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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 December 2021
We begin with the idea that nature is all we need; it is necessary to accept her as she is, without modifying her or diminishing her in any respect; she is sufficiently beautiful and great to provide a beginning, a middle, and an end. Instead of imagining an adventure, complicating it, and arranging a series of theatrical effects to lead to a final conclusion, we simply take from life the story of a being or a group of beings whose acts we faithfully set down. The work becomes an official record, nothing more; its only merit is that of exact observation, of the more or less profound penetration of analysis, of the logical concatenation of facts …
“On Naturalism in the Theatre,” Emile Zola (1880)
Naturalism has its roots in a scientific approach which melds man inextricably to his environment, studying him as a complex amalgam of audible rhythms and spectacular mutations for survival. Chekhov, the passionate doctor, applied this discipline to the ailing conventional drama of his time.
1 Quoted in Magarshack, David, Chekhov the Dramatist, (New York: Hill & Wang, 1960), p. 84.Google Scholar
2 Beckett at Sixty, (London: Calder & Boyars, Ltd., 1967), p. 86.
3 All Chekhov quotes are taken from: Chekhov Plays, translated by Elisaveta Fen, (Penguin Books, 1954).
4 Magarshack, David, Stanislavsky: a Life, (Chaunticleer Press, 1937), p. 172.Google Scholar
5 Magarshack, David, Chekhov the Dramatist, (New York: Hill & Wang, 1960), pp. 40-41.Google Scholar
6 Gore Vidal, “French Letters”, Encounter (December 1967), p. 19.
