The Sea-Gull(海鸥)

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The Sea-Gull

by Anton Checkov

The Sea-Gull

CHARACTERS

IRINA ABKADINA, an actress

CONSTANTINE TREPLIEFF, her son

PETER SORIN, her brother

NINA ZARIETCHNAYA, a young girl, the daughter of a rich

landowner

ILIA SHAMRAEFF, the manager of SORIN'S estate

PAULINA, his wife

MASHA, their daughter

BORIS TRIGORIN, an author

EUGENE DORN, a doctor

SIMON MEDVIEDENKO, a schoolmaster

JACOB, a workman

A COOK

A MAIDSERVANT

The scene is laid on SORIN'S estate. Two years elapse between the

third and fourth acts.

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ACT I

The scene is laid in the park on SORIN'S estate. A broad avenue of

trees leads away from the audience toward a lake which lies lost in the

depths of the park. The avenue is obstructed by a rough stage, temporarily

erected for the performance of amateur theatricals, and which screens the

lake from view. There is a dense growth of bushes to the left and right of

the stage. A few chairs and a little table are placed in front of the stage.

The sun has just set. JACOB and some other workmen are heard

hammering and coughing on the stage behind the lowered curtain.

MASHA and MEDVIEDENKO come in from the left, returning from

a walk.

MEDVIEDENKO. Why do you always wear mourning?

MASHA. I dress in black to match my life. I am unhappy.

MEDVIEDENKO. Why should you be unhappy? [Thinking it over] I

don't understand it. You are healthy, and though your father is not rich, he

has a good competency. My life is far harder than yours. I only have

twenty-three roubles a month to live on, but I don't wear mourning. [They

sit down].

MASHA. Happiness does not depend on riches; poor men are often

happy.

MEDVIEDENKO. In theory, yes, but not in reality. Take my case, for

instance; my mother, my two sisters, my little brother and I must all live

somehow on my salary of twenty-three roubles a month. We have to eat

and drink, I take it. You wouldn't have us go without tea and sugar, would

you? Or tobacco? Answer me that, if you can.

MASHA. [Looking in the direction of the stage] The play will soon

begin.

MEDVIEDENKO. Yes, Nina Zarietchnaya is going to act in Treplieff's

play. They love one another, and their two souls will unite to-night in the

effort to interpret the same idea by different means. There is no ground on

which your soul and mine can meet. I love you. Too restless and sad to

stay at home, I tramp here every day, six miles and back, to be met only by

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your indifference. I am poor, my family is large, you can have no

inducement to marry a man who cannot even find sufficient food for his

own mouth.

MASHA. It is not that. [She takes snuff] I am touched by your

affection, but I cannot return it, that is all. [She offers him the snuff-box]

Will you take some?

MEDVIEDENKO. No, thank you. [A pause.]

MASHA. The air is sultry; a storm is brewing for to-night. You do

nothing but moralise or else talk about money. To you, poverty is the

greatest misfortune that can befall a man, but I think it is a thousand times

easier to go begging in rags than to-- You wouldn't understand that,

though.

SORIN leaning on a cane, and TREPLIEFF come in.

SORIN. For some reason, my boy, country life doesn't suit me, and I

am sure I shall never get used to it. Last night I went to bed at ten and

woke at nine this morning, feeling as if, from oversleep, my brain had

stuck to my skull. [Laughing] And yet I accidentally dropped off to sleep

again after dinner, and feel utterly done up at this moment. It is like a

nightmare.

TREPLIEFF. There is no doubt that you should live in town. [He

catches sight of MASHA and MEDVIEDENKO] You shall be called when

the play begins, my friends, but you must not stay here now. Go away,

please.

SORIN. Miss Masha, will you kindly ask your father to leave the dog

unchained? It howled so last night that my sister was unable to sleep.

MASHA. You must speak to my father yourself. Please excuse me; I

can't do so. [To MEDVIEDENKO] Come, let us go.

MEDVIEDENKO. You will let us know when the play begins?

MASHA and MEDVIEDENKO go out.

SORIN. I foresee that that dog is going to howl all night again. It is

always this way in the country; I have never been able to live as I like here.

I come down for a month's holiday, to rest and all, and am plagued so by

their nonsense that I long to escape after the first day. [Laughing] I have

always been glad to get away from this place, but I have been retired now,

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and this was the only place I had to come to. Willy-nilly, one must live

somewhere.

JACOB. [To TREPLIEFF] We are going to take a swim, Mr.

Constantine.

TREPLIEFF. Very well, but you must be back in ten minutes.

JACOB. We will, sir.

TREPLIEFF. [Looking at the stage] Just like a real theatre! See, there

we have the curtain, the foreground, the background, and all. No artificial

scenery is needed. The eye travels direct to the lake, and rests on the

horizon. The curtain will be raised as the moon rises at half-past eight.

SORIN. Splendid!

TREPLIEFF. Of course the whole effect will be ruined if Nina is late.

She should be here by now, but her father and stepmother watch her so

closely that it is like stealing her from a prison to get her away from home.

[He straightens SORIN'S collar] Your hair and beard are all on end.

Oughtn't you to have them trimmed?

SORIN. [Smoothing his beard] They are the tragedy of my existence.

Even when I was young I always looked as if I were drunk, and all.

Women have never liked me. [Sitting down] Why is my sister out of

temper?

TREPLIEFF. Why? Because she is jealous and bored. [Sitting down

beside SORIN] She is not acting this evening, but Nina is, and so she has

set herself against me, and against the performance of the play, and against

the play itself, which she hates without ever having read it.

SORIN. [Laughing] Does she, really?

TREPLIEFF. Yes, she is furious because Nina is going to have a

success on this little stage. [Looking at his watch] My mother is a

psychological curiosity. Without doubt brilliant and talented, capable of

sobbing over a novel, of reciting all Nekrasoff's poetry by heart, and of

nursing the sick like an angel of heaven, you should see what happens if

any one begins praising Duse to her! She alone must be praised and

written about, raved over, her marvellous acting in "La Dame aux

Camelias" extolled to the skies. As she cannot get all that rubbish in the

country, she grows peevish and cross, and thinks we are all against her,

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and to blame for it all. She is superstitious, too. She dreads burning three

candles, and fears the thirteenth day of the month. Then she is stingy. I

know for a fact that she has seventy thousand roubles in a bank at Odessa,

but she is ready to burst into tears if you ask her to lend you a penny.

SORIN. You have taken it into your head that your mother dislikes

your play, and the thought of it has excited you, and all. Keep calm; your

mother adores you.

TREPLIEFF. [Pulling a flower to pieces] She loves me, loves me not;

loves--loves me not; loves--loves me not! [Laughing] You see, she doesn't

love me, and why should she? She likes life and love and gay clothes, and

I am already twenty-five years old; a sufficient reminder to her that she is

no longer young. When I am away she is only thirty-two, in my presence

she is forty-three, and she hates me for it. She knows, too, that I despise

the modern stage. She adores it, and imagines that she is working on it for

the benefit of humanity and her sacred art, but to me the theatre is merely

the vehicle of convention and prejudice. When the curtain rises on that

little thr ee-walled room, when those mighty geniuses, those high-priests

of art, show us people in the act of eating, drinking, loving, walking, and

wearing their coats, and attempt to extract a moral from their insipid talk;

when playwrights give us under a thousand different guises the same,

same, same old stuff, then I must needs run from it, as Maupassant ran

from the Eiffel Tower that was about to crush him by its vulgarity.

SORIN. But we can't do without a theatre.

TREPLIEFF. No, but we must have it under a new form. If we can't do

that, let us rather not have it at all. [Looking at his watch] I love my

mother, I love her devotedly, but I think she leads a stupid life. She always

has this man of letters of hers on her mind, and the newspapers are always

frightening her to death, and I am tired of it. Plain, human egoism

sometimes speaks in my heart, and I regret that my mother is a famous

actress. If she were an ordinary woman I think I should be a happier man.

What could be more intolerable and foolish than my position, Uncle, when

I find myself the only nonentity among a crowd of her guests, all

celebrated authors and artists? I feel that they only endure me because I

am her son. Personally I am nothing, nobody. I pulled through my third

The Sea-Gull

year at college by the skin of my teeth, as they say. I have neither money

nor brains, and on my passport you may read that I am simply a citizen of

Kiev. So was my father, but he was a well-known actor. When the

celebrities that frequent my mother's drawing-room deign to notice me at

all, I know they only look at me to measure my insignificance; I read their

thoughts, and suffer from humiliation.

SORIN. Tell me, by the way, what is Trigorin like? I can't understand

him, he is always so silent.

TREPLIEFF. Trigorin is clever, simple, well-mannered, and a little, I

might say, melancholic in disposition. Though still under forty, he is

surfeited with praise. As for his stories, they are--how shall I put it?--

pleasing, full of talent, but if you have read Tolstoi or Zola you somehow

don't enjoy Trigorin.

SORIN. Do you know, my boy, I like literary men. I once passionately

desired two things: to marry, and to become an author. I have succeeded in

neither. It must be pleasant to be even an insignificant author.

TREPLIEFF. [Listening] I hear footsteps! [He embraces his uncle] I

cannot live without her; even the sound of her footsteps is music to me. I

am madly happy. [He goes quickly to meet NINA, who comes in at that

moment] My enchantress! My girl of dreams!

NINA. [Excitedly] It can't be that I am late? No, I am not late.

TREPLIEFF. [Kissing her hands] No, no, no!

NINA. I have been in a fever all day, I was so afraid my father would

prevent my coming, but he and my stepmother have just gone driving. The

sky is clear, the moon is rising. How I hurried to get here! How I urged my

horse to go faster and faster! [Laughing] I am _so_ glad to see you! [She

shakes hands with SORIN.]

SORIN. Oho! Your eyes look as if you had been crying. You mustn't

do that.

NINA. It is nothing, nothing. Do let us hurry. I must go in half an hour.

No, no, for heaven's sake do not urge me to stay. My father doesn't know I

am here.

TREPLIEFF. As a matter of fact, it is time to begin now. I must call

the audience.

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SORIN. Let me call them--and all--I am going this minute. [He goes

toward the right, begins to sing "The Two Grenadiers," then stops.] I was

singing that once when a fellow-lawyer said to me: "You have a powerful

voice, sir." Then he thought a moment and added, "But it is a disagreeable

one!" [He goes out laughing.]

NINA. My father and his wife never will let me come here; they call

this place Bohemia and are afraid I shall become an actress. But this lake

attracts me as it does the gulls. My heart is full of you. [She glances about

her.]

TREPLIEFF. We are alone.

NINA. Isn't that some one over there?

TREPLIEFF. No. [They kiss one another.]

NINA. What is that tree?

TREPLIEFF. An elm.

NINA. Why does it look so dark?

TREPLIEFF. It is evening; everything looks dark now. Don't go away

early, I implore you.

NINA. I must.

TREPLIEFF. What if I were to follow you, Nina? I shall stand in your

garden all night with my eyes on your window.

NINA. That would be impossible; the watchman would see you, and

Treasure is not used to you yet, and would bark.

TREPLIEFF. I love you.

NINA. Hush!

TREPLIEFF. [Listening to approaching footsteps] Who is that? Is it

you, Jacob?

JACOB. [On the stage] Yes, sir.

TREPLIEFF. To your places then. The moon is rising; the play must

commence.

NINA. Yes, sir.

TREPLIEFF. Is the alcohol ready? Is the sulphur ready? There must be

fumes of sulphur in the air when the red eyes shine out. [To NINA] Go,

now, everything is ready. Are you nervous?

NINA. Yes, very. I am not so much afraid of your mother as I am of

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Trigorin. I am terrified and ashamed to act before him; he is so famous. Is

he young?

TREPLIEFF. Yes.

NINA. What beautiful stories he writes!

TREPLIEFF. [Coldly] I have never read any of them, so I can't say.

NINA. Your play is very hard to act; there are no living characters in

it.

TREPLIEFF. Living characters! Life must be represented not as it is,

but as it ought to be; as it appears in dreams.

NINA. There is so little action; it seems more like a recitation. I think

love should always come into every play.

NINA and TREPLIEFF go up onto the little stage; PAULINA and

DORN come in.

PAULINA. It is getting damp. Go back and put on your goloshes.

DORN. I am quite warm.

PAULINA. You never will take care of yourself; you are quite

obstinate about it, and yet you are a doctor, and know quite well that damp

air is bad for you. You like to see me suffer, that's what it is. You sat out on

the terrace all yesterday evening on purpose.

DORN. [Sings]

"Oh, tell me not that youth is wasted."

PAULINA. You were so enchanted by the conversation of Madame

Arkadina that you did not even notice the cold. Confess that you admire

her.

DORN. I am fifty-five years old.

PAULINA. A trifle. That is not old for a man. You have kept your

looks magnificently, and women still like you.

DORN. What are you trying to tell me?

PAULINA. You men are all ready to go down on your knees to an

actress, all of you.

DORN. [Sings]

"Once more I stand before thee."

It is only right that artists should be made much of by society and

treated differently from, let us say, merchants. It is a kind of idealism.

The Sea-Gull

PAULINA. When women have loved you and thrown themselves at

your head, has that been idealism?

DORN. [Shrugging his shoulders] I can't say. There has been a great

deal that was admirable in my relations with women. In me they liked,

above all, the superior doctor. Ten years ago, you remember, I was the

only decent doctor they had in this part of the country--and then, I have

always acted like a man of honour.

PAULINA. [Seizes his hand] Dearest!

DORN. Be quiet! Here they come.

ARKADINA comes in on SORIN'S arm; also TRIGORIN,

SHAMRAEFF, MEDVIEDENKO, and MASHA.

SHAMRAEFF. She acted most beautifully at the Poltava Fair in 1873;

she was really magnificent. But tell me, too, where Tchadin the comedian

is now? He was inimitable as Rasplueff, better than Sadofski. Where is he

now?

ARKADINA. Don't ask me where all those antediluvians are! I know

nothing about them. [She sits down.]

SHAMRAEFF. [Sighing] Pashka Tchadin! There are none left like him.

The stage is not what it was in his time. There were sturdy oaks growing

on it then, where now but stumps remain.

DORN. It is true that we have few dazzling geniuses these days, but,

on the other hand, the average of acting is much higher.

SHAMRAEFF. I cannot agree with you; however, that is a matter of

taste, _de gustibus._

Enter TREPLIEFF from behind the stage.

ARKADINA. When will the play begin, my dear boy?

TREPLIEFF. In a moment. I must ask you to have patience.

ARKADINA. [Quoting from Hamlet] My son,

"Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul; And there I see such

black grained spots As will not leave their tinct."

[A horn is blown behind the stage.]

TREPLIEFF. Attention, ladies and gentlemen! The play is about to

begin. [A pause] I shall commence. [He taps the door with a stick, and

speaks in a loud voice] O, ye time-honoured, ancient mists that drive at

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摘要：

TheSea-Gull1TheSea-GullbyAntonCheckovTheSea-Gull2CHARACTERSIRINAABKADINA,anactressCONSTANTINETREPLIEFF,hersonPETERSORIN,herbrotherNINAZARIETCHNAYA,ayounggirl,thedaughterofarichlandownerILIASHAMRAEFF,themanagerofSORIN'SestatePAULINA,hiswifeMASHA,theirdaughterBORISTRIGORIN,anauthorEUGENEDORN,adoctorSI...

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