SOURCE: "Chekhov's Theatre," in The Breaking String: The Plays of Anton Chekhov, Schocken Books, 1983, pp. 3-47.

In the following excerpt from a work that was first published in 1966, Valency finds Turgenev's plays a mixture of realism and idealism, noting that they demonstrate "a very different realism from the noncommital, 'scientific ' sort, in which the author pointedly refrains from making judgments and taking sides. Turgenev took sides. He left no doubt as to where his sympathies lay. "

Turgenev's career in the theatre was relatively short. In 1840, when he was 22, he completed his first serious play, The Bachelor. Ten years later, in 1850, he wrote A Month in the Country. Both plays were works of genius—the theatrepieces he wrote in the interval seem trivial in comparison. Shchedrin produced The Bachelor in 1849. Turgenev followed it up at once with A Month in the Country. But the censor handled this play...