When he serves on a jury at a murder trial, Prince Nekhlyudov must face the consequences of his seduction and abandonment of the defendent.

In the final years of his life Chekhov had reached the height of his powers as a dramatist, while also writing short stories that rank among his masterpieces. In "The Lady with the Little Dog" a man and a woman indulge in an affair that could ruin both their marriages, but their feelings for each other compel them towards betrayal. "Peasants" focuses on the brutality of peasant life, where the locus of evil is the tavern, in which the men spend the...