triumphantly two years later.

Which director's Moscow Art Theatre revived The Seagull in 1898?

His focus on psychological realism and ensemble playing drew out the text's buried subtleties.

The dramatic principle that a rifle shown on the wall must eventually fire is known as what?

Chekhov meant that every element of a story must be necessary and the rest removed.

Which disease killed Chekhov in 1904 at the age of 44?

He had hidden the symptoms for years, afraid to let colleagues examine him.

Chekhov died in which German spa town in the Black Forest?

His last words were reportedly "Ich sterbe", after which he drank a glass of champagne.

Chekhov's body was carried to Moscow in a refrigerated railway car meant for what?

The detail offended Maxim Gorky; some mourners followed a general's funeral by mistake.

Whom did Chekhov marry quietly in 1901?

An actress at the Moscow Art Theatre, she lived in Moscow while he stayed in Yalta.

Chekhov wrote that he wanted a wife who, like which celestial body, would not appear every day?

The letter to Suvorin proved prophetic of his long-distance marriage.

In 1890 Chekhov travelled across Siberia to census the convicts of which penal island?

He spent three months interviewing thousands of prisoners and settlers.

Chekhov famously called which Siberian city "a very dull town" with dull inhabitants?

The remark to his sister became notorious; the city later erected a mocking statue of him.

Under what pen name did young Chekhov publish many of his early comic sketches?

Another pseudonym was "Man Without Spleen".

Whose 1886 letter saying "You have real talent" struck the young Chekhov like a thunderbolt?

He advised Chekhov to slow down and write less; the Pushkin Prize followed in 1888.

Chekhov's 1888 collection At Dusk won which honour?

Grigorovich pulled a few strings to make it happen.

Which newspaper magnate became Chekhov's closest friend and paid him double the usual rate?

His St Petersburg paper Novoye Vremya also gave Chekhov three times the space.

Chekhov wrote his play Ivanov in how long, for theatre manager Korsh in 1887?

He found the chaotic production "sickening" yet it was a hit.

At which estate did Chekhov build a lodge in the orchard and begin writing The Seagull?

Peasants flocked there from twenty miles around for free medical treatment.

Chekhov's villa in Yalta, where he wrote his last two plays, is known by what name?

He kept dogs and tame cranes there and hosted Tolstoy and Gorky.

Chekhov told Ivan Bunin that people might keep reading him for how many years?

Pressed on why, he upgraded the estimate to seven and a half.

Which revolutionary said reading Ward No. 6 "made him a revolutionary"?

He claimed to feel shut up in the ward himself.

The Seagull's character Trigorin is a famous what?

Stanislavski himself played the part in the 1898 revival.

In The Seagull, who is Arkadina's son, the symbolist playwright?

His suicide attempts, like all lurid action in Chekhov, happen offstage.

Chekhov's future wife was one of how many original members of the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898?

She met Chekhov at rehearsals for The Seagull and married him three years later.

Which actress lost her voice playing Nina at The Seagull's hostile 1896 premiere?

Chekhov fled the auditorium and spent the last two acts backstage.

Chekhov insisted The Seagull was what kind of play?

Stanislavski's subtext-heavy staging made audiences read it as tragedy instead.

Uncle Vanya is a reworking of which earlier Chekhov play?

He cut the cast from almost two dozen to nine and swapped a suicide for a botched shooting.

In Uncle Vanya, what is the profession of the retired Serebryakov?

He announces he will sell the estate that Vanya and Sonya have kept running for him.

Which character in Uncle Vanya is the country doctor obsessed with the destruction of forests?

Sonya loves him hopelessly; he is dazzled by Yelena instead.

Which 2022 Oscar-winning Japanese film centres on a production of Uncle Vanya?

Louis Malle had earlier filmed the play as Vanya on 42nd Street.

What is the surname of the Three Sisters?

Olga, Masha and Irina long to return to Moscow, which they left eleven years earlier.

How many years before Three Sisters opens did the Prozorovs leave Moscow?

Irina is sure she will find true love there; they never go.

In Three Sisters, Masha falls in love with which lieutenant-colonel?

Chekhov compared his own tree-planting dreams to Vershinin's talk of life in 300 years.

In Three Sisters, Irina's fiance Baron Tuzenbach is killed how?

Solyony shoots him in a pointless quarrel; Irina resolves to go on working anyway.

Which actor-director filmed Three Sisters in 1970 as his last effort as a film director?

He also played a supporting role in it.

In The Cherry Orchard, who buys the estate at auction?

He is the son of a former serf; the family leaves to the sound of axes in the orchard.

What is the name of the aristocratic landowner at the centre of The Cherry Orchard?

Her humour comes largely from an inability to grasp financial matters.

The Cherry Orchard premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre on 17 January of which year?

Chekhov called it a comedy with farce; Stanislavski staged it as tragedy.

Which elderly servant in The Cherry Orchard calls the emancipation of the serfs a disaster?

He recalls when barons and lords, not postmen, came to the ball.

Where do the lovers of "The Lady with the Dog" meet while on holiday?

Nabokov called it one of the greatest short stories ever written.

What breed of dog does Anna Sergeyevna walk along the seafront in "The Lady with the Dog"?

Dmitri Gurov, a bored Moscow banker, uses the little dog as his opening.

In Chekhov's "The Bet", a lawyer wagers he can stay in solitary confinement for how long?

The argument began over whether execution is worse than life imprisonment.

Ward No. 6 is set in what kind of institution?

Doctor Ragin becomes captivated by a patient who challenges his views on suffering.

Which story did Chekhov call "something rather odd and much too original" after a trip to Ukraine?

It follows a boy's chaise journey across the grassland and got him into a literary journal at last.

Chekhov was held back a year at school for failing an exam in which language?

He also sang in the Greek Orthodox monastery choir in his home town.

Which Raymond Carver story retells Chekhov's death?

Carver called Chekhov the greatest of all short story writers.

George Bernard Shaw subtitled which play "A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes"?

He saw Chekhov's futile gentry mirrored in the English landed class.

Which translator's versions won Chekhov his English-language readership?

Woolf, Joyce and Katherine Mansfield all fell for him through her translations.

Chekhov was buried next to his father in which Moscow cemetery?

Mourners in their thousands followed the procession in 1904.

Who bailed out the bankrupt Chekhov family for the price of their house?

Teenage Anton boarded with him in Taganrog while selling goldfinches to pay for school.