person
Alexander Filippovich Fedotov
Fedotov
also: Федотов
Named only as "Fedotov, the author of many plays" and head of the newly founded Society of Art and Literature; probably Alexander Filippovich Fedotov, a Moscow actor, director, and playwright active in founding this society in 1888, but the letter itself gives no further identifying detail -- this identification should be treated as probable rather than confirmed.
Reading notes
- To A. S. Suvorin, 3 November 1888. Moscow. §3 at its head stands Fedotov, the author of many plays
PROBABLE, NOT CONFIRMED -- likely Alexander Filippovich Fedotov, a Moscow actor, director, and playwright active in founding the Society of Art and Literature in 1888, but the letter gives no further identifying detail beyond "the author of many plays," so this identification should be treated as probable rather than certain.
- To Ye. M. Shavrova, 11 January 1891. Petersburg. §4 Fedotov
Almost certainly Alexander Filippovich Fedotov, a Moscow actor, director, and playwright connected to Shavrova's apparent flirtation with a stage career; Chekhov pointedly declines to discuss him, a refusal he repeats more bluntly in loc. 7.
- To the Chekhovs, 18 January 1891. Petersburg. §5 Fedotov's school, or in the society of vileness and caricature
A joking pair of proposed venues for posting a satirical newspaper clipping about lady amateur actors: "Fedotov's school" -- probably the Society of Art and Literature founded by Alexander Filippovich Fedotov, though the letter itself gives no further identifying detail -- set alongside the mock-institutional "society of vileness and caricature," an invented, sarcastic double of the first that is not a real organization.
- To L. S. Mizinova, 21 January 1891. Petersburg. §3 Levitan, Fedotov, and the conductors of the horse-tram belong
The joke's comic engine is the deliberately absurd mixture of registers: Isaac Levitan, Chekhov's painter friend, is set alongside "Fedotov" -- almost certainly the same Alexander Filippovich Fedotov, Moscow actor/director/playwright, linked in the corpus's other 1891 letters to Mizinova and the Shavrova circle, though this letter itself gives no identifying detail and the linkage should be treated as probable, not confirmed -- and then, for the punchline, the anonymous conductors of Petersburg's horse-tram, flattening painter, playwright, and tram conductor into one absurd "high society."