The Bear Study Guide

Anton Chekhov was a celebrated playwright and author of short stories, known in Russia and across the modern world for his exploration of the human condition through commonplace misunderstandings. The grandson of a serf, he was born to a large, religious family, though spent the later years of his adolescence living alone in Taganrog after his father relocated to Moscow in search of work. Chekhov followed his family and enrolled in the local Faculty of Medicine, supporting his mother and sister with income from his journalism and comic sketches, which he published in low-brow magazines under many pseudonyms, including Antosha Checkhonte. As he continued to work modestly as a doctor, his work grew quite popular locally, and he was soon invited to write a weekly literary supplement. By 1887, he wrote his first play Ivanov and began publishing more “serious” fiction. Throughout his short life, Chekhov wrote over 500 short stories and 14 plays, including The Seagull (1895) and Uncle Vanya (1896). After 44 years of writing fastidiously while providing medical care for the poor, Chekhov died of tuberculosis.

The Bear was written in late 19th-century Russia, during a period of growing unrest with Russian bureaucracy. When Alexander III took power in 1881, he stamped out much of the revolutionary activity that had been stirred up in the 1870s. Many people wondered how the peasantry and landed aristocracy would coexist and whether Russia would follow European ideals or develop its own economic systems. A moderate liberal class was beginning to emerge in cities, but society was growing increasingly divided between the industrial working class and its often corrupt rulers. This unrest accelerated into the 20th century, with uprisings in 1905 and later, in 1917, the Russian Revolution.

The Bear is one of Chekhov’s many vaudevilles, or short comedic plays, alongside The Proposal, The Wedding, and The Anniversary. Unlike many of his mature works, which combine irony, humor, and tragedy, these plays are generally lighter and more pointedly satirical. The play pokes fun at ongoing conversations about women’s rights and freedoms in 19th-century Russia and is in conversation with other works that deal with similar themes, such as Ivan Turgenev’s 1859 On The Eve and Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s 1863 What Is to Be Done? The plot of The Bear is an adaptation of the ancient Roman tale, The Widow of Ephesus, which was later adapted by Christopher Fry into the play A Phoenix Too Frequent. Additionally, The Bear was directly inspired by the 1865 French play, Les Jurons de Cadillac by Pierre Berton, in which a brutish young man attempts not to swear in front of his bride-to-be. The Bear has been adapted into an opera by William Walton, a short film in 1938 directed by Isidor Annensky, and an Australian television program in 1968 entitled The Proposal.