To V. N. Davydov, December 1887. Moscow.

1 A short business letter from late December 1887, written in Moscow to Vladimir Nikolaevich Davydov, the well-known comic actor of the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. Chekhov reports that he has just had his brothers copy out a fair draft of his one-act play "Calchas" (an early title for what would become the monologue Swan Song) and is sending Davydov two copies. He asks Davydov, who had apparently offered the day before to submit the play to the theatrical censor himself, to let him know once he does so, so that Chekhov can send in the required petition at the same time.

2 The letter is brief and practical, but vivid in its aside about Russian theatrical censorship: Chekhov jokes that without a petition "decorated with stamps," the censors ("Cerberuses," after the three-headed dog of the underworld) won’t even read a submitted play. It is a small, sharp glimpse of the bureaucratic hoops a playwright had to clear before a piece could reach the stage in Imperial Russia, and of Chekhov’s early efforts, aided by Davydov’s practical help, to get one of his first dramatic works produced.