Term of the Day: Chekhov's gun

Chekhov's gun--a theory by the great Russian playwright that if a gun appears onstage in Act I, it will be used by the end of the show. "One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep." Chekhov, letter to Aleksandr Semenovich Lazarev, 1 November 1889.