Customer Reviews

The Complete Plays

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A brilliant translation for all lovers of great and enduring literature.

W.W. Norton has published all of Chekhov's dramatic works in a single stunning volume. The translator is a professor of drama at Tufts University and is fluent in the Russian of the period. This volume contains works that have not previously been translated. The plays are heavily annotated for clearer understanding and appreciation of the nuances and subtleties of the original. Before each play, the author includes an interpretation in the context of Russian history at the time. The plays are consequently better understood and enjoyed.

The translator includes variants of the plays, different endings encouraged by the actors who played the parts, unfinished plays, and dialogues.

Senelick includes an illuminating chronology of Chekhov's life in the context of history. Chekhov wrote his great plays while practicing medicine as a physician and suffering from tuberculosis.

I had to get this boook for an acting class because the professor (who is Russian) wanted to use a translation other than the more well known Paul Schmidt complete works.

While I like Paul's for a very American translation accessible more to American Actors and audiences, there is admitedly something Russian in spirit about Laurence Senelick's translation. I beleive that translations should really be called adaptations because they are merely another, less exact form of the original. Especially when it comes to language and character, and not merely a plot driven play (e.g. Ibsen) Senelick's translation offer a sense that is less American and probably closer to the russian. The only thing that bothers me and it has taken me some time to be somewhat ok with is that I feel like it reads like a translation and I tend to like more seamless adaptation if I'm going to call it that, which takes authorial intention (to the best of their opinion of what authorial intent is) to create their version of the original version. From a performative aspect I am still not sure how much I like it in the mouths of American tongues, but I see the merit in language that requires and american actor to really invest in a a foriegn thought process and construction.

Other pluses: Variants to every play chekhov wrote, including what can only be described in this day and age as the special features section with deleted scenes. Great look and style to the book overall, if you like that kind of thing, but it will feel like a bible you are carrying around. Paul Schmidt's is nice because it looks and carries like a normal book, but has virtually every play Chekhov wrote.

In the case of Chekhov, even some of the short, minor plays are characteristic and of interest. Some are screamingly funny ("Evils of Tobacco.") Of course, one cannot gauge the translation without knowing Russian, but critical notes suggest seriousness on the tranlator's part, and these translations read well. Joseph Smith