To A. N. Maslov, October 1888. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow in mid-October 1888, this is a reply to the second letter of Alexei Nikolayevich Maslov, the writer who published under the pen name Bezhetsky. It is, as far as this corpus shows, the first letter addressed directly to Maslov/Bezhetsky himself: he had previously appeared only as a third party, discussed between Chekhov and others – Chekhov urged Alexei Pleshcheyev to bring him onto "Severny Vestnik" at 150 rubles a signature (, 30 September 1888) and asked Alexei Suvorin whether Maslov had a play ready for Korsh’s theater (, 2 October 1888). Here, a couple of weeks later, Chekhov is corresponding with him in person, which suggests the introduction Chekhov had been brokering took hold.

2 The letter is entirely practical theater business. Maslov has apparently proposed a verse play, "The Seducer of Seville" ("Sevilsky obolstitel"), and asked about staging it at Korsh’s; Chekhov explains why it doesn’t suit Fyodor Korsh’s house – Korsh runs light three-to-four-act vaudeville comedies, not verse dramas requiring elaborate sets and extensive rehearsal – and steers him instead toward writing a light contemporary comedy or, failing that, a one-act piece. He then gives Maslov a detailed, almost bureaucratic walkthrough of how to get a play from censorship to the provincial stage and into money: the censor’s office, the Theatrical Library’s lithography and distribution service, and membership in the Society of Dramatic Writers and Opera Composers, whose author’s-fee pool he quotes with real figures (about 85,000 rubles collected the previous season, an expected 100,000 this year). He closes with brisk craft advice – keep the cast small and the staging simple, publish under a pseudonym if the result is weak – and a short, warm sign-off.