figure
The Box Office
also: Касса
The theater's box office (kassa) personified as an impoverished, persecuted spinster whose starving children are the night's takings -- the play's central pun that box-office revenue, not romance, is its true melodrama.
Reading notes
- Chaos in Rome §14 The Box Office
"Касса" (kassa) is literally the theater box office / cash till. Chekhov personifies it as a character -- an impoverished spinster whose starving children are the receipts -- turning the theater's chronic money troubles into a stock melodrama figure of persecuted virtue.