Chekhov The Seagull

Full Text and Introduction (NHB Drama Classics)
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-78001-418-0
Verlag: Nick Hern Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 0, 92 Seiten

Reihe: NHB Classic Plays

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Chekhov's early tragedy, translated and introduced by Stephen Mulrine. Arkadina, a famous actress, and her lover, a famous novelist, are spending the summer on her country estate, but their glamorous presence proves fatally disruptive to the lives of all those present, especially her son, Konstantin and Nina, the girl he loves. Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull was first staged at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in St Petersburg in October 1896. This translation by Stephen Mulrine, published in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, was first staged by English Touring Theatre in 1997.

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), a physician by training, is now considered the most notable 20th-century Russian dramatist. His major plays, all staged by Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre, helped establish psychological realism in European theatre.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chekhov, Anton

Weitere Mitwirkende

Mulrine, Stephen

Leseproben

Act One

A section of the park on SORIN’s estate. A broad avenue leads away from the audience towards a lake in the background. The avenue is screened off by a makeshift stage, for amateur theatricals, obscuring the view of the lake. There are bushes on either side of the stage. A few chairs, and a small table.

The sun has just set. YAKOV and some other workmen are busy behind the stage curtain; sounds of coughing and hammering. MASHA and MEDVEDENKO enter left, returning from a walk.

MEDVEDENKO. Why do you always wear black?

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

MEDVEDENKO. Why? (Thinking it over.) I don’t understand it. You’re in good health, your father might not be rich, but he’s comfortably off. My life’s much harder than yours. I earn a measly twenty-three roubles a month, and there’s superannuation to come off that, but you don’t see me in mourning.

They sit down.

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

MEDVEDENKO. Yes, in theory, but in practice it’s a different story. I’ve got my mother, two sisters, and a younger brother to support, all on a salary of twenty-three roubles. And we need to eat and drink, don’t we? We need tea and sugar, right? Tobacco? Things are tight, I don’t mind telling you.

MASHA (looking round at the stage). They’ll be starting the play soon.

MEDVEDENKO. Yes. Nina’s going to be in it, and Kostya’s written it. They’re in love with one another, and tonight their souls will merge to create a single, unified work of art. But between your soul and mine there’s no such point of contact. I love you, I can’t sit at home because I miss you so much. I walk four miles here every day and four miles back, and I meet with nothing but indifference on your part. Well, that’s understandable. I’ve no money, we have a large family. Who’d want to marry a man who can’t even feed himself?

MASHA. Oh, that’s rubbish. (Takes a pinch of snuff.) I’m really quite touched by your affection, I just can’t return it, that’s all. (Offers him the snuff-box.) Have some.

MEDVEDENKO. No, thanks.

A pause.

MASHA. It’s very close, there’s going to be thunder tonight. You’re always droning on about something – either that or complaining about money. You think there’s no greater unhappiness than poverty, but the way I see it, it’s a thousand times better to go about in rags and beg for your living, than to … Oh, you wouldn’t understand.

SORIN and KOSTYA enter right.

SORIN (Leaning on his walking-stick). No, country life just doesn’t suit me, old chap, and I’ll never get used to it now, that’s obvious. I went to bed last night at ten, and woke up this morning at nine, with the distinct feeling my brains were glued to my skull, after all that sleeping. (Laughs.) And I dozed off again by chance after lunch, so now I’m completely wrecked, it’s a nightmare, all things considered.

KOSTYA. Yes, you certainly ought to live in town. (Catching sight of MASHA and MEDVEDENKO.) Excuse me – you’ll be called when it’s due to begin, but you can’t stay here just now. Please go away.

SORIN (to MASHA). Masha dear, if you’d be so kind – ask your father to let the dog off its chain, to stop it howling. My sister didn’t get a wink of sleep again last night.

MASHA. You can speak to my father yourself, I shan’t. Leave me out of it, please. (To MEDVEDENKO.) Come on, let’s go.

MEDVEDENKO (to KOSTYA). You’ll send somebody to tell us when it’s ready, won’t you?

They exit.

SORIN. That means that dog’s going to be howling all night again. Anyway, as I was saying, I’ve never lived in the country, the way I’d like to. I used to take a month’s leave, come down here for a rest, that sort of thing, but they’d start plaguing you with all manner of nonsense, you’d feel like clearing off the first day. (Laughs.) Yes, I was always glad to leave. Well, now I’m retired and I don’t know what to do with myself, by and large. Still, got to put up with it.

YAKOV (to KOSTYA). Sir, we’re going for a swim now.

KOSTYA. Fine, just make sure you’re back here in ten minutes. (Looks at his watch.) We’ll be starting soon.

YAKOV. Right, sir. (Exits.)

KOSTYA (looking over at the stage). Now, this is what you call a theatre. A curtain, a wing at either side, and open space beyond. No scenery whatsoever. A view straight onto the lake and the horizon. We’ll raise the curtain at exactly half-past eight, when the moon comes up.

SORIN. Splendid.

KOSTYA. Of course, if Nina’s late, it’ll spoil the whole effect. She ought to be here by now. Her father and stepmother keep her on such a tight rein, slipping out of the house is like breaking out of prison. (Fixes his uncle’s tie.) Your hair and beard are a mess. You should have them trimmed, honestly …

SORIN (combing his beard). That’s the story of my life. Even when I was young I looked as if I drank like a fish. Never had any luck with the ladies, either. (Sitting down.) So, why is your mother in such a mood?

KOSTYA. Why? She’s bored. (Sits beside him.) And she’s jealous. She’s got it in for me to start with – and the performance, and my play – because that writer of hers might take a fancy to Nina. She doesn’t even know the piece, but she hates it already.

SORIN (laughs). Oh, come on, you’re imagining things …

KOSTYA. No no, she’s annoyed because it’ll be Nina who gets all the applause on this tiny little stage, and not her. (Glances at his watch.) She’s a psychologist’s dream, my mother. She’s talented all right, she’s intelligent, she’ll weep buckets over some book, and reel off the whole of Nekrasov by heart. Oh yes, she’ll tend the sick like a ministering angel, but you just let her hear you praising Eleanora Duse. Oh, no. You must worship her alone, she’s the only one you can write or shout about – you’ve got to go into ecstasies over her wonderful acting in The Lady of the Camellias or The Fumes of Life. Well, there’s none of that intoxicating brew here in the country, so she becomes bored and irritable, and we’re all her enemies, it’s all our fault. She’s superstitious, too – terrified if she sees three candles, or the number thirteen. And she’s miserly. She’s got seventy thousand in a bank in Odessa, I know that for a fact. But you ask her for a loan, and she bursts into tears.

SORIN. You’ve got it into your head that your mother won’t like your play, that’s what’s really bothering you. Oh, come on – your mother adores you.

KOSTYA (pulling the petals off a flower). She loves me – she loves me not, she loves me – she loves me not, she loves me – she loves me not. (Laughs.) You see? My mother doesn’t love me. No wonder. She wants to live, have affairs, wear bright clothes, and I’m twenty-five already, a constant reminder to her that she’s no longer young. She’s thirty-two when I’m not here, and forty-three when I am, that’s why she hates me. And she knows I’ve no time for the theatre. She loves the theatre, she thinks she’s serving humanity, a sacred art, but as far as I’m concerned the theatre of today’s stuck in a rut, boring and conventional. When the curtain goes up on that room with its three walls, and its artificial light, and we see those great geniuses, those high priests of the sacred art, miming how people eat, drink, make love, walk, wear their jackets – when they try to fish some sort of moral out of the most banal scenes and lines, some pathetic reach-me-down maxim that’ll come in handy around the house – when they serve up the same thing over and over again, in a hundred-and-one variations – well, I just take to my heels, the way Maupassant fled from the Eiffel Tower, which weighed down his brain with its sheer vulgarity.

SORIN. We can’t do without the theatre.

KOSTYA. It’s new forms we need. We need new forms of theatre, and if we can’t have them, we’d be better off with nothing. (Looks at his watch.) I love my mother, I love her very much, but look at her: smoking, drinking, living in sin with that writer of hers, her name constantly bandied about in the papers – I find that all so tiresome. Sometimes I feel a twinge of selfishness, like any ordinary mortal, and I actually regret having a famous actress for a mother – I think I’d be much happier if she were just an ordinary woman. I mean, can you imagine a more desperate situation? It’s so stupid. She’d be entertaining, a whole room full of celebrities, actors and writers, and I’d be stuck in the middle of them, an utter nonentity, tolerated only because I’m her son. Who am I? What am I? I left university in third year, due to circumstances beyond our control, as...