A lot of love
In a letter to a friend written while he was working on The Seagull, Chekhov listed “five bushels of love” as one of the ingredients of the play. As Doctor Dorn remarks there is certainly  “a lot of love” around. An interesting footnote associated with the play is that Chekhov himself married the actress who played Arkadina in the breakthrough Moscow Arts Theatre production of 1898. Olga Knipper went on to appear in all of Chekhov’s final great plays, playing Elena in Uncle Vanya, Masha in Three Sisters and Madame Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard.

According to his biographer, Donald Rayfield, Chekhov was in fact an inveterate ladies man, who had affairs with more than 30 different women before marrying Olga at the age of 41. It may be safe to assume that his fame as a writer offered him ready romantic opportunities. It is also not difficult perhaps to see something of Chekhov in the character of Trigorin in this regard. Until Olga Chekhov avoided making any binding commitments to the women he was involved with, despite many of them hoping for more.

Chekhov and Olga married secretly in May 1901, three years after the Moscow premiere of The Seagull. Biographers speculate that he chose to marry Olga when he did because as a doctor himself he was acutely aware that his tuberculosis would be terminal. They spent much of their short married life apart, Chekhov forced to remove himself to the warm south at Yalta in Crimea, while Olga remained in Moscow with the theatre. Their letters reveal that they both wanted to have children, and Olga did in fact miscarry a child in March 1902. In a twist worthy of the roundabout relationships in The Seagull, there is some evidence that Olga’s baby was not Chekhov’s. Such a lot of love indeed.

Sadly Chekhov died at the age of only 44 in 1904, scarecly three years after they married, and without any children. Olga worked with the Moscow Arts Theatre for the rest of her life, dying at age 90 in as late as 1959.

Cartoon by Shannon Wheeler
Too Much Coffee Man

Masha’s father
During the podcast Dan brought up the idea that Masha may in fact be Doctor Dorn’s daughter, rather than Shamrayev’s. It’s a view that Michael Frayn suggested in the introduction to his translation of the play. Dan and I talked about several of the clues that could be taken as pointing that way: Polina and the doctor have certainly had a relationship in the past, which Polina is keen to rekindle. Shamrayev also treats Masha harshly, perhaps because he knows or suspects that she may not be his.

And there are two more small moments that may hint at this connection. When Dorn chastises Masha for her habit of taking snuff, his exasperation suggests a more personal concern than would naturally be warranted. He also grabs the box from her hand and throws it away, which is a surprisingly proprietary gesture. At another moment Masha is moved to confide in the doctor about her love for Konstantin, saying to him: “I don’t like my father…but you have a special place in my heart. I don’t know why but all my life I’ve felt that you were close to me.”  Perhaps the clues are not as hidden as one might think.