How do the recorded wordings of the "gun" remark differ in object, unit, date and source, and what do English renderings change?

A side-by-side of the four Russian records and one English secondary summary shows a drifting object (ruzhyo gun/rifle vs pistol), unit (stage vs act vs chapter), purpose (promise vs hook vs edit) and publication date (1904, 1910, 1911, 1936). An English summary text (Wikipedia, one revision) renders Shchukin's "chapter" as "act", merges the letter's two sentences into "wrong to make promises", and speaks of "several letters" where the Russian sources read show one letter and three reminiscences. No openly readable English translation with named translator was found. Curator qualifications: Excerpt check with correct KOI8-R decoding: all S11-02/-03 excerpts found verbatim, incl. Shchukin 'если вы говорите в первой главе, что на стене висит ружье, во второй или третьей главе оно должно непременно выстрелить' and Nemirovich-Danchenko 'публика же любит, чтобы в конце акта перед нею поставили заряженное ружье' / 'но надо, чтоб потом оно выстрелило, а не было просто убрано в антракте'. Wikipedia: 'recorded, with some variation, in several letters by Anton Chekhov'; '"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."'; Shchukin rendered as 'If you say in the first act that there is a rifle hanging on the wall'. Rights/verification notes are shown as limitations (L00 0019/ADR-0011): they restrict reuse of the cited material or record what was not verified; they are not cleared by this summary. Limitations: [component_reuse_restriction] Rights hold on 20th-century editorial commentary and reminiscence editions (producer). Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.

{
  "citations": [
    {
      "url": "https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%8C%D0%BC%D0%B0._(%D0%9E%D0%BA%D1%82%D1%8F%D0%B1%D1%80%D1%8C_1888_-_%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%B1%D1%80%D1%8C_1889)_(%D0%A7%D0%B5%D1%85%D0%BE%D0%B2)",
      "note": "ru.wikisource oldid 5658775; lib.ru LITRA/CHEHOW/vosp.txt (KOI8-R); en.wikipedia Chekhov's gun (fetched 2026-10-22)"
    },
    {
      "url": "http://www.lib.ru/LITRA/CHEHOW/vosp.txt",
      "note": "ru.wikisource oldid 5658775; lib.ru LITRA/CHEHOW/vosp.txt (KOI8-R); en.wikipedia Chekhov's gun (fetched 2026-10-22)"
    },
    {
      "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun",
      "note": "ru.wikisource oldid 5658775; lib.ru LITRA/CHEHOW/vosp.txt (KOI8-R); en.wikipedia Chekhov's gun (fetched 2026-10-22)"
    }
  ]
}