I have seen Tchekoff’s last play, _The Cherry Garden_, either seven or eight times. It tells in four pictures the whole story of the aristocratic landed proprietor class in Russia. We see a charming old and rather foolish aristocratic landlord coming back to his country house with his sister, a young and beautiful married woman, after five years’ absence. Their affairs are in a shocking state, and a neighbour of theirs, whose father was a serf, and who himself was a peasant, but who has become a merchant and a millionaire, warns them that unless they let their property and allow it to be cut up into villas it will be sold by auction. They tell him he does not understand what he is talking about. The idea is simply inconceivable to them. They say that something will turn up and save them; but it does not, and the place and the beautiful cherry garden are sold by auction, and bought by the merchant whose father was their serf, and who ran about barefoot in their village as a child; and they go away, and the shutters are shut, and we hear the cherry garden being hewed down. That is the whole subject of the play; but I know no play more poignant and more intensely real. It has, I should add, the advantage of being played by the company of the “Artistic Theatre” of Moscow. The acting of this company seems to me as superior to any other acting I have ever seen as Shakespeare’s plays are superior to any other plays in verse. It is simply in another class. They are now performing Ibsen’s great poetical play _Brand_ so magnificently that it would be worth while for any stage lover to go to Moscow from London merely to see this performance. To see one of the greatest of poetical plays played with inspiration by the chief actors, not only magnificently but artistically staged and mounted, and perfectly interpreted down to the smallest part and the most trivial detail is very rare. It is worth a pilgrimage just in the same way as it is worth while going to Bayreuth to hear _Parsifal_. And for the perfection of ensemble in the interpretation and the inspiration of the principal units, it surpasses anything which I have seen at Bayreuth, or anywhere else. A RUSSIAN MYSTERY PLAY[5]