Abstract
This section acknowledges the changing world that came in Russia after Chekhov. While Gorky certainly learnt from his older mentor, his Russia strikes away from the liberal world Chekhov’s plays inhabit. A discussion of Chekhov’s continuing influence on British theatre and on perceptions of Russia herself opens the section. The ensuing analysis of the reception of Gorky’s The Lower Depths, and other plays, demonstrates that Gorky’s world was often inimical to British reviewers. However, he was taken up as a radical voice in the British theatre, almost as an antidote to Chekhov. His plays before WW1 are seen as important social opposites to Chekhov and, however misguidedly, as indicative of political change to come.
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Marsh, C. (2020). Bridging the Centuries: Chekhov and Gorky. In: Translated and Visiting Russian Theatre in Britain, 1945–2015. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44333-7_5
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