Anton Chekhov fought with the famous Stanislavsky to stage his play The Cherry Orchard as a tragedy. According to Chekhov, the play about a wealthy family forced to give up their house and orchard to a man who began life as a simple serf on their estate was intended to be viewed strictly as a comedy. Historically speaking, comedy and tragedy are the oldest drama genres and can generally be differentiated based on their ending: a comedy has a happy ending, while a tragedy has a much more downbeat resolution. Chekhov claims that he wrote The Cherry Orchard to be interpreted as a rather specific subgenre of comedy, a farce. What differentiates farce from other types of comedy is the introduction and use of broader humor, eccentric events, and sometimes bawdy content. Konstantin Stanislavsky, famous for inventing the "Method" school of theater, ignored the author's stated intention and, instead, foreshadowing the New Criticism around the corner, chose to stage the play according to his own interpretation of the tragedy (Haslam 24). . Stanislavski's choice became the standard method for producing The Cherry Orchard, with later directors avoiding the considerable problems of staging the play according to its author's vision. The main obstacle preventing audiences from viewing The Cherry Orchard as a farce is that strict adherence to Greek definitions of tragedy excludes exploration of the play's political idealism as a comedy. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay Tragedy is now classified as a drama that follows the downward spiral of a character who, while noble, is also prey to what came to be known as the tragic flaw or, as Aristotle described it, hamartia. Hamartia is not so much a character flaw as an error of judgment that sends the hero on a course toward a tragic end (Aristotle 27). Tragedy differs from comedy not only in the way events unfold, but also in the way the characters are presented, and this may well be the crux of the debate over whether presenting The Cherry Orchard as a farce would undermine the austere political ideals of many actors. its characters. The tragic characters are dignified by elevated poetry and big scenes of tragic importance that lead to the one thing you don't expect from a comedy, although it sometimes contains: catharsis. Catharsis is a Greek dramatic term which has come to mean spiritual cleansing. However, in its original meaning, Aristotle created the term in response to Plato's fear that poetry led men to act irrationally. Aristotle posits that, through catharsis, people can benefit from a harmless expurgation of repressed emotional turmoil via fictional representations of deep psychological anxiety (Aristotle 27). It's a heady thing that clearly reveals the importance to the Greeks of demarcating comedy and tragedy. The problem with Chekhov is that The Cherry Orchard does not conform perfectly to the ideals of Aristotelian tragedy, but nevertheless presents characters who demonstrate hamartia in the sense that their own errors of judgment result in what is right for them a tragic ending rather than a tragic ending. a happy ending. Additionally, while the play's resolution can't really be called cathartic, it retains the power to invoke the feeling of pity that is also integral totragedy (Haslam 46). What further complicates the problem is that, unlike most tragedies, the humor of The Cherry Orchard is undeniable, even if that humor is only evident in short passages. considered a tragedy is whether the comedy succeeds in undermining the tragic realism and political idealism that are vital to the contemporary enjoyment of a play which, apparently, is liable to be interpreted both as a farce and as a a tragedy. Coming back to Aristotle, the definition of a comedy differs from a tragedy in that comedy is only an imitation so feared by Plato. The primary Aristotelian differentiation between tragedy and comedy is met at the crossroads of hamartia. The infamous tragic flaw is rarely discovered in comedy; in its place, Aristotle finds ridiculous flaws of a much lower order (Cooper 5-8). The difficulty in appreciating the political seriousness of The Cherry Orchard is probably due, at least in part, to this erroneous assumption that comedy is of a lower order than tragedy. Indeed, contemporary critics have invented a new expression to allow comic elements to be introduced into the tragic environment: tragicomedy. Aristotle would no doubt find this disturbing. It is equally worrying from a modern perspective which, while more open to the idea of ​​allowing comedy to contain profound themes, remains universally reluctant to give the same weight to pure comedy as to pure drama . The traditionally Aristotelian comic character is designed with the intention of drawing laughs, but even in Greek comedy satire was the predominant genre. Satire works best when applied through a deadpan imitation of seriousness; attempting to satirize, say, an Ingmar Bergman film by replacing its stark images, long shots, and sparse dialogue with the manic elements of farce would result in total failure. The Cherry Orchard succeeds in injecting seriousness into comedy by presenting itself as a comedy without compromising the seriousness of the characters who convey political ideals. For example, the player's ending is neither entirely comic nor entirely tragic; Ranevsky is arguably in a better state at the end of the play than at its beginning. She was given the opportunity to do what few characters in a tragedy are allowed to do: avoid the mistakes of her past and move on. Ranevsky is second only to the orchard itself in importance and the sympathy which it quite naturally arouses comes very close to attributing to it certain elements of the tragic hero. There is also some legitimacy to this concept on a structural level since the forward movement of the piece follows its journey. Political idealism very often succeeds in arousing sympathy; it just as easily provokes laughter. Chekhov's genius lies in creating a play that dares to question both perspectives on the validity of idealistic hope. This duality is no better represented than in the character of Boris Simeonov-Pishchik, who, in contemporary terms, is a tragicomic character. While his pleas throughout the play are presented as comedy, what lies beneath this veneer is a very serious, even tragic, situation. It is Chekhov who discovers the central link between tragedy and comedy, with boundless enthusiastic optimism as his ribbon. What makes the scenes in which Boris asks Ranevsky for help getting out of debt avoid a real tragedy is not necessarily because they are presented in a comedic manner, but because the comedy serves to further emphasize the double-edged sword of an idealistic vision. Consider the following lines spoken by Pishchik: “My father, let him, 2005.