To I. L. Leontyev, 7 November 1888. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 7 November 1888 to Ivan Leontyev, who wrote under the pen name Ivan Shcheglov and whom Chekhov addressed by the nickname "Jean," this is a dense, businesslike letter in the same run of correspondence as the letters to Shcheglov of 14 September and 2 November. Five weeks after his sharp advice not to cut Act III of "The Summer Husband" under pressure, Chekhov here loads Shcheglov with a string of practical errands regarding his own plays "The Bear" and the new provincial vaudeville "The Proposal," alongside theater gossip and a mock-serious tirade against loving the stage too much.

2 Chekhov opens by teasingly apologizing for burdening Shcheglov with errands: deliver copies of "The Bear" to an unnamed elder figure ("grandpapa"), then go to the Censorship Committee to collect and distribute a free copy to an actor of Shcheglov’s choosing, noting with studied indifference that it makes no difference to him whether Shcheglov’s or Tikhonov’s recommended cast is used. He then describes his new one-act farce "The Proposal," written for the provinces and sent to the censor via Rassokhin’s Theatrical Library, and asks Shcheglov to smooth its passage with Kryukovsky, the censor’s secretary, via a joking Gogolian aside. He asks Shcheglov to tell "sir Bazarov" (of the same Theatrical Library) that copies of "The Bear" are on their way, gives brisk instructions about the timing of placing "The Summer Husband," and asks to be given creative control over the staging of Shcheglov’s "The Sparrow Theater." A run of quick items follows – an inquiry about Shcheglov’s own writing, praise for Bezhetsky’s new play, and news that the actress Glama-Meshcherskaya has quarreled with and is leaving Korsh’s company – before Chekhov turns to an extended, half-mocking lecture urging the newly married, increasingly "respectable" Shcheglov to fall out of love with the theater, contrasting the harsh, successful playwright V. Krylov’s cold detachment with the sentimental cliche that "the theater is a school." He closes with a note on his own empty finances, a request that Shcheglov pass his address to the writer Baranzevich, and the signature "Your Antoine."