This volume offers lively and accurate translations of Chekhov's major plays and one-acts along with a superb Introduction focused on the plays' remarkably enduring power to elicit the most widely divergent of responses, the life of the playwright in its historical and aesthetic contexts, suggestions for reading the plays 'under a microscope,' and notes designed to bring Chekhov's world into immediate focus'everything needed to examine his drama with fresh eyes and on its own artistic terms.