Plays

by Anton Chekhov

  SORIN: By the way, tell me please what sort of man this writer is. You can’t make him out. He never speaks.

  TREPLYOV: He’s an intelligent man, simple, a little — you know, melancholy. Very decent. He’s a long way short of forty but he’s already famous, and well-fed ... His writing, well — what should I tell you? Pleasant, talented, but ... after Tolstoy7 and Zola8 you wouldn’t want to read Trigorin.

  SORIN: Ah, the literary world, I love it, old boy. I used to want two things passionately: I wanted to marry and I wanted to become a writer, but I didn’t succeed in either aim. How nice it would be to be even a second-class writer, at the end of the day.

  TREPLYOV [listening]: I can hear footsteps ... [Hugs his uncle.] I can’t live without her ... Even the sound of her footsteps is beautiful ... I’m madly happy. [Quickly goes to meet NINA ZARECHNAYA, who enters.] Enchantress, my dream ...

  NINA [anxiously]: I’m not late ... Of course I’m not late ...

  TREPLYOV [kissing her hands]: No, no, no.

  NINA: I was worried all day, I was so frightened. I was afraid my father wouldn’t let me go ... But he went out just now with my stepmother. A lovely sky, the moon was beginning to rise, and I drove the horse hard, hard. [Laughs.] But I’m glad. [Firmly shakes Sorin’s hand.]

  SORIN [laughing] : I think your little eyes have had tears ... Ha-ha! That’s no good.

  NINA: No, no ... You see how out of breath I am. I’m going in half an hour, we must hurry. I have to, I have to, you mustn’t keep me, for God’s sake. My father doesn’t know I’m here.

  TREPLYOV: Yes, it’s now time to begin. We must go and call everyone.

  SORIN: I’ll go and get them. This minute. [Goes right and sings.] ‘To France two grenadiers ...’9 [Looks round.] Once I started singing like that and the Deputy Public Prosecutor said to me, ‘What a powerful voice Your Excellency has ...’ Then he thought a moment and added, ‘But... not a pleasing one.’ [Laughs and goes out.]

  NINA: My father and his wife won’t let me come here. They say you’re bohemians ... they’re afraid I might become an actress ... But I’m drawn here to the lake like a seagull ... My heart is full of you. [Looks around.]

  TREPLYOV: We’re alone.

  NINA: I think someone’s there ...

  TREPLYOV: No one. [They kiss.]

  NINA: What kind of tree is that?

  TREPLYOV: An elm.

  NINA: Why is it so dark?

  TREPLYOV: Now it’s evening, all objects are dark. Don’t leave early, I beg you.

  NINA: You mustn’t beg me.

  TREPLYOV: But what if I come to you, Nina? I shall stand in the garden all night and look at your window.

  NINA: You mustn’t, the watchman will see you. And Trésor isn’t accustomed to you and he’ll bark.

  TREPLYOV: I love you.

  NINA: Shh ...

  TREPLYOV [hearing steps]: Who’s there? Is that you, Yakov?

  YAKOV [behind the stage]: It is.

  TREPLYOV: Get in your places. It’s time. Is the moon rising?

  YAKOV: It is.

  TREPLYOV: Have we got the spirit? Have we got the sulphur? When the red eyes appear we need a smell of sulphur. [To Nina] Go, everything is ready in there. Are you nervous? ...

  NINA: Yes, very. Your mama — that doesn’t matter, I’m not frightened of her, but Trigorin is here ... I’m scared and feel awkward acting in front of him ... A famous writer ... Is he young?

  TREPLYOV: Yes.

  NINA: How wonderful his stories are.

  TREPLYOV [coldly]: I wouldn’t know, I haven’t read them.

  NINA: It’s difficult to act in your play. It has no living characters.

  TREPLYOV: Living characters! Life should be shown not as it is, and not as it ought to be, but as it appears in dreams.

  NINA: Your play doesn’t have much action, only speeches. And I think a play should definitely have some love interest ...

  [Both go behind the stage.]

  [Enter POLINA ANDREYEVNA and DORN.]

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA: It’s getting damp. Go back and put on your galoshes.

  DORN: I’m hot.

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA: You don’t look after yourself. It’s stubbornness. You’re a doctor and know very well that damp air is bad for you, but you want me to suffer; yesterday you deliberately sat out on the terrace the whole evening ...

  DORN [sings]: ‘Say not that youth’s destroyed.’

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA: You were so carried away talking to Irina Nikolayevna ... you didn’t notice the cold. Admit it, you find her attractive ...

  DORN: I’m fifty-five.

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA: Nonsense, for men that’s not old. You’ve really kept your looks and you’re still attractive to women ...

  DORN: So what can I do for you?

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA: You’re all ready to fall on your faces before an actress. All of you!

  DORN [sings]: ‘Afresh before thee I ...’ If society loves actors and treats them differently from, say, shopkeepers, that is in the order of things. It’s idealism.

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA: Women have always fallen in love with you and hung on your neck. Is that idealism too?

  DORN [shrugging his shoulders]: So? There was a lot that was good in women’s feelings for me. They chiefly loved the first-class doctor in me. Ten or fifteen years ago, you remember, I was the only decent obstetrician in the whole province. And I always behaved honourably.

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA [seizing his hand]: My dearest!

  DORN: Quiet. They’re coming.

  [Enter ARKADINA on SORIN’s arm, TRIGORIN, SHAMRAYEV, MEDVEDENKO and MASHA.]

  SHAMRAYEV: She gave an amazing performance at the Poltava fair in ’seventy-three. Pure ecstasy! She played wonderfully. Would you also happen to know where Pavel Semyonych Chadin, the comedian, is now? He was inimitable as Rasplyuyev,10 better than Sadovsky, I swear to you, dear lady. Where is he now?

  ARKADINA: You’re always asking about some has-been. How would I know? [Sits down.]

  SHAMRAYEV [sighing] : Pashka Chadin! There are none like him now. The stage has declined, Irina Nikolayevna! Once there were mighty oaks but now we can only see stumps.

  DORN: There are few brilliant talents now, that’s true, but the quality of the average actor has gone up a lot ...

  SHAMRAYEV: I cannot agree with you. But it’s a matter of taste. De gustibus aut bene, aut nihil.11

  [TREPLYOV comes out from behind the stage.]

  ARKADINA [to her son]: My dear son, when does it begin?

  TREPLYOV: In a minute. Patience please.

  ARKADINA [quoting from Hamlet]: ‘O Hamlet, speak no more! Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul, And there I see such black and grained spots As will not leave their tinct.’

  TREPLYOV [quoting from Hamlet]: ‘Nay, but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty ...’12 [A horn sounds behind the stage.]

  Ladies and gentlemen, it’s beginning. Your attention please.

  [A pause.]

  I am starting. [Knocks with a stick and speaks loudly.]

  O you honoured ancient shades, who are borne at night over this lake, put us to sleep and let us dream of what will be in two hundred thousand years!

  SORIN: In two hundred thousand years there will be nothing.

  TREPLYOV: So let us be shown that nothing.

  ARKADINA: Yes indeed. We are sleeping.

  [The curtain rises to reveal a view of the lake, the moon on the horizon, its reflection in the water; NINA ZARECHNAYA is sitting on a large rock, all in white.]

  NINA: Men, lions, eagles and partridges, antlered deer, geese, spiders, silent fish which live in the water, starfish and organisms invisible to the eye — in short, all life, all life, all life has been extinguished after completing its sad cycle ... For thousands of centuries the earth has not borne a single living being, and this poor moon lights her lantern to no purpose. In the meadow the cranes give their waking cry no more an
d in May the cockchafers are no longer heard in the lime groves. It is cold, cold, cold. It is empty, empty, empty. It is frightening, frightening, frightening.

  [A pause.]

  The bodies of living beings have turned into dust and eternal matter has changed them into stones, into water, into clouds, and all their spirits have merged into one. I ... I am that universal spirit ... In me is the spirit of Alexander the Great and Caesar and Shakespeare and Napoleon, and that of the meanest leech. In me human consciousness has merged with animal instinct, and I remember everything, everything, and every life I live out in myself anew.

  [Marsh lights appear on the lake.]

  ARKADINA [quietly]: This is a bit of Decadent theatre.

  TREPLYOV [pleading and reproachful]: Mama!

  NINA: I am lonely. Once in a hundred years I open my mouth to speak, and my voice sounds dolefully in this emptiness and no one hears ... And you, pale lights, do not hear me ... Towards dawn the decaying marsh spawns you and you roam till dawn, but without thought, without will, without tremor of life. Afraid that life might begin in you, the father of eternal matter, the devil, changes your atoms every instant, like those of the rocks and the water, and you continuously change. Only one spirit in the universe remains constant and immutable.

  [A pause.]

  Like a prisoner cast into an empty deep well, I do not know where I am and what awaits me. It is only revealed to me that in the unyielding cruel fight with the devil, the principle of the forces of matter, I am destined to conquer, and thereafter matter and spirit will blend in a beautiful harmony and there will come the kingdom of universal will. But this will only be when little by little, over a long sequence of millennia, the moon and bright Sirius and the earth will have turned to dust ... But till then horror, horror ...

  [A pause; two red points appear against the lake.]

  My mighty enemy, the devil, approaches. I see his fearsome crimson eyes ...

  ARKADINA: I smell sulphur. Is that intentional?

  TREPLYOV: Yes.

  ARKADINA [laughing] : Yes, it’s effective.

  TREPLYOV: Mama!

  NINA: He is lonely without man ...

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA [to Dorn]: You’ve taken off your hat. Put it on or you’ll catch cold.

  ARKADINA: The Doctor has taken off his hat to the devil, the father of eternal matter.

  TREPLYOV [losing his temper, loudly]: The play is over! That’s enough! Curtain!

  ARKADINA: Why are you angry!

  TREPLYOV: Enough! Curtain! Lower the curtain! [Stamping his foot.] Curtain!

  [The curtain falls.]

  I’m sorry. I lost sight of the fact that only a select few can write plays and act on the stage. I broke the monopoly! For me ... I ... [Wants to say something more but throws up his hand and goes off left.]

  ARKADINA: What’s the matter with him?

  SORIN: Irina my dear, you mustn’t treat a young man’s pride like that.

  ARKADINA: What did I say to him?

  SORIN: You offended him.

  ARKADINA: He warned us it was a joke, and I treated his play like a joke.

  SORIN: Still...

  ARKADINA: Now it turns out that he has written a great work. What next! He must have arranged this performance with its smell of sulphur not as a joke but as a demonstration. He wanted to teach us how to write and what to perform. In the end it gets boring. His constant attacks on me, his needling would try anybody! A capricious, self-obsessed boy.

  SORIN: He wanted to please you.

  ARKADINA: Really? However, he didn’t choose some ordinary play but made us listen to these decadent ravings. As a joke I am prepared to listen to raving, but here we have claims to new forms, to a new age in art. And in my opinion there are no new forms here but simply bad behaviour.

  TRIGORIN: Everyone writes as he wants and as he is able to.

  ARKADINA: Let him write as he wants and as he is able to, only let him leave me in peace.

  DORN: Jove, thou art angry ...

  ARKADINA: I am not Jove but a woman. [Lights a cigarette.] I’m not angry, only vexed that a young man spends his time so tediously. I didn’t want to offend him.

  MEDVEDENKO: No one has grounds for separating spirit from matter since it is possible that spirit itself is the combination of atoms of matter. [Animatedly, to Trigorin] But just think, how about describing in a play and then performing on the stage the existence of yours truly — a schoolmaster. It’s a hard, hard life!

  ARKADINA: Fair enough, but we won’t talk of plays or atoms. It’s such a lovely evening. Do you hear, my friends — the singing? [Listens.] Doesn’t it feel good?

  POLINA ANDREYEVNA: It’s from the far shore.

  [A pause.]

  ARKADINA [to Trigorin]: Sit by me. Ten, fifteen years ago here on the lake we heard constant music and singing almost every night. There are six estates on this shore. I remember there was laughter, noise, shooting, and romance, romance ... The jeune premier13 and idol of these six houses was then — I present [she points to Dorn] Doctor Yevgeny Sergeich. Even now he is enchanting but then he was irresistible. However, my conscience is beginning to bother me. Why did I offend my poor boy? I am troubled. [Loudly] Kostya! My boy! Kostya!

  MASHA: I’ll go and look for him.

  ARKADINA: Please, dear.

  MASHA [goes left]: Hallo! Konstantin Gavrilovich! ... Hallo! [Exit.]

  NINA [coming out from behind the stage]: Since it’s clearly not going on, I can come out now ... Good evening! [Kisses Arkadina and Polina Andreyevna.]

  SORIN: Bravo! Bravo!

  ARKADINA: Bravo! Bravo! We were full of admiration. Looking as you do, with such a wonderful voice, you mustn’t sit in the country, it’s a sin. You’ve clearly got a talent. Do you hear? You have to go on the stage.

  NINA: Oh, it’s my dream. [Sighing] But it won’t ever come true.

  ARKADINA: Who knows! Can I introduce to you Boris Alekseyevich Trigorin.

  NINA: Oh, I am so pleased ... [Embarrassed] I always read you ...

  ARKADINA [sitting Nina next to her]: Don’t be embarrassed, my dear. He’s a celebrity but he has a simple soul. You see, he himself is embarrassed.

  DORN: I think we can raise the curtain now, or it feels odd.

  SHAMRAYEV [loudly]: Yakov, old chap, raise the curtain!

  [The curtain rises.]

  NINA [to Trigorin]: Wasn’t that a strange play?

  TRIGORIN: I understood nothing. But I watched with pleasure. You acted with such sincerity. And the set was lovely.

  [A pause.]

  There must be a lot of fish in this lake.

  NINA: Yes, there are.

  TRIGORIN: I love to fish. There’s no greater pleasure for me than sitting on the bank and watching my float.

  NINA: But I imagine, after experiencing the pleasures of creativity, no other pleasures exist any more ...

  ARKADINA [laughing]: Don’t talk like that. When people say nice things to him, he shrivels up.

  SHAMRAYEV: I remember once in Moscow at the Opera the famous Silva hit bottom C. And sitting in the gallery at the same time, just as if it was planned, was a bass from one of our church choirs, and suddenly, you can imagine our extreme surprise, we hear from up in the gallery ‘Bravo, Silva!’, a whole octave lower ... Like this [forcing a low bass]: Bravo, Silva! ... The audience froze.

  [A pause.]

  DORN: An angel just passed ...

  NINA: And I must go. Goodbye.

  ARKADINA: Where? Where are you going so early? We won’t let you.

  NINA: Papa is waiting for me.

  ARKADINA: That father ...

  [They kiss.]

  Well, there we are. I’m sorry, sorry to let you go.

  NINA: If you knew how hard it is for me to leave!

  ARKADINA: Someone could go with you, my lamb.

  NINA [frightened]: Oh no, no!

  SORIN [pleading with her]: Stay.

  NINA: I can’t, Pyotr Nikolayevich.

  SORIN: Stay fo
r just one hour, and so on and so on. Well ...

  NINA [after thinking, with tears in her eyes]: I can’t! [Shakes his hand and quickly leaves.]

  ARKADINA: An unfortunate girl really. They say her dead mother left all her huge estate to her husband, down to the last kopeck, and now this girl has nothing, as her father has already left everything to his second wife. It’s shocking.

  DORN: Yes, her papa is a real swine, one has to give him full credit for that.

  SO RIN [rubbing his chilly hands]: Let’s go in too, ladies and gentlemen, or it’ll be getting damp. My legs are aching.

  ARKADINA: They’re barely moving, as if they were made of wood. Well, come on, you poor old thing. [Takes his arm.]

  SHAMRAYEV [giving his arm to his wife]: Madame?

  SORIN: I can hear the dog howling again. [To Shamrayev] Ilya Afanasyevich, be so kind as to tell them to unchain it.

  SHAMRAYEV: I can‘t, Pyotr Nikolayevich, I’m afraid thieves will get into the barn. I’ve got millet in there. [To Medvedenko who is walking beside him] Yes, a whole octave lower: ‘Bravo, Silva!’ And not a professional singer, a simple fellow from a church choir.

  MEDVEDENKO: And how much is a church chorister paid?

  [All go out, except DORN.]

  DORN [alone]: I don’t know, perhaps I understand nothing or I’ve gone out of my mind, but I liked the play. There’s something there. When the girl spoke of loneliness and then when the red eyes of the devil appeared, my hands shook from emotion. Fresh, simple ... I want to say a lot of nice things to him.