First performed over a century ago, this play remains one of the most widely staged productions throughout the world. The Seagull is Anton Chekhov's brilliant four-act play that is considered a monumental work of drama, and one of the most sublime literary examinations of the complexities of love and friendship. "What writers influenced me as a young man? Chekhov! As a dramatist? Chekhov! As a story writer? Chekhov!"-Tennessee Williams "While Hamlet is a tragedy about genius.Treplyov's (is) a tragedy of mediocrity" (T.G."Chekhov, speaking simply and never otherwise than as an artist and a humane man, shows us in fullness and plenitude the mystery of our lives."-Eudora Welty However Treplyov is not Hamlet, as he lacks his strength of character and doesn't remove his cloak of indecision and become a man of action as Hamlet does. "as an ironic commentary on Treplyov's pretensions" and to "heighten tensions.in Act IV into a variant of Aristotlean peripetia" * The play within a play-Arkadina and Treplyov both quote from Hamlet and the play ends abruptly with people being offended and passions flaring Hamlet motif - Thomas G Winner Chekhov uses the Hamlet theme/motif: * Nina's father objects to her association with Treplyov as Polonius does with Orphelia * Tereplyov has just returned from university as Hamlet had done * Treplyov's relationship with Arkadina somewhat mirrors that of Hamlet with Gertrude * Identification of characters in The Seagull with those in Hamlet: (New Yorker, Aug 20th 2001) Modernism quote "The modern theatre is trite and riddled with cliches.what we need are new forms" Treplyov Shakespeare in The Seagull Hamlet. Anonymous critic quote "Although he was writing before Freud his plays essentially dramatise the unconscious" He talks about how his plays are meant to "show life the way we experience it in dreams" Which mirrors the work done on dreams and the subconscious by Freud and Jung. He derides the state of the theatre at the time and strives to create something new. Theme - Modernism Treplyov symbolises the new directions in Art and in particular, theatre, at the turn of the century.
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