Maria Nikolayevna Yermolova

Reading notes

• To A. S. Suvorin, 18 December 1888. Moscow. §3 As for Yermolova's not agreeing to play Repina, he hadn't heard of it

  The actress Maria Nikolayevna Yermolova of the Maly Theatre, here named in full for the first time in this letter (thereafter mostly called "Masha" within the reported household dialogue). First appearance of this entity in this corpus's translated letters. DISAMBIGUATION: this Yermolova is NOT Chekhov's own sister, Maria Pavlovna Chekhova, who is also nicknamed "Masha" elsewhere in this corpus (e.g.'s headnote). The two "Mashas" are entirely distinct people -- one a leading Maly Theatre tragedienne being courted for a casting decision, the other Chekhov's sister -- and must never be conflated in glossary work; see the further note at \S5 where the source's own parenthetical gloss first equates "Masha" with Yermolova.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 18 December 1888. Moscow. §5 "I'm willing to play Kokoshkina, but who's to play Repina? Masha (that is, Yermolova) is engaged..."

  CRITICAL DISAMBIGUATION -- "Masha (that is, Yermolova)" is the source's own parenthetical gloss ("Машенька, т. е. Ермолова"), explicitly equating the two names for the reader's benefit. This "Masha" is the actress Maria Nikolayevna Yermolova, NOT Chekhov's sister Maria Pavlovna Chekhova, who is also nicknamed "Masha" elsewhere in this corpus. Every subsequent bare "Masha"/"Masha's"/"radical Masha" in this letter (\S7, \S11, \S15, \S18, \S25, \S28) refers to Yermolova and should be tagged to, never to Chekhov's sister. Kokoshkina and Repina are both roles in Suvorin's play "Tatyana Repina" -- Kokoshkina the secondary role Nikulina says she is willing to play, Repina the contested title role -- and are not catalogued as separate corpus entities, only glossed here as role names within the play.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 18 December 1888. Moscow. §7 "...and Masha can't abide Suvorin. She's said, 'Not for anything in the world will I act in one of Suvorin's plays...' He dragged her through the mud, you know. Over Ophelia, I believe..."

  Continues the sister's gossip about Yermolova ("Masha" -- see the \S5 disambiguation note; not Chekhov's sister). The claim that Suvorin "dragged her through the mud... over Ophelia" is reported secondhand by an unreliable, gossiping character and not corroborated elsewhere in this letter; it is glossed here only as reported hearsay about a supposed Suvorin review of a Yermolova performance as Ophelia, with no further biographical elaboration supplied.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 18 December 1888. Moscow. §25 a footman comes in and hands Nadya a letter in some extraordinary, socialist-democratic-looking envelope

  See the companion allusions entry.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 19 December 1888. Moscow. §4 Nikulina met me with the joyful news that Mashenka has agreed to play Repina.

  TWO-MARIAS FLAG (1 of 2) -- "Mashenka" is a diminutive of Maria, here identified as Maria Nikolayevna Yermolova, the celebrated Maly Theatre tragedienne, cast in this section's playbill as Repina in Suvorin's "Tatyana Repina." This is the SAME entity as the Yermolova of the companion letter (entity_id, already established in this corpus). She is NOT the same person as Maria Savina (of the Alexandrinsky Theatre), who appears later in this very letter (\S13) cast as Sarra in "Ivanov" -- two different leading actresses named Maria appear in this single letter and must not be conflated. See the \S13 note for the second half of this disambiguation.

• To D. V. Grigorovich, 24 December 1888. Moscow. §8 Yermolova is playing Repina

  Maria Nikolayevna Yermolova of the Maly Theatre, cast in the title role of "Tatyana Repina"; cross-references the casting settlement already reported in and's headnotes, where Yermolova's agreement to play Repina ("Mashenka") is worked out.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 26 December 1888. Moscow. §14 He said that Yermolova has taken up "Tatyana" with real pleasure.

  CONTINUATION FLAG -- reports Maria Nikolayevna Yermolova having accepted the title role in Suvorin's "Tatyana Repina", continuing directly from the casting negotiations already tracked in, and.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 8 February 1889. Moscow. §7 Yermolova was tired

  Maria Nikolayevna Yermolova, the celebrated Moscow actress starring in "Tanya Repina"; her fatigue, not any trouble with the play, caused the postponement.

• To M. P. Chekhova, 17 March 1891. Petersburg. §3 Yermolova

  Maria Nikolayevna Yermolova, the leading tragedienne of Moscow's Maly Theatre and, by most contemporary accounts, the foremost Russian actress of her generation. Chekhov's dismissal of her as "wooden" here is a private, provocative aesthetic judgment made in the flush of having just seen Duse -- not a considered critical verdict, and not one he repeats elsewhere with the same force.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 27 May 1891. Bogimovo. §6 can M. N. Yermolova really act in a hippodrome alongside horses

  Maria Nikolayevna Yermolova, the leading tragedienne of Moscow's Maly Theatre, invoked as a test case for the impracticality of Suvorin's hippodrome-theater proposal in a conservative city like Moscow.

• In Moscow §26 M. N. Yermolova

  Maria Nikolayevna Yermolova, the Maly Theater's legendary tragedienne; the narrator's demand that she play nothing but ideal young ladies under twenty-one is an absurd, arbitrary decree typical of his empty connoisseurship.