Chekhov started writing about theatre - in newspaper articles and in his own letters - even before he began writing plays. Later he wrote in detail about these to his wife and leading actress Olga Knipper, and to the two directors of the Moscow Art Theatre, Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko. Collected here in Stephen Mulrine's vivid translations, these writings reveal Chekhov's many and varied insights into the way theatre works - and how best to realise his own intentions as a theatre writer.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price A classic Italian comedy that remains blisteringly hilarious and relevant, over two hundred and fifty years after it was written. Disguising herself as her dead brother, Beatrice travels to Venice to find Florindo, the man responsible for his death. However, her servant, Truffaldino, enters into the pay of Florindo, and struggles to keep his two lives and masters separate. Carlo Goldoni's play The Servant of Two Masters (Il servitore di due padroni) was written in the 1740s, though later revised by its author. It draws on the tradition of Italian commedia dell'arte. This English version in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series is translated by Stephen Mulrine.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Chekhov's early tragedy, translated and introduced by Stephen Mulrine. Arkadina, a famous actress, and her lover, a famous novelist, are spending the summer on her country estate, but their glamorous presence proves fatally disruptive to the lives of all those present, especially her son, Konstantin and Nina, the girl he loves. Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull was first staged at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St Petersburg in October 1896. This translation by Stephen Mulrine, published in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, was first staged by English Touring Theatre in 1997.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Should the truth be pursued, whatever the cost? The idealistic son of a wealthy businessman seeks to expose his father's duplicity and to free his childhood friend from the lies on which his happy home life is based. Henrik Ibsen's play The Wild Duck, considered a masterpiece of modern tragicomedy, was premiered in January 1885 at Den Nationale Scene, Bergen, Norway. This English translation by Stephen Mulrine is published in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, with a full introduction.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Moliere's most-admired comedy of manners, about a man whose quickness to criticise the flaws in others, and in himself, leads him into deep trouble. Alceste, the 'misanthrope', hates all mankind, and despairs of its hypocrisy and falseness. He believes that the world could be perfected if people were more honest with each other. But when his honesty starts to make him enemies, and the target of malicious gossips, it is his world and his life which suffer. The Misanthrope, or the Cantankerous Lover (Le Misanthrope ou l'Atrabilaire amoureux) was first performed in 1666 at the Theatre du Palais-Royal, Paris. This English version, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is translated and introduced by Stephen Mulrine.

This collection features Chekhov's best-known short plays in brand new translations: three farces, two comic duologues and a monologue, all of them referred to by Chekhov as 'vaudevilles' and all written in the late 1880s before any of his great full-length plays. 'I don't much care for theatre, ' he wrote at the time, 'but I do enjoy vaudevilles.'
"The Bear," "The Proposal" and "The Wedding" are all farces on the preposterous business of courtship and marriage. "A Tragic Figure" and "Swansong" are comic duologues: one about a civil servant sweltering in Moscow coping with the incessant demands of his family from their summer dacha, the other about a melancholy old actor perked up by memories of past glories. "On the Evils of Tobacco" is a bittersweet monologue in which a scientific lecture is hijacked by thoughts of domestic misery.
These accurate and actable translations by Chekhov expert Stephen Mulrine reveal a dramatist reveling in the broad comedy of human behavior, a comedy which was refined in his later masterpieces.
Highly entertaining, these comic shorts offer a fascinating insight into Chekhov's development as a dramatist, and will provide actors at any level - student, amateur or professional - with an ideal showcase.
This edition also includes an introduction, a chronology of key dates, and a pronunciation guide.

An account of the cultured alcoholic and self-mocking intellectual Yerofeev's heroic odyssey from Moscow to neighbouring Petushki. The production successfully transferred to the West End (1995), where Tom Courtenay's performance and the play received much acclaim. Cast size: 1

Four of Ostrovsky's finest plays. The best known of these, The Forest (1871), has two young lovers in thrall to their tyrannical elders, who are prevented from marrying until a pair of strolling actors come to their rescue. In Artistes and Admirers (1881), a comedy of theatre life, a dedicated young actress renounces both love and fortune in order to pursue her sacred calling. In the comedy Wolves and Sheep (1875) Ostrovsky returns to a favourite theme, the double-dealing and hypocrisy of the Russian landowning classes, while the melodrama Sin and Sorrow (1863) explores the tragic consequences of a bored provincial wife's brief affair.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price The best known play by one of the most performed French playwrights - a sparkling 18th-century comedy of manners based on the simplest of plot devices, the exchanging places of master and valet, mistress and maidservant. This edition of Pierre Marivaux's play The Game of Love and Chance, in an English translation by Stephen Mulrine, is in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series. It includes an introduction by Stephen Mulrine.

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Set in a country weighed down by political, ideological and spiritual stagnation, Chekhov's compelling early play is rooted in the revolutionary atmosphere of Russia at the turn of the 20th century. Anton Chekhov's play Ivanov was first performed in 1887 at the Korsh Theatre in Moscow. This English version, in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, is translated and introduced by Stephen Mulrine, with notes on Further Reading, a Chronology and a Pronunciation Guide.

"Includes three comedies - Too Clever by Half, Crazy Money, Innocent as Charged - and a tragedy The Storm from the father of Russian drama. Ostrovsky (1823-86) paved the way for twentieth-century stage realism in Russia. These plays are populated by characters that reveal Ostrovsky's talent for well-turned idiomatic phrases and his acute observation of behaviour and conditioning."

This collection contains Gogol's three completed plays: "The Government Inspector," "Marriage," and "The Gamblers."

"The Government Inspector," which satirizes a corrupt society, was regarded by Nabokov as the greatest play in the Russian language and is still widely studied in schools and universities:

"I resolved to gather into one heap everything that was bad in Russia which I was aware of at that time, all the injustices being perpetrated in those places, and in those circumstances that especially cried out for justice, and tried to hold them all up to ridicule, at one fell swoop."--Nikolai Gogol

"Marriage" is a comedy about the business of matchmaking and matrimony; "The Gamblers" is an excoriating piece about the excesses of the Moscow aristocracy.

"Two and two make five, if not the square root of five, and it all happens quite naturally in Gogol's world ... Gogol was a strange creature, but, then, genius is always strange."--Vladimir Nabokov

Includes the plays; A Month in the Country, Stony Broke, One of the Family, The Bachelor, Lunch at His Excellency's and A Provincial Lady. A Month in the Country is Turgenev's acknowledged masterpiece and clearly influenced the plays of Chekhov, written almost half a century later. His shorter plays are highly performable comedies at one, two and three-act length, and all the features of his major contribution to the world repertoire are to be found there in some measure. This collection of six plays, written between 1843 and 1852, samples of the best of Turgenev's drama.