Vaudeville

Reading notes

• The Impresario Under the Sofa §2 The Vaudeville with a Change of Costume

  A generic-sounding title for a stock costume-change vaudeville, the light farcical genre of quick-change comic theater popular on the provincial Russian stage in the 1880s; the title within the story is itself a joke, since the actress's real costume change happens offstage in the plot.

• The Playwright §4 playwright

  "Playwright" (драматург) in 1880s Moscow did not necessarily mean a writer of original plays. The city's theaters, and especially its cheap variety and farce houses, were flooded with vaudevilles and comedies of foreign origin, and the label was claimed by anyone credited on a playbill -- however that credit had actually been earned.

• My Ranks and Titles §18 vaudeville

  A light comic theatrical genre with songs and topical humor, popular on the Russian stage; Chekhov frames the playlet as a fragment 'from a nonexistent' one, mocking the genre's stock scenes.

• To V. V. Bilibin, 14 February 1886. Moscow. §21 vaudeville

  A light, farcical theatrical genre mixing comic dialogue with songs and topical jokes, hugely popular on the Russian stage in the 1880s; Chekhov's proposal to co-write one with Bilibin -- splitting the acts and the fee -- is characteristic of the era's brisk, commercial approach to playwriting for quick cash.

• To A. S. Lazarev, 1 November 1889. Moscow. §3 vaudeville

  A light comic theatrical genre with songs and topical humor, a staple of the 19th-century Russian stage; the manuscript Chekhov is critiquing here.

• To S. F. Rassokhin, 17 December 1891. Moscow. §4 vaudeville

  A light one-act comic genre with songs and topical humor, the staple form Chekhov supplied to touring and provincial companies throughout the 1880s; the piece is not named here. Chekhov mentions having "written a vaudeville" the same day in a letter to Suvorin, very likely the same manuscript now going to Rassokhin's office to be copied and submitted.