Q 01/05

Besides writing, what was Anton Chekhov's profession?

A) Lawyer

B) Physician

C) Priest

D) Army officer

Answer · why

B) Physician

Physician: "Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress," he wrote, and he went on treating the poor free of charge.

Q 02/05

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

A) Mariupol

B) Taganrog

C) Rostov

D) Sevastopol

Answer · why

B) Taganrog

Taganrog: his father ran a grocery there and conducted the church choir. When the business failed the family fled to Moscow, leaving sixteen-year-old ...

Q 03/05

After The Seagull was booed, Chekhov vowed never again to do what?

A) Write plays

B) Visit Petersburg

C) Publish fiction

D) Read reviews

Answer · why

A) Write plays

Write plays: "I shall never either write plays or have them acted," he told a friend the next day. Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard were still to ...

Q 04/05

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

A) Vsevolod Meyerhold

B) Konstantin Stanislavski

C) Yevgeny Vakhtangov

D) Sergei Eisenstein

Answer · why

B) Konstantin Stanislavski

Konstantin Stanislavski had to be talked into it by his co-founder Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. The triumph made the company's name, and it took a s...

Q 05/05

Chekhov told writers that anything hung on the wall in the first chapter must be used later, naming what as his example?

A) A rifle

B) A clock

C) A portrait

D) A guitar

Answer · why

A) A rifle

A rifle: "If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there." The rule, now known as Chekhov's gun, says every element of a story must earn...