The Plays of Anton Chekhov Read online

  SASHA: Oh, Nikolay, if you knew how you’ve exhausted me! How you’ve worn out my spirit! You’re a kind and intelligent man, so consider this: can you really create such problems? Every day there’s a problem, each one worse than the last ... I wanted an active love but this is a martyrdom of love!

  IVANOV: And when you become my wife, the problems will be even more complicated. Give me up! Understand this: it’s not love that speaks in you but the obstinacy of an honest nature. You set yourself a goal to resurrect, to save the human being in me at all costs, it flattered you that you were carrying out a heroic deed ... Now you are ready to step back but you’re stopped by a false feeling. Just understand that!

  SASHA: What strange, wild logic! So, can I give you up? How will I give you up? You have no mother, no sister, no friends ... You are ruined, they’ve pilfered your estate, there’s slanderous gossip about you on every front ...

  IVANOV:I did a foolish thing in coming here. I should have acted as I intended ...

  [Enter LEBEDEV.]

  IX

  [The same and LEBEDEV.]

  SASHA[running towards her father]:Papa, for God’s sake, he’s rushed in here like a madman, and he’s tormenting me! He’s demanding that I reject him because he doesn’t want to ruin me. Tell him that I don’t want his generosity! I know what I’m doing.

  LEBEDEV: I don’t understand anything ... What generosity?

  IVANOV: There will be no wedding!

  SASHA: There will! Papa, tell him that there will be a wedding!

  LEBEDEV: Wait, wait a minute! ... Why don’t you want there to be a wedding?

  IVANOV: I’ve explained to her why, but she doesn’t want to understand.

  LEBEDEV: No, you explain it to me, not to her, and explain it so that I can understand! Oh, Nikolay Alekseyevich! God is your judge! What a fog you’ve released into our life, so I feel I’m in a Hall of Wonders: I look and I understand nothing ... It’s pure punishment ... Well, what do you want this old man to do with you? Challenge you to a duel or something?

  IVANOV: There’s no need for any duel. You only need a head on your shoulders and to understand the Russian language.

  SASH A [walking about the stage in emotion]: This is terrible, terrible! Just like a child!

  LEBEDEV: One can only throw up one’s hands, and that’s it. Listen, Nikolay! In your view all that you’re doing is intelligent, refined, in accordance with all the rules of psychology, but in mine it’s a scandal and a misery. Hear this old man out for the last time! I will tell you this: calm your mind! Look at things simply, as everyone looks at them! In this world everything is simple. The ceiling is white, boots are black, sugar is sweet. You love Sasha, she loves you. If you love her, stay, if you don’t, leave, we won’t hold it against you. It’s so simple! You are both healthy, intelligent, moral people, and well fed, thank God, and clothed ... What more do you want? You have no money? What of that! Happiness doesn’t lie in money ... Of course, I understand ... your estate is mortgaged, you have nothing to pay the interest with, but I am her father, I understand ... Mother can do what she wants: if she won’t give money — it’s not needed. Shurka says she doesn’t need a dowry. Principles, Schopenhauer4 ... All that’s nonsense ... I have ten thousand hidden away in the bank ... [Looks around.] Not a soul in the house knows about it ... It was from Granny ... It’s for you both ... Take it, on one condition: give two thousand to Matvey ...

  [The guests are assembling in the ballroom.]

  IVANOV: Pasha, this talk is beside the point. I am acting as my conscience tells me.

  SASHA: And I am acting as my conscience tells me. You can say whatever you want, I won’t release you. Papa, let’s have the blessing right away! I’ll go and call Mama. [Goes out.]

  X

  (IVANOV and LEBEDEV.]

  LEBEDEV: I don’t understand anything ...

  IVANOV: Listen, my poor friend ... I’m not going to explain to you who I am — honest or corrupt, sane or psychopath. You’d never understand. I was young, full of fire, sincere, no fool; I loved, I hated and I believed, but not like other men, I worked and I had hopes for ten, I tilted at windmills and beat my head against walls; without measuring my strength, without proper consideration, with no knowledge of life, I took a burden on my back which at once made it crack and my sinews stretch; I hurried to expend all I had on my youth alone, I got drunk, I became excited, I worked; I knew no middle way. And tell me: could it have been otherwise? There are so few of us, and so much, so much to do! God, how much to do! And now the life against which I struggled is taking this cruel vengeance on me! I’ve worn myself out! I was already hung-over and old at thirty, I’d already put on my dressing-gown. With a heavy head, with a slothful spirit, exhausted, overstretched, broken, without faith, without love, without a goal, I roam like a shadow among men and I don’t know who I am, why I’m alive, what I want. And I now think that love is nonsense, that embraces are cloying, that there’s no sense in work, that song and passionate speeches are vulgar and outmoded. And everywhere I take with me depression, chill boredom, dissatisfaction, revulsion from life ... I am destroyed, irretrievably! Before you stands a man already worn out at thirty-five, disillusioned and crushed by his worthless achievements; he is consumed with shame, mocks his own weakness ... Oh, what indignation in my pride, what rage is choking me! [Staggers.] God, how I’ve worn myself out! I’m even staggering ... I’m feeling weak. Where is Matvey? Tell him to take me home.

  VOICES IN THE BALLROOM: The groom’s best man5 has arrived!

  XI

  [The same, SHABELSKY, BORKIN and then LVOV and SASHA.]

  SHABELSKY [entering]: Wearing someone else’s worn tail-coat ... without gloves ... and for that how many mocking looks, silly remarks, mean smiles ... Disgusting little people!

  BORKIN [coming in hurriedly with a bouquet; he is wearing tails, with a best man’s buttonhole]: Ouf! Where is he then? [To Ivanov] They’ve been waiting for you in the church for ages, while you’ve been lecturing on philosophy here. What a comedian! Yes, comedian! You’re not meant to drive with the bride, but separately with me, and I’ll come for the bride from the church. Don’t you even know that? Decidedly a comedian!

  LVOV [entering, to Ivanov]: Ah, you here? [Loudly] Nikolay Alekseyevich Ivanov, I declare for all to hear that you are evil!

  IVANOV [coldly] : I thank you most humbly.

  [General consternation.]

  BORKIN [to Lvov]: Sir, that is very low! I ask you to fight!

  LVOV: Mr Borkin, I consider it degrading for me not just to fight with you but even to talk with you! But Mr Ivanov can have satisfaction whenever he wants.

  SHABELSKY: Sir, I will fight with you!

  SASHA [to Lvov]: Why? Why have you insulted him? Gentlemen, please, let him tell me why.

  LVOV: Aleksandra Pavlovna, I did not insult him gratuitously. I came here as an honest man to open your eyes, and I ask you to hear me out.

  SASHA: What can you say? That you’re an honest man? The whole world knows that! You’d do better to tell me in all conscience, do you know yourself or not! You came in here just now, as an honest man, and made him a terrible insult, which almost killed me; and when you pursued him like a shadow and got in the way of his life, you were convinced that you were fulfilling your duty, that you were an honest man. You interfered in his private life, you slandered him and sat in judgement on him wherever you could, you showered me and all our friends with anonymous letters — and all the time you thought yourself an honest man. You, a doctor, did not even spare his sick wife, thinking it honest, and gave her no rest with your suspicions. And whatever violence, whatever acts of cruelty and meanness you commit, you would always consider yourself an exceptionally honest and progressive man!

  IVANOV [laughing] : Not a wedding but a parliamentary debate! Bravo, bravo! ...

  SASHA [to Lvov]: So just think now, do you know yourself or not? Stupid, heartless people! [Takes Ivanov by the hand.] Let’s go from here, Nikolay! Father, let’
s go!

  IVANOV : Where shall we go? Wait a minute, I’ll make an end of all this right away! My youth has woken in me, the old Ivanov has spoken! [Takes out a revolver.]

  SASHA [crying out] : I know what he wants to do! Nikolay, for God’s sake!

  IVANOV : I’ve gone downhill for a long time, enough! It’s time to go! Keep away! Thank you, Sasha!

  SASHA [shouting]: Nikolay, for God’s sake! Hold him!

  IVANOV : Leave me alone! [Runs to one side and shoots himself.]

  [Curtain.]

  The Seagull

  A Comedy in Four Acts

  CHARACTERS

  IRINA NIKOLAYEVNA ARKADINA, by marriage Treplyova, an actress

  KONSTANTIN GAVRILOVICH TREPLYOV [also KOSTYA], her son, a young man

  PYOTR NIKOLAYEVICH SORIN [also PETRUSHA], Arkadina’s brother

  NINA MIKHAYLOVNA ZARECHNAYA, a young girl, the daughter of a rich landowner

  ILYA AFANASYEVICH SHAMRAYEV, a retired lieutenant, Sorin’s estate manager

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA, his wife

  MASHA [also MARYA ILYINICHNA, MASHENKA], his daughter

  BORIS ALEKSEYEVICH TRIGORIN, a novelist

  YEVGENY SERGEYEVICH DORN, a doctor

  SEMYON SEMYONOVICH MEDVEDENKO, a schoolmaster

  YAKOV, a workman

  A COOK

  A MAID

  The action takes place in Sorin’s country house. Two years pass between Acts Three and Four.

  Act One

  Part of the park of Sorin’s estate. A broad avenue leading towards a lake in the distance is blocked by a stage hastily put up for private theatricals, so the lake cannot be seen at all. To left and right of the stage are shrubberies. Some chairs, a small table.

  [The sun has only just set. On the stage behind the lowered curtain YAKOV and other workmen; there is coughing and hammering. Enter from the left MASHA and MEDVEDENKO, who are returning from a walk.]

  MEDVEDENKO : Why do you always wear black?

  MASHA: I’m in mourning for my life. I am unhappy.

  MEDVEDENKO: Why? [Hesitantly] I don’t understand ... You are healthy, your father, though not rich, is comfortably off. My life is much more difficult than yours. I get twenty-three roubles a month all told, with pension contributions taken out of that, and still I don’t wear mourning.

  [They sit.]

  MASHA: It’s not a question of money. Even a pauper can be happy.

  MEDVEDENKO: In theory yes, but the reality is this: there’s myself and my mother and two sisters and a little brother, and my total salary is twenty-three roubles. We have to eat and drink, don’t we? And buy tea and sugar. And tobacco. So try and manage on that.

  MASHA [looking at the stage]: The play will begin soon.

  MEDVEDENKO: Yes. Nina will be acting and Konstantin G avrilovich has written the play. They’re in love with each other and today their souls will be united as they aspire to give the same dramatic effect. But my soul and yours have no common points of contact. I love you and because of that longing I can’t sit at home, every day I walk six versts here and six versts back and I just get indifference from you. I understand it. I am poor, I have a large family ... How can you want to marry a man who has nothing to eat?

  MASHA: Nonsense. [Takes snuff.] I am touched by your love but I can’t feel the same, that’s all. [Offers him her snuffbox.] Help yourself.

  MEDVEDENKO: I don’t want any.

  MASHA: It’s heavy, there’ll be a storm tonight. You’re always philosophizing or talking of money. In your eyes there’s no greater misfortune than poverty, but in mine it’s a thousand times easier to go in rags and live by begging than to ... But you won’t understand that ...

  [Enter SORIN and TREPLYOV, right.]

  SORIN [leaning on a cane] : The country’s not really for me, old man, and of course I’ll never get accustomed to life here. Yesterday I went to bed at ten and this morning I woke at nine feeling as if my brain had kind of stuck to my skull from a long sleep and so on and so on. [Laughs.] And after lunch, without meaning to I again went to sleep and now I’m quite shattered, as if I’d had a nightmare, at the end of the day ...

  TREPLYOV: Yes, you should live in the city. [Seeing Masha and Medvedenko.] My friends, when it starts you’ll be called but you shouldn’t be here now. Go away please.

  SORIN [to Masha]: Marya Ilyinichna, be kind enough to ask your papa to let the dog off its chain, otherwise it’ll bark. My sister again didn’t sleep all night.

  MASHA : Speak to my father yourself, I won’t. Please don’t ask me to. [To Medvedenko] Let’s go.

  MEDVEDENKO [to Treplyov]: You’ll send someone to tell us before it starts.

  [They both go out.]

  SORIN: That means the dog will howl all night again. It’s a funny thing, I’ve never lived in the country as I wanted to. I used to take four weeks’ leave and come here to relax and so on and so on, but they’d get at you here with all sorts of nonsense so that you wanted out on the very first day ... [Laughs.] I always left here with pleasure ... Well, and now I’m retired, at the end of the day there’s nowhere to put myself. Whether you want to or not, you have to live ...

  YAKOV [to Treplyov]: Konstantin Gavrilych, we’re going for a swim.

  TREPLYOV: All right, only be in your places in ten minutes. [Looks at his watch.] It’ll start soon.

  YAKOV: Yes, sir. [Goes out.]

  TREPLYOV [looking round the stage]: Here’s a theatre for you. The curtain, then the first pair of wings, then the second, and then empty space. No sets. You look straight at the lake and the horizon. We’ll raise the curtain at half past eight on the dot. When the moon rises.

  SORIN: Splendid.

  TREPLYOV: If Nina is late, then of course the whole effect will be lost. It’s already time for her to be here. Her father and stepmother watch over her, and escaping home is as hard for her as escaping from a prison. [Straightens his uncle’s tie.] Your hair and beard are ruffled. Shouldn’t you have a haircut?

  SORIN [combing his beard]: The tragedy of my life. Even when I was young I looked like a drunk — and so on and so on. Women never loved me. [Sitting down.] Why’s your mother in a bad mood?

  TREPLYOV: Why? She’s bored. [Sitting down next to him.] She’s jealous. She’s against me and now she’s against the performance and against my play because she is not in it and Nina is. She doesn’t know my play but she hates it already ...

  SORIN [laughing]: You’re really imagining things ...

  TREPLYOV: Now she’s put out because it’ll be Nina having a success on this little stage rather than herself. [Looking at his watch.] A psychological curiosity, my mother. Unquestionably talented, clever, capable of crying over a book, she’ll declaim all of Nekrasov1 for you from memory, she looks after the sick like an angel; but you just try and praise Duse2 in front of her. O-ho-ho! One must have praise only for her, one must write about her, shout and go into ecstasies about her exceptional performance in La Dame aux Camelias3or Life’s Hell,4but since there are none of those drugs here in the country, she turns bored and nasty, and we are all her enemies, we are all to blame. Then she is superstitious, she sees death in three lit candles, she’s scared of the thirteenth of the month. She’s stingy. She has seventy thousand in the bank in Odessa — that I know for sure. But ask her for a loan. She’ll start crying.

  SORIN: You’ve imagined that your mother doesn’t like your play and now you’re getting all upset, and so on and so on. Calm down, your mother worships you.

  TREPLYOV [pulling off the petals of a flower]: She loves me — she loves me not, she loves me — she loves me not, she loves me — she loves me not. [Laughs.] See, my mother doesn’t love me. Of course not! She wants to live, to love, to wear bright-coloured blouses, but I am already twenty-five and I remind her that she’s no longer young. When I’m not there she’s only thirty-two. When I am she’s forty-three, and for that she hates me. She also knows that I have no respect for the theatre. She loves the theatre, she thinks that she serves manki
nd, serves a sacred art, but I think the modern theatre is just cliché and prejudice. When the curtain goes up and there in a three-walled room with three walls, lit for the evening, these great talents, priests of the sacred art, show how people eat, drink, love, walk, wear their jackets; when out of these trite images and phrases they try to fish out a moral — a little moral, one easy to understand, useful in the home; when I am offered a thousand variants of the same thing — then I run and run as Maupassant5 ran away from the Eiffel Tower, which crushed his mind with its vulgarity.

  SORIN: We can’t do without the theatre.

  TREPLYOV: We need new forms. We need new forms, but if there aren’t any, it’s better to have nothing. [Looks at his watch.] I love my mother, I love her very much; but she leads a pointless life, she’s always carrying on with this novelist, her name is perpetually coming up in the papers — and it exhausts me. Sometimes it’s just the egoism of an ordinary mortal that comes out in me; I’m sorry that my mother is a famous actress and I think I would be happier if she were an ordinary woman. Uncle, what can be sadder and sillier than my situation; she usually entertains no one but celebrities, actors and writers, and there am I, the only nobody among them and am only tolerated because I’m her son. What am I? What am I? I left the third year of university in circumstances, as they say, which are outside the editor’s control. I have no talents, not a kopeck to my name, and on my passport I’m a petty bourgeois from Kiev.6 My father was a Kiev petty bourgeois even though he was also a famous actor. So when all those actors and writers in her drawing-room used to give me their gracious attention, it seemed to me their eyes were measuring my nothing-ness — I read their thoughts and had agonies of humiliation ...