Masters of the Theatre

by Delphi Classics

  MR. DARLING (giving her his hat loftily). If you will be so good, Liza. (The cheering is resumed.) It is very gratifying!

  LIZA (contemptuous). Lot of little boys.

  MR. DARLING (with the new sweetness of one who has sworn never to lose his temper again). There were several adults to-day.

  (She goes off scornfully with the hat and the two men, but he has not a word of reproach for her. It ought to melt us when we see how humbly grateful he is for akiss from his wife, so much more than he feels he deserves. One may think he is wrong to exchange into the kennel, but sorrow has taught him that he is the kind of man who whatever he does contritely he must do to excess; otherwise he soon abandons doing it.)

  MRS. DARLING (who has known this for quite a long time).What sort of a day have you had, George?

  (He is sitting on the floor by the kennel.)

  MR. DARLING. There were never less than a hundred running round the cab cheering, and when we passed the Stock Exchange the members came out and waved.

  (He is exultant but uncertain of himself, and with a word she could dispirit him utterly.)

  MRS. DARLING (bravely). I am so proud, George.

  MR. DARLING (commendation from the dearest quarter ever going to his head). I have been put on a picture postcard, dear.

  MRS. DARLING (nobly). Never!

  MR. DARLING (thoughtlessly). Ah, Mary, we should not be such celebrities if the children hadn’t flown away.

  MRS. DARLING (startled). George, you are sure you are not enjoying it?,

  MR. DARLING (anxiously). Enjoying it! See my punishment: living in a kennel.

  MRS. DARLING. Forgive me, dear one.

  MR. DARLING. It is I who need forgiveness, always I, never you. And now I feel drowsy. (He retires into the kennel.) Won’t you play me to sleep on the nursery piano? And shut that window, Mary dearest; I feel a draught.

  MRS. DARLING. Oh, George, never ask me to do that. The window must always be left open, for them, always, always.

  (She goes into the day nursery, from which we presently hear her playing the sad song of Margaret. She little knows that her last remark has been overheard by a boy crouching at the window. He steals into the room accompanied by a ball of light.)

  PETER. Tink, where are you? Quick, close the window. (It closes.) Bar it. (The bar slams down.) Now whenWendy comes she will think her mother has barred her out, and she will have to come back to me! (TINKER BELL sulks.) Now, Tink, you and I must go out by the door. (Doors, however, are confusing things to those who are used to windows, and he is puzzled when he finds that this one does not open on to the firmament. He tries the other, and sees the piano player.) It is Wendy’s mother! (TINK. pops on to his shoulder and they peep together.) She is a pretty lady, but not so pretty as my mother. (This is a pure guess.) She is making the box say ‘Come home, Wendy.’ You will never see Wendy again, lady, for the window is barred! (He flutters about the room joyously like a bird, but has to return to that door.) She has laid her head down on the box. There are two wet things sitting on her eyes. As soon as they go away another two come and sit on her eyes. (She is heard moaning ‘Wendy, Wendy, Wendy.’) She wants me to unbar the window. I won’t! She is awfully fond of Wendy. I am fond of her too. We can’t both have her, lady! (A funny feeling comes over him.) Come on, Tink; we don’t want any silly mothers.

  (He opens the window and they fly out.

  It is thus that the truants find entrance easy when they alight on the sill, JOHN to his credit having the tired MICHAEL on his shoulders. They have nothing else to their credit; no compunction for what they have done, not the tiniest fear that any just person may be awaiting them with a stick. The youngest is in a daze, but the two others are shining virtuously like holy people who are about to give two other people a treat.)

  MICHAEL (looking about him). I think I have been here before.

  JOHN. It’s your home, you stupid.

  WENDY. There is your old bed, Michael.

  MICHAEL. I had nearly forgotten.

  JOHN. I say, the kennel!

  WENDY. Perhaps Nana is in it.

  JOHN (peering). There is a man asleep in it.

  WENDY (remembering him by the bald patch). It’s father!

  JOHN. So it is!

  MICHAEL. Let me see father. (Disappointed) He is not as big as the pirate I killed.

  JOHN (perplexed). Wendy, surely father didn’t use to sleep in the kennel?

  WENDY (with misgivings). Perhaps we don’t remember the old life as well as we thought we did.

  JOHN (chilled). It is very careless of mother not to be here when we come back.

  (The piano is heard again.)

  WENDY. H’sh! (She goes to the door and peeps.) That is her playing! (They all have a peep.)

  MICHAEL. Who is that lady?

  JOHN. H’sh! It’s mother.

  MICHAEL. Then are you not really our mother, Wendy?

  WENDY (with conviction). Oh dear, it is quite time to be back!

  JOHN. Let us creep in and put our hands over her eyes.

  WENDY (more considerate). No, let us break it to her gently.

  (She slips between the sheets of her bed; and the others, seeing the idea at once, get into their beds. Then when the music stops they cover their heads. There are now three distinct bumps in the beds. MRS. DARLING sees the bumps as soon as she comes in, but she does not believe she sees them.)

  MRS. DARLING. I see them in their beds so often in my dreams that I seem still to see them when I am awake! I’ll not look again. (She sits down and turns away her face from the bump, though of course they are still reflected in her mind.) So often their silver voices call me, my little children whom I’ll see no more.

  (Silver voices is a good one, especially about JOHN; but the heads pop up.)

  WENDY (perhaps rather silvery). Mother!

  MRS. DARLING (without moving). That is Wendy.

  JOHN, (quite gruff). Mother!

  MRS. DARLING. Now it is John.

  MICHAEL (no better than a squeak). Mother!

  MRS. DARLING. Now Michael. And when they call I stretch out my arms to them, but they never come, they never come!

  (This time, however, they come, and there is joy once more in the Darling household. The little boy who is crouching at the window sees the joke of the bumps in the beds, but cannot understand what all the rest of the fuss is about.

  The scene changes from the inside of the house to the outside, and we see MR. DARLING romping in at the door, with the lost boys hanging gaily to his coat-tails. Some may conclude that WENDY has told them to wait outside until she explains the situation to her mother, who has then sent MR. DARLING down to tell them that they are adopted. Of course they could have flown in by the window like a covey of birds, but they think it better fun to enter by a door. There is a moment’s trouble about SLIGHTLY, who somehow gets shut out. Fortunately LIZA finds him.)

  LIZA. What is the matter, boy?

  SLIGHTLY. They have all got a mother except me.

  LIZA (starting back). Is your name Slightly?

  SLIGHTLY. Yes’m.

  LIZA. Then I am your mother.

  SLIGHTLY. How do you know?

  LIZA (the good-natured creature). I feel it in my bones.

  (They go into the house and there is none hazier now than SLIGHTLY, unless it be NANA as she passes with the importance of a nurse who will never have another day off. WENDY looks out at the nursery window and sees a friend below, who is hovering in the air knocking off tall hats with his feet. The wearers don’t see him. They are too old. You can’t see PETER if you are old. They think he is a draught at the corner.

  WENDY. Peter!

  PETER (looking up casually). Hullo, Wendy.

  (She flies down to him, to the horror of her mother, who rushes to the window.)

  WENDY (making a last attempt). You don’t feel you would like to say anything to my parents, Peter, about a very sweet subject?

  PETER. No, Wendy.

  WENDY. Abo
ut me, Peter?

  PETER. No. (He gets out his pipes, which she knows is a very bad sign. She appeals with her arms to MRS. DARLING, who is probably thinking that these children will all need to be tied to their beds at night.)

  MRS. DARLING (from the window). Peter, where are you? Let me adopt you too.

  (She is the loveliest age for a woman, but too old to see PETER clearly.)

  PETER. Would you send me to school?

  MRS. DARLING (obligingly). Yes.

  PETER. And then to an office?

  MRS. DARLING. I suppose so.

  PETER. Soon I should be a man?

  MRS. DARLING. Very soon.

  PETER (passionately). I don’t want to go to school and learn solemn things. No one is going to catch me, lady, and make me a man. I want always to be a little boy and to have fun.

  (So perhaps he thinks, but it is only his greatest pretend.)

  MRS. DARLING (shivering every time WENDY pursues him in the air). Where are you to live, Peter?

  PETER. In the house we built for Wendy. The fairies are to put it high up among the tree-tops where they sleep at night.

  WENDY (rapturously). To think of it!

  MRS. DARLING. I thought all the fairies were dead.

  WENDY (almost reprovingly). No indeed! Their mothers drop the babies into the Never birds’ nests, all mixed up with the eggs, and the mauve fairies are boys and the white ones are girls, and there are some colours who don’t know what they are. The row the children and the birds make at bath time is positively deafening.

  PETER. I throw things at them.

  WENDY. You will be rather lonely in the evenings, Peter.

  PETER. I shall have Tink.

  WENDY (flying up to the window). Mother, may I go?

  MRS. DARLING (gripping her for ever). Certainly not. I have got you home again, and I mean to keep you.

  WENDY. But he does so need a mother.

  MRS. DARLING. So do you, my love.

  PETER. Oh, all right.

  MRS. DARLING (magnanimously). But, Peter, I shall let her go to you once a year for a week to do your spring cleaning.

  (WENDY revels in this, but PETER, who has no notion what a spring cleaning is, waves a rather careless thanks.)

  MRS. DARLING. Say good-night, Wendy.

  WENDY. I couldn’t go down just for a minute?

  MRS. DARLING. No.

  WENDY. Good-night, Peter!

  PETER. Good-night, Wendy!

  WENDY. Peter, you won’t forget me, will you, before spring-cleaning time comes?

  (There is no answer, for he is already soaring high. For a moment after he is gone we still hear the pipes. MRS. DARLING closes and bars the window.)

  We are dreaming now of the Never Land a year later. It is bed-time on the island, and the blind goes up to the whispers of the lovely Never music. The blue haze that makes the wood below magical by day comes up to the tree-tops to sleep, and through it we see numberless nests all lit up, fairies and birds quarrelling for possession, others flying around just for the fun of the thing and perhaps making bets about where the little house will appear to-night. It always comes and snuggles on some tree-top, but you can never be sure which; here it is again, you see John’s hat first as up comes the house so softly that it knocks some gossips off their perch. When it has settled comfortably it lights up, and out come Peter and Wendy.

  Wendy looks a little older, but Peter is just the same. She is cloaked for a journey, and a sad confession must be made about her; she flies so badly now that she has to use a broomstick.

  WENDY (who knows better this time than to be demonstrative at partings). Well, good-bye, Peter; and remember not to bite your nails.

  PETER. Good-bye, Wendy.

  WENDY. I’ll tell mother all about the spring cleaning and the house.

  PETER (who sometimes forgets that she has been here before). You do like the house?

  WENDY. Of course it is small. But most people of our size wouldn’t have a house at all. (She should not have mentioned size, for he has already expressed displeasure at her growth. Another thing, one he has scarcely noticed, though it disturbs her, is that she does not see him quite so clearly now as she used to do.) When you come for me next year, Peter — you will come, won’t you?

  PETER. Yes. (Gloating) To hear stories about me!

  WENDY. It is so queer that the stories you like best should be the ones about yourself.

  PETER (touchy). Well, then?

  WENDY. Fancy your forgetting the lost boys, and even Captain Hook!

  PETER. Well, then?

  WENDY. I haven’t seen Tink this time.

  PETER. Who?

  WENDY. Oh dear! I suppose it is because you have so many adventures.

  PETER (relieved). ‘Course it is.

  WENDY. If another little girl — if one younger than I am—(She can’t go on.) Oh, Peter, how I wish I could take you up and squdge you! (He draws back.) Yes, I know. (She gets astride her broomstick.) Home! (It carries her from him over the tree-tops.

  In a sort of way he understands what she means by ‘Yes,I know,’ but in most sorts of ways he doesn’t. It has something to do with the riddle of his being. If hecould get the hang of the thing his cry might become ‘To live would be an awfully big adventure!’ but he can never quite get the hang of it, and so no one is as gay as he. With rapturous face he produces his pipes, and the Never birds and the fairies gather closer, till the roof of the little house is so thick with his admirers that some of them fall down the chimney. He plays on and on till we wake up.)

  THE END

  THE CHERRY ORCHARD by Anton Chekhov

  A COMEDY IN FOUR ACTS

  1904

  Translated by Julius West, 1916

  Chekhov’s last play, now widely regarded as his masterpiece, The Cherry Orchard premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre in January 1904 in a production directed by Constantin Stanislavski. Chekhov intended the play to be a comedy, containing elements of farce and humour. However, Stanislavski insisted on directing the play as a tragedy. Since the initial production, directors have had to contend with the dual nature of the drama.

  The play concerns an aristocratic Russian woman and her family as they return to the family’s estate, with a large and well-known cherry orchard, just before it is auctioned to pay the mortgage. Though presented with options to save the estate, the family essentially does nothing and the play ends with the estate being sold to the son of a former serf and the family leaving to the sound of the cherry orchard being cut down. The story presents themes of cultural futility — both the futility of the aristocracy to maintain its status and the futility of the bourgeoisie to find meaning in its newfound materialism. In reflecting the socio-economic forces at work in Russia at the turn of the 20th century, including the rise of the middle class after the abolition of serfdom and the sinking of the aristocracy, the play reflects forces at work around the globe in that period.

  There were several experiences in Chekhov’s own life that are said to have directly inspired his writing of The Cherry Orchard. When Chekhov was sixteen, his mother went into debt after being cheated by some builders she had hired to construct a small house. A former lodger, Gabriel Selivanov, offered to help her financially, but secretly bought the house for himself. At approximately the same time, Chekov’s childhood home in Taganrog was sold to pay off its mortgage. These financial and domestic upheavals imprinted themselves on his memory greatly and would reappear in the action of the famous play.

  Since the first production at the Moscow Art Theatre, The Cherry Orchard has been translated and adapted into many languages and produced in many theatres across the world, becoming a classic work of dramatic literature. Some of the major directors of theatre have directed this drama, each interpreting the work differently. Some of these directors include Charles Laughton, Peter Brook, Andrei Serban, Eva Le Gallienne, Jean-Louis Barrault, Tyrone Guthrie and Giorgio Strehler.

  Chekhov with Leo Tolstoy at Yalta, 1900
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br />   This play was taken from our Complete Works edition:

  CONTENTS

  CHARACTERS

  ACT ONE

  ACT TWO

  ACT THREE

  ACT FOUR

  CHARACTERS

  LUBOV ANDREYEVNA RANEVSKY (Mme. RANEVSKY), a landowner

  ANYA, her daughter, aged seventeen

  VARYA (BARBARA), her adopted daughter, aged twenty-seven

  LEONID ANDREYEVITCH GAEV, Mme. Ranevsky’s brother

  ERMOLAI ALEXEYEVITCH LOPAKHIN, a merchant

  PETER SERGEYEVITCH TROFIMOV, a student

  BORIS BORISOVITCH SIMEONOV-PISCHIN, a landowner

  CHARLOTTA IVANOVNA, a governess

  SIMEON PANTELEYEVITCH EPIKHODOV, a clerk

  DUNYASHA (AVDOTYA FEDOROVNA), a maidservant

  FIERS, an old footman, aged eighty-seven

  YASHA, a young footman

  A TRAMP

  A STATION-MASTER

  POST-OFFICE CLERK

  GUESTS

  A SERVANT

  The action takes place on Mme. RANEVSKY’S estate

  A scene from Act 3 of the first run — Moscow Art Theatre production

  ACT ONE

  [A room which is still called the nursery. One of the doors leads into ANYA’S room. It is close on sunrise. It is May. The cherry-trees are in flower but it is chilly in the garden. There is an early frost. The windows of the room are shut. DUNYASHA comes in with a candle, and LOPAKHIN with a book in his hand.]

  LOPAKHIN. The train’s arrived, thank God. What’s the time?

  DUNYASHA. It will soon be two. [Blows out candle] It is light already.

  LOPAKHIN. How much was the train late? Two hours at least. [Yawns and stretches himself] I have made a rotten mess of it! I came here on purpose to meet them at the station, and then overslept myself... in my chair. It’s a pity. I wish you’d wakened me.

  DUNYASHA. I thought you’d gone away. [Listening] I think I hear them coming.

  LOPAKHIN. [Listens] No.... They’ve got to collect their luggage and so on.... [Pause] Lubov Andreyevna has been living abroad for five years; I don’t know what she’ll be like now.... She’s a good sort — an easy, simple person. I remember when I was a boy of fifteen, my father, who is dead — he used to keep a shop in the village here — hit me on the face with his fist, and my nose bled.... We had gone into the yard together for something or other, and he was a little drunk. Lubov Andreyevna, as I remember her now, was still young, and very thin, and she took me to the washstand here in this very room, the nursery. She said, “Don’t cry, little man, it’ll be all right in time for your wedding.” [Pause] “Little man”.... My father was a peasant, it’s true, but here I am in a white waistcoat and yellow shoes... a pearl out of an oyster. I’m rich now, with lots of money, but just think about it and examine me, and you’ll find I’m still a peasant down to the marrow of my bones. [Turns over the pages of his book] Here I’ve been reading this book, but I understood nothing. I read and fell asleep. [Pause.]