cannot be licensed." The name of the gentleman who held this view--
Kaiser von Kugelgen--gives another reason for the educated
Russian's low opinion of German-sounding institutions. Baron von
Tuzenbach, the satisfactory person in "The Three Sisters," it will
be noted, finds it as well, while he is trying to secure the
favours of Irina, to declare that his German ancestry is fairly
remote. This is by way of parenthesis. "The High Road," found after
thirty years, is a most interesting document to the lover of
Chekhov. Every play he wrote in later years was either a one-act
farce or a four-act drama. [Note: "The Swan Song" may occur as an
exception. This, however, is more of a Shakespeare recitation than
anything else, and so neither here nor there.]

In "The High Road" we see, in an embryonic form, the whole later
method of the plays--the deliberate contrast between two strong
characters (Bortsov and Merik in this case), the careful
individualization of each person in a fairly large group by way of
an introduction to the main theme, the concealment of the
catastrophe, germ-wise, in the actual character of the characters,
and the of a distinctive group-atmosphere. It need scarcely be
stated that "The High Road" is not a "dirty" piece according to
Russian or to German standards; Chekhov was incapable of writing a
dirty play or story. For the rest, this piece differs from the
others in its presentation, not of Chekhov's favourite middle-classes,
but of the moujik, nourishing, in a particularly stuffy atmosphere,
an intense mysticism and an equally intense thirst for vodka.

"The Proposal" (1889) and "The Bear" (1890) may be taken as good
examples of the sort of humour admired by the average Russian. The
latter play, in another translation, was put on as a curtain-raiser