Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism | The Cherry Orchard - Virginia Woolf (essay date 1920)

Virginia Woolf (essay date 1920)

[One of the most prominent figures in twentieth-century literature, Woolf rebelled as a novelist against traditional narrative techniques, developing a highly individualized style employing the stream-of-consciousness mode. She was also esteemed for her critical essays, which cover a broad range of topics and contain some of her finest prose. In the following review of a performance of The Cherry Orchard, Woolf asserts that the play is foreign to English sensibilities yet is emotionally moving regardless.]

Although every member of the audience at the Art Theatre last week had probably read Tchekhov's The Cherry Orchard several times, a large number of them had, perhaps, never seen it acted before. It was no doubt on this account that as the first act proceeded the readers, now transformed into seers, felt themselves shocked and outraged. The beautiful, mad drama which I had staged often enough in the dim...

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