We recognise Anton Pavlovich Chekhov as one of the greatest poets, dramatists and writers. His tragedies were particularly renowned. But as it happened, Chekhov’s favourites were French farces and vaudevilles or light comical theatrical pieces that combined pantomime, dialogue, song and dance. He has produced some great one-act plays too.

Like the other all-time literary greats, William Somerset Maugham and A. J. Cronin, Chekhov too was a qualified medical doctor who showed a distinct leaning for writing stories and plays rather than writing prescriptions for patients. Chekhov was born in Taganrog, Russia, on the Sea of Azov, on January 29, 1860. Chekhov’s romance with writing began during his days as a medical student at the University of Moscow, when he began to spin weaves of fantasy with his pen, churning short stories with ease. After qualifying to practise medicine in the year 1884, Chekhov took to the pen seriously. He began as a freelance journalist and as a writer of comic sketches.
	Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Soon after, Chekhov mastered the art of one-act plays and soon produced some masterpieces. Some of these include The Bear, produced in the year 1888 and The Wedding, produced in 1889. The former deals with a young widow who is hounded by her creditor. Driven to fancy ends, the young lady agrees to even face her creditor in a duel! So impressed is the creditor that he proposes marriage to her. The Wedding is the story of a bridegroom’s earnest desire to have a general attend his wedding ceremony and who later discovers that the special invitee is a retired naval captain "of the second rank".

Chekhov's first full-length plays, Ivanov (1887) and The Wood Demon (1888) did nothing to plant him firmly in the literary field. What really catapulted him to success was the production of his plays by the Moscow Art Theatre. It began with his The Seagull (1897), a play that had been received so badly when produced earlier by a different company two years earlier that Chekhov had walked out during the second act. Chekhov now plunged into a critical analysis of his plays and presented the Moscow Art Theatre a revised version of The Wood Demon, renamed Uncle Vanya, in the year 1899. Along with his later productions The Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya went on to become one of the masterpieces of the modern theatre.

In spite of the success and fame that descended on the duo (Chekhov and the Moscow Art Theatre director Constantin Stanislavsky), Chekhov was unhappy with the way the director was handling his plays. While Chekhov considered his mature plays to be a kind of comic satire, he felt that Stanislavsky laid too much emphasis on the tragic elements in the play. Whatever their disagreements, as a team their production won great acclaim. About himself, Chekhov has said that he merely wanted to communicate to his people that they should look at themselves and realise the dreariness of their lives. He believed that once people did that they would create a better life for themselves.