Tchekov, more than any other writer, has depicted for us the attitude of mind, the nature and the feelings of the whole of this generation, just as Tourgeniev depicted the preceding generation; the aspirations and the life of the men who lived in the sixties, during the tumultuous epoch which culminated in the liberation of the serfs. And nowhere can the quality of this frame of mind, and the perfume, as it were, of this period be better felt and apprehended than in the plays of Anton Tchekov; for in his plays we get not only what is most original in his work as an artist, but the quintessence of the atmosphere, the attitude of mind, and the shadow of what the _Zeitgeist_ brought to the men of his generation. Before analysing the dramatic work of Tchekov, it is necessary to say a few words about the Russian stage in general. The main fact about the Russian stage that differentiates it from ours, and from that of any other European country, is the absence of the modern French tradition. The tradition of the “well-made” French play, invented by Scribe, does not, and never has existed in Russia. Secondly, reformers and demolishers of this tradition do not exist either, for they have nothing to reform or demolish. In Russia it was never necessary for naturalistic schools to rise with a great flourish of trumpets, and to proclaim that they were about to destroy the conventions and artificiality of the stage, and to give to the public, instead of childish sentimentalities and impossible Chinese puzzles of intrigue, slices of real life. Had anybody behaved thus in Russia he would simply have been beating his hands against a door which was wide open. For the Russian drama, like the Russian novel, has, without making any fuss about it, never done but one thing--to depict life as clearly as it saw it, and as simply as it could. That is why there has never been a naturalist school in Russia. The Russians are born realists; they do not have to label themselves realists, because realism is the very air which they breathe, and the very blood in their veins. What was labelled realism and naturalism in other countries simply appeared to them to be a straining after effect. Even Ibsen, whose great glory was that, having learnt all the tricks of the stagecraft of Scribe and his followers, he demolished the whole system, and made Comedies and Tragedies just as skilfully out of the tremendous issues of real life--even Ibsen had no great influence in Russia, because what interests Russian dramatists is not so much the crashing catastrophes of life as life itself, ordinary everyday life, just as we all see it. “I go to the theatre,” a Russian once said, “to see what I see every day.” And here we have the fundamental difference between the drama of Russia and that of any other country.