To A. P. Lensky, 7–8 October 1889. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 7 or 8 October 1889 to the actor and director Alexander Pavlovich Lensky of the Maly Theater, this short letter announces that Chekhov’s new comedy is finished and is being fair- copied, and sounds Lensky out about staging it. The play is "Leshy" ("The Wood Demon"), the comedy Chekhov reports having just completed in his letter to Pleshcheyev of 6 October 1889; it did not in the event go to the Maly, but premiered in December 1889 at Abramova’s theater in Moscow, after the Maly’s theater-literary committee rejected it. This letter therefore documents an early, ultimately unsuccessful overture to place the play with Lensky’s company, alongside an unrelated logistical note about a different play’s Petersburg benefit performance.

2 After the dateline (1), Chekhov reports the comedy is finished and being copied out fair, says he would be glad and flattered if it were staged at the Maly, and describes the part he has in mind for Lensky himself as large and demanding; he also names five other actors – Gorev, Sadovsky, Yuzhin, Rybakov, and Muzil – for whom he has good parts in mind (2). He then turns, in the same letter, to a different, unrelated production: an unnamed play of his (not the new comedy) is to be given on 31 October in Petersburg as a benefit performance, which will require him to travel there around 25–28 October, a trip he says he does not want to make (3). He sends regards to Lensky’s wife and to "Sasik" (4), promises to bring a copy of the finished play in two or three days once the copying is done (5), and closes with the signature (6).