| A Marriage Proposal | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Anton Chekhov |
| Date premiered | 1890 |
| Original language | Russian |
| Genre | One-act farce |
A Marriage Proposal (sometimes translated as simply The Proposal, Russian: Предложение) is a one-act farce by Anton Chekhov, written in 1888-1889 and first performed in 1890. Although best known for his longer, more serious plays, Chekhov also wrote a number of short farces, which include the one-act A Marriage Proposal. This type of play was very popular at the time. The play requires a minimal set and a small cast. It is a fast-paced play of dialogue-based action and situational humour.
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Plot synopsis
Ivan Vassilievich Lomov, a long-time neighbor of Stepan Stepanovich Chubukov has come to propose marriage to Chubukov's 25-year-old daughter, Natalia. After he has asked and received joyful permission to marry Natalia, she is invited into the room, and he tries to convey to her the proposal. Lomov is a hypochondriac, and, while trying to make clear his reasons for being there, he gets into arguments with Natalia about a disputed piece of land and ends up having "palpitations" and a numb leg. After her father notices they are arguing, he joins in, and then sends Ivan out of the house. Stepan then tells his daughter that Lomov was about to propose, and at this news she immediately starts "dying" and screams for her father to bring him back. He does, and Natalia and Ivan get into a second big argument, this time about the superiority of their respective dogs. Ivan collapses and they fear he's died. However, after a few minutes he regains consciousness, and Tschubukov all but forces him and his daughter to accept the proposal with a kiss. Immediately following the kiss, the couple get into yet another argument.
Characters
- Stepan Stepanovich Chubukov - A landowner.
Chubukov is a widower, eager to marry off his daughter.
- Natalia Stepanovna - Stepan's daughter, 25 years old.
Natalia is over-dramatic, and at 25 is an old maid desperate for a husband.
- Ivan Vassilievich Lomov - A large and hearty neighbor of Chubukov, who asks for Natalia's hand in marriage.
Lomov is 35 and a hypochondriac, and is looking for someone to take care of him; he is worried that he too, is getting too old.
Themes
The farce explores the process of getting married and could be read as a satire on the upper middle class and courtship.
The play points out the struggle to balance the economic necessities of marriage and what the characters themselves actually want. It shows the characters' desperation for marriage as comical.
In Chekhov's Russia, marriage was a mean of economic stability for most people. They married to gain wealth and possessions or to satisfy social pressure. The satire is conveyed successfully by emphasizing the couple's foolish arguments over small things. The main arguments in the play revolve around "The Oxen Meadows" and two dogs called "Guess and Squeezer".
Performance history
The Proposal was successful in its first runs in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and quickly became popular in small towns across Russia.[1] Tsar Alexander III liked the play when he had it performed for him.[2] Chekhov himself thought farces were not really worth much as literature; before its success, he called The Proposal a "wretched, boring, vulgar little skit."[3] He advised its director, Leontiev, to "roll cigarettes out of it for all I care."[3]
When Vassar College staged The Proposal in the 1920s, they performed it three times in one evening, each with a very different staging: "as realism, expressionism, and constructivism."[2] In the second version, played closer to tragedy, the actors were masked, and in the third the actors were all dressed in work suits in a playground, tossing a ball between them.[2]
In 1935 in the Soviet Union, the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Vsevolod Meyerhold combined The Proposal with Chekhov's other short plays The Bear and The Anniversary to form a three-act play called 33 Swoons that demonstrated the weakness of the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia.[4]
References
Sources
- Meister, Charles W. 1988. "The Proposal." In Chekhov Criticism: 1880 Through 1986. Jefferson NC: McFarland. 184-85.
- Senelick, Laurence. 1985. "Chekhov on Stage." In A Chekhov Companion. Ed. Toby W. Clyman. Westport CT: Greenwood. 209-32.
External links
- Project Gutenberg eText, an English-language compilation of some of Chekov's shorter plays, including "The Proposal"
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