Anton Chekhov

""Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress""

""If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.""

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian short-story writer, playwright and physician in the turn of the previous century. He's best known for his dramatic works, and especially his four major plays: The Seagull, Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard. His plays seem to be nearly-plotless character studies. Although they're often about how depressed people are with the lives they lead, Chekhov referred to his plays as Comedies (aside from Three Sisters). His main objective with his work was to get people to see the pain in their lives and make a change. He worked as a doctor most of his life, and there are many doctors as characters in his work. His plays were not well-received initially, and he almost gave up writing after the first production of The Seagull was a bomb... and then it was revived four years later by the Moscow Art Theater and was a huge smash hit.

Not to be confused with Pavel Andreievich Chekov.


 * The ubiquitous-on-this-site Chekhov's Gun

Literature

 * His plays are referenced in Discworld's The Fifth Elephant, where Mister Vimes encounters three sisters in a cherry orchard (without cherries). Mister Vimes then borrows a pair of trousers (the Gloomy and Purposeless Trousers of Uncle Vanya) from them. Though there's nothing about seagulls in there.