Ten Plays

Anton Chekhov

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780486122649
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

Here in one compact and modestly priced edition are the celebrated Russian playwright's most popular works. In addition to five full-length plays— The Sea Gull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, and Ivanov —this anthology features five of Anton Chekhov's one-act comedies: The Anniversary, An Unwilling Martyr, The Wedding, The Bear, and The Proposal.
Chekhov's taste for vaudeville shows and French farces influenced his comic one-acts, which are widely regarded as masterpieces of the genre. His greatest fame rests upon his full-length tragedies, which focus on mood and characterization rather than plot. Chekhov considered his famous tragedies a form of comic satire—with the bleakness of life in czarist Russia at the turn of the twentieth century as their central joke. "All I wanted was to say honestly to people: 'Have a look at yourselves and see how bad and dreary your lives are!'" explained the playwright. In addition to their enduring emotional and intellectual appeal to audiences, Chekhov's modern realist dramas continue to influence theatrical literature and performance.

THE THREE SISTERS

Characters

ANDREY SERGEYEVICH PROZOROV

NATALIA IVANOVNA [NATASHA], his fiancée, later his wife

FYODOR ILYICH KULYGIN, high school teacher, married to MASHA

ALEXANDER IGNATYEVICH VERSHININ, lieutenant-colonel in charge of a battery

NIKOLAI LVOVICH TUZENBAKH, baron, lieutenant in the army

VASSILI VASSILYEVICH SOLYONI, captain

IVAN ROMANOVICH CHEBUTYKIN, army doctor

ALEXEY PETROVICH FEDOTIK, second lieutenant

VLADIMIR KARLOVICH RODÉ, second lieutenant

FERAPONT, door-keeper at local council offices, an old man

ANFISA, nurse, 80 years old

The action takes place in a provincial town.

ACT I

In PROZOROV’s house. A sitting-room with pillars; behind is seen a large dining-room. It is midday, the sun is shining brightly outside. In the dining-room the table is being laid for lunch.

OLGA, in the regulation blue dress of a teacher at a girl’s high school, is walking about correcting exercise books; MASHA, in a black dress, with a hat on her knees, sits and reads a book; IRINA, in white, stands about, with a thoughtful expression.

OLGA. A year since father died last May the fifth, on your name-day, Irina. It was very cold then, and snowing. I thought I would never live, and you were in a dead faint. And now a year has gone by and it does not affect us, and you are wearing a white dress and look happy. [Clock strikes twelve.] And the clock struck just the same way then. [Pause] I remember that there was music at the funeral, and they fired a volley in the cemetery. A general in command but few people present. Rain and snow.

IRINA. Why recall it?

[BARON TUZENBAKH, CHEBUTYKIN and SOLYONI appear by the table in the dining-room, behind the pillars.]

OLGA. It’s so warm to-day that we can keep the windows open, though the birches are not yet in flower. Father was put in command of a brigade, and he rode out of Moscow with us eleven years ago. I remember perfectly that it was early in May and all Moscow was blooming. It was warm too, everything in sunshine. Eleven years, and I remember everything as if we rode out only yesterday. Oh God! When I awoke this morning and saw all the light and the spring, I was homesick.

CHEBUTYKIN. Will you take a bet on it?

TUZENBAKH. Don’t be foolish.

[MASHA, lost in a reverie over her book, whistles softly.]

OLGA. Don’t whistle, Masha. How can you! [Pause] I’m always having headaches from having to go to the High School every day and then teach till evening. Strange thoughts come to me, as if I were aged. And really, during these four years I have been feeling as if every day had been drained from me. And only one desire grows and gains in strength....

IRINA. To go away to Moscow. To sell the house, leave all and go to Moscow....

OLGA. Yes! To Moscow, and as soon as possible.

[CHEBUTYKIN and TUZENBAKH laugh.]

IRINA. I expect Andrey will become a professor, but still, he won’t want to live here. Only poor Masha must go on living here.

OLGA. Masha can come to Moscow every summer.

[MASHA is whistling gently.]

IRINA. Everything will be arranged, please God. [Looks out of window.] It’s nice out to-day. I don’t know why I’m so happy: I remembered this morning that it was my name-day, and I suddenly felt glad and remembered my childhood, when mother was still with us. What beautiful thoughts I had, what thoughts!

OLGA. You’re all radiance to-day, I’ve never seen you look so lovely. And Masha is pretty, too. Andrey wouldn’t be bad-looking, if he wasn’t so stout; it does spoil his appearance. But I’ve grown old and very thin, I suppose it’s because I get angry with the girls at school. To-day I’m free. I’m at home. I haven’t got a headache, and I feel younger than I was yesterday. I’m only twenty-eight.... All’s well, God is everywhere, but it seems to me that if only I were married and could stay at home all day, it would be even better. [Pause] I should love my husband.

TUZENBAKH [to SOLYONI]. I’m tired of listening to the rot you talk. [Entering the sitting-room.] I forgot to say that Vershinin, our new lieutenant-colonel of artillery, is coming to see us to-day. [Sits down to the piano.]

OLGA. That’s good. I’m glad.

IRINA. Is he old?

TUZENBAKH. Oh, no. Forty or forty-five, at the very outside. [Plays softly.] He seems rather a good sort. He’s certainly no fool, only he likes to hear himself speak.

IRINA. Is he interesting?

TUZENBAKH. Oh, he’s all right, but there’s his wife, his mother-in-law, and two daughters. This is his second wife. He pays calls and tells everybody that he’s got a wife and two daughters. He’ll tell you so here. The wife isn’t all there, she does her hair like a flapper and gushes extremely. She talks philosophy and tries to commit suicide every now and again, apparently in order to annoy her husband. I should have left her long ago, but he bears up patiently, and just grumbles.

SOLYONI [enters with CHEBUTYKIN from the dining-room]. With one hand I can only lift fifty-four pounds, but with both hands I can lift 180, or even 200 pounds. From this I conclude that two men are not twice as strong as one, but three times, perhaps even more....

CHEBUTYKIN [reads a newspaper as he walks]. If your hair is coming out . . . take an ounce of naphthaline and half a bottle of spirit . . . dissolve and use daily.... [Makes a note in his pocket diary.] When found make a note of! Not that I want it though.... [Crosses it out.] It doesn’t matter.

IRINA. Ivan Romanovich, dear Ivan Romanovich!

CHEBUTYKIN. What does my own little girl want?

IRINA. Ivan Romanovich, dear Ivan Romanovich! I feel as if I were sailing under the broad blue sky with great white birds around me. Why is that? Why?

CHEBUTYKIN [kisses her hands, tenderly]. My white bird....

IRINA. When I woke up to-day and got up and dressed myself, I suddenly began to feel as if everything in this life was open to me, and that I knew how I must live. Dear Ivan Romanovich, I know everything. A man must work, toil in the sweat of his brow, whoever he may be, for that is the meaning and object of his life, his happiness, his enthusiasm. How fine it is to be a workman who gets up at daybreak and breaks stones in the street, or a shepherd, or a schoolmaster, who teaches children, or an engine-driver on the railway.... My God, let alone a man, it’s better to be an ox, or just a horse, so long as it can work, than a young woman who wakes up at twelve o’clock, has her coffee in bed, and then spends two hours dressing.... Oh it’s awful! Sometimes when it’s hot, your thirst can be just as tiresome as my need for work. And if I don’t get up early in future and work, Ivan Romanovich, then you may refuse me your friendship.

CHEBUTYKIN [tenderly]. I’ll refuse, I’ll refuse....

OLGA. Father used to make us get up at seven. Now Irina wakes at seven and lies and meditates about something till nine at least. And she looks so serious! [Laughs]

IRINA. You’re so used to seeing me as a little girl that it seems queer to you when my face is serious. I’m twenty!

TUZENBAKH. How well I can understand that craving for work, oh God! I’ve never worked once in my life. I was born in Petersburg, a chilly, lazy place, in a family which never knew what work or worry meant. I remember that when I used to come home from my regiment, a footman used to have to pull off my boots while I fidgeted and my mother looked on in adoration and wondered why other people didn’t see me in the same light. They shielded me from work; but only just in time! A new age is dawning, the people are marching on us all, a powerful, health-giving storm is gathering, it is drawing near, soon it will be upon us and it will drive away laziness, indifference, the prejudice against labor, and rotten dullness from our society. I shall work, and in twenty-five or thirty years, every man will have to work. Every one!

CHEBUTYKIN. I shan’t work.

TUZENBAKH. You don’t matter.

SOLYONI. In twenty-five years’ time, we shall all be dead, thank the Lord. In two or three years’ time apoplexy will carry you off, or else I’ll blow your brains out, my pet. [Takes a scent-bottle out of his pocket and sprinkles his chest and hands.]

CHEBUTYKIN [laughs]. It’s quite true, I never have worked. After I came down from the university I never stirred a finger or opened a book, I just read the papers.... [Takes another newspaper out of his pocket.] Here we are.... I’ve learnt from the papers t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Note
• Table of Contents
• IVANOV
• THE BEAR - A JEST IN ONE ACT
• THE PROPOSAL - A JEST IN ONE ACT
• AN UNWILLING MARTYR (A HOLIDAY EPISODE) - A JEST IN ONE ACT
• THE WEDDING - A FARCE IN ONE ACT
• THE ANNIVERSARY
• THE SEA GULL
• UNCLE VANYA
• THE THREE SISTERS
• THE CHERRY ORCHARD