The Three Sisters Analysis

The Three Sisters is set in a small town in Russia in the late 1890s. Actually, the exact dates are vague, though some scholars have argued that the play takes place from 1897-1900. At the sam...

The Three Sisters is definitely a tragedy. There's a lot less of the tomfoolery and pratfalls that make critics argue that The Cherry Orchard, another Chekhov drama, is a comedy. Not so much in thi...

We're not sure why, but Chekhov seems to have a straighter face in The Three Sisters than in The Seagull or The Cherry Orchard. The Seagull's protagonist, Konstantin, is subjected to pratfalls...

Chekhov believed that theater should reflect life. So just think of his playwriting as the opposite of Hollywood. He doesn't give us a potboiler with lots of onstage sex, violence, and suspense. Ev...

The Three Sisters is about the three Prozorov sisters. Notice Chekhov doesn't call the play Irina or Masha or Olga or even The Prozorov Sisters. He's purposely created multiple protagonists; he's i...

At the end of The Three Sisters, Olga, Masha, and Irina have just survived the death of a fiancé, the abandonment of a lover, and eviction from their own house at the hands of their sister-in-law....

The Three Sisters is pretty straightforward. There's no difficult language (assuming you remembered to buy the English translation and not the Russian one) and the characters are people we can symp...

The sisters celebrate Irina's birthday and fantasize about returning to Moscow. Three Sisters opens with a lot of possibility. Irina holds out hope not only for Moscow, but for finding fulfillment...

It's Irina's birthday. The sisters are dying to go to Moscow.For these sibs, anticipation and dreaming are one in the same: Moscow, the symbol of fulfillment for the Prozorov sisters, still seems...

Yes, Three Sisters is in four acts. This three-act thing is just another way of thinking about the structure.It's our lucky day—part one of the general three-act breakdown also fits with the firs...

The Three Sisters may have been inspired by the Brontë sisters. In a really smart interview, director Katie Mitchell explores the connection. (Source)Did you know there's an opera of The Three Sis...

There's a little bit of sex in this play, and there can be more if the director wants it in there. Natasha and Andrey make out at the end of Act I. Masha and Vershinin share a few moments when some...

Dobrolyubov (1.33): Nikolai Dobrolyubov (1836-1861) was a well-known literary critic for the influential Russian journal Sovremennik ("The Contemporary"). Lazy Chebutykin would have done well...