The Cherry Orchard Cherry Orchard" was Chekhov's tribute to himself. Many of the characters in the play hearken back to his earlier works and are based on people he knew in his own life. It should also be noted that his boyhood house was bought and torn down by a wealthy man that his mother had considered a friend. The breaking guitar string in acts 2 and 4 hark back to his earliest works. Finally the classic "loaded gun" that appears in many of Chekhov's plays appears here, but this is his only play in which a gun is shown but not fired.
Plays of Three Decades "The threat of war began to overshadow the reality of want." It was in response to this threat, motivated especially by the exigency of the Munich Agreement, that Ardrey wrote "Thunder Rock." In his introduction to "Plays of Three Decades" Ardrey writes that he conceived of the play in New York following a long vacation to Nantucket. He wrote the play in New Orleans during the winter and spring of 1939. "Thunder Rock" concerns a journalist, Charleston, who, distraught at the state of the world, withdraws into isolation as a lighthouse attendant. Amid the solitude he conjures in his imagination