Chekhov breaks his own rule

like a true parent...do as I say, not as I do

Well, did Chekhov break his own rule?

“Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first act that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third act it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.”

The Cherry Orchard had 2 characters walking around with guns - that never go off.

That was Chekhov’s last play. Evidently, he wrote thousands of letters, plus articles and essays, and he many times talked about guns that don’t go off - so probably his audience had heard of his opinions…and then he left both guns silent!

I read about that in a book called, Anton Chekhov: A life by a Chekhov scholar named Donald Rayfield. Mr. Rayfield read everything available that Chekhov ever wrote! He paired the action-less guns with the passion-less characters. “Only the mistress of the house, who comes to Russia from her lover in France and leaves again, is a sexual being. Nobody else expresses ardour, any more than Charlott…