Chekhov Three Sisters

Full Text and Introduction (NHB Drama Classics)
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-78001-425-8
Verlag: Nick Hern Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 124 Seiten

Reihe: NHB Drama Classi

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price Chekhov's masterpiece of provincial claustrophobia, translated and introduced by Stephen Mulrine. Living in a provincial army barrack town, Olga, Masha and Irina are finding life dull and long for the vitality of Moscow. Meanwhile their brother's wife begins to take over their house and their lives. Anton Chekhov's play Three Sisters was first performed in 1901 at the Moscow Art Theatre. This translation by Stephen Mulrine, published in the Nick Hern Books Drama Classics series, was first staged by Bristol Old Vic and Out of Joint on tour in 1995.

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

The PROZOROVS’ house. A drawing-room with pillars, behind which can be seen a large ballroom. It is mid-day, bright and sunny. In the ballroom, the table is being set for lunch. OLGA is wearing the blue uniform dress of a teacher at the girls’ high school, and while she stands and moves around, she corrects exercise books; MASHA, in a black dress, sits with her hat in her lap, reading a book. IRINA, dressed in white, stands deep in thought.

OLGA. Father died exactly a year ago, this very day. On your name-day, Irina, the fifth of May. It was very cold then – snowing. I thought I’d never get over it, and you had fainted, lying as if you were dead. And here we are, a year’s gone by, and we can talk about it quite calmly. You’re wearing white again, looking radiant …

A clock strikes twelve.

The clock struck then too.

A pause.

And I remember, when they carried father out, the band was playing, and they fired a salute at the graveside. He was a general, a brigade commander, yet so few people came to the funeral. Still, it was raining. Heavy rain, and sleet.

IRINA. Why bring it all back?

In the ballroom, beyond the pillars, BARON TUZENBAKH, CHEBUTYKIN and SOLIONY appear at the table.

OLGA. It’s warm today, we can even have the windows open, and the birch-trees still aren’t out. Father got his brigade, and we left Moscow eleven years ago, yet I can remember so well, how everything’s already in flower in Moscow by this time, the beginning of May, how warm it is, everything bathed in sunlight. Yes, eleven years have passed, and I remember it all, as if we’d left only yesterday. Oh, dear God – I woke up this morning, saw the light streaming in, the spring sunshine, and felt such joy welling up in my heart, such an intense longing to go home.

CHEBUTYKIN. Oh, forget it!

TUZENBAKH. It’s nonsense, of course.

MASHA, absorbed in her book, begins softly whistling.

OLGA. Masha, stop whistling. How can you?

A pause.

Yes, I daresay it’s because I’m at school all day, and then in the evening I have to give lessons, but my head aches the whole time, and I’ve already started to think like an old woman. To tell you the truth, these past four years I’ve been teaching at the high school, it’s as if all my strength and youth have been ebbing away, drop by drop. The only thing that grows and gets stronger, is the one dream I have …

IRINA. To go to Moscow! To sell this house, leave it all behind, and head for Moscow …

OLGA. Oh, yes! To Moscow, as soon as possible!

CHEBUTYKIN and TUZENBAKH laugh.

IRINA. Our brother’ll no doubt be a professor – in any case he won’t go on living here. There’s only one snag, and that’s poor Masha.

OLGA. Masha can come to Moscow for the whole summer, every year.

MASHA is still softly whistling.

IRINA. God willing, it’ll all work out. (Looking out of the window.) What a beautiful day it is. I don’t know why, I just feel so light-hearted! This morning I remembered it was my name-day, and I suddenly felt so happy. I remembered when I was little, and Mama was still alive. Oh, and such wonderful thoughts came into my mind, such feelings!

OLGA. You’re looking radiant today, even more beautiful than usual. And Masha’s beautiful too. Andrei could be quite handsome, except he’s got so stout, and it doesn’t suit him. And I’ve grown old and terribly thin, I suppose from losing my temper with the girls at school. Still, I have a day off today, I’m at home, my headache’s gone, and I feel younger than I did yesterday. Twenty-eight, that’s all I am … Everything’s fine, it’s God’s will, but even so – I think I’d have done better if I’d got married and stayed home all day.

A pause.

Yes, I’d have loved my husband.

TUZENBAKH (to SOLIONY). Honestly, you talk such nonsense, I’m fed up listening to you. (Entering the drawing-room.) By the way, I forgot to mention. You’ll be having a visit today from our new battery commander, Vershinin. (He sits down at the piano.)

OLGA. Really? That’ll be nice.

IRINA. Is he old?

TUZENBAKH. No, not particularly. He’s about forty, forty-five at most. (He begins to play, softly.) He’s a decent chap, by all accounts. He’s no fool, that’s for sure. Talks too much, though.

IRINA. Is he an interesting person?

TUZENBAKH. Yes, I suppose so. He’s got a wife, mind you, and a mother-in-law and two little girls. Married for the second time, no less. Pays calls on everybody, tells them he’s got a wife and two little girls. He’ll say it here too. His wife’s a bit cracked, wears her hair in a long braid, like a schoolgirl, talks all sorts of pretentious rot, philosophy and so on. Keeps trying to commit suicide, obviously to spite him. I’d have cleared off long ago, but he sticks it out, just complains.

SOLIONY (entering from the dining room, with CHEBUTYKIN). Now, with one hand, I can lift fifty pounds – but with two, a hundred and eighty, possibly two hundred. And from that I conclude that two men aren’t just twice as strong as one, but three times, or even more …

CHEBUTYKIN (reading a newspaper as he enters). For falling hair … nine grammes of naphthalene in a half-bottle of alcohol … to be dissolved, and applied daily … (He writes in a notebook.) Better jot that down! (To SOLIONY.) So anyway, as I was telling you, you put a cork into a little bottle, and pass a glass tube through it … Then you take just a pinch of common-or-garden alum …

IRINA. Ivan Romanych, dearest Ivan Romanych!

CHEBUTYKIN. My dear, sweet child, what is it?

IRINA. Tell me, why am I so happy today? It’s as if I’m sailing, with a wide deep sky above me and great white birds flying past. Why is that? Tell me, why?

CHEBUTYKIN (kisses both her hands, tenderly). My little white bird …

IRINA. When I woke up this morning, I got up and washed, and it was as if everything in this life had suddenly become clear to me, and I knew how I ought to live. Dear Ivan Romanych, I know everything now. A man must labour, he should work in the sweat of his brow, no matter who he is, and that’s the only thing that gives meaning and purpose to his life, the source of all his happiness and joy. Oh, it must be wonderful to be a workman, and get up when it’s still barely light, to break stones on the road, or a shepherd, or a teacher, teaching children, or an engine-driver on the railway … Dear God, better to be a dumb ox, or a horse, if only to work – anything but a girl who gets up at twelve o’clock, takes her coffee in bed, then spends two hours dressing! That’s awful! It’s like having a terrible thirst in a heatwave, that’s how much I long to work. And if I don’t get up early, and really work, well then, Ivan Romanych, you can just refuse to be my friend.

CHEBUTYKIN (tenderly). That’s exactly what I’ll do.

OLGA. Father trained us to get up at seven. Nowadays Irina wakes at seven, and then lies thinking until at least nine o’clock. And with such a serious face! (Laughs.)

IRINA. You’re so used to seeing me as a little girl – you think it’s strange if I look serious. But I’m twenty!

TUZENBAKH. This longing for work – dear God, it’s all so familiar! I’ve never done a stroke of work in my life. I was born in St.Petersburg, a cold, listless town, to a family that’d never known either work, or want. I remember I used to come home from the cadet corps, and a manservant had to pull off my boots; I’d be acting the goat, while my mother looked on admiringly; she just couldn’t believe other people saw me in a different light. No, they shielded me from work. But they only just managed it, yes indeed! The time has come, the storm clouds are massing for all of us, a fierce, cleansing wind’s blowing up, it’s coming, it’s not far away, and it’s going to sweep the idleness right out of our society, all the apathy, and prejudice against work, the rotten boredom. I shall work, yes, and in twenty-five or thirty years’ time, everybody’ll work. Every one of us!

CHEBUTYKIN. Well, I shan’t work.

TUZENBAKH. You don’t count.

SOLIONY. In twenty-five years’ time you won’t even be alive, thank God. In another couple of years you’ll die of a stroke. Either that or I’ll lose my temper and plant a bullet in your brain, my angel. (He takes a little bottle of scent from his pocket and sprinkles some on his chest and hands.)

CHEBUTYKIN (laughs). Well, I’ve never done a thing, I must say. Since I left university, I haven’t so much as lifted a finger, haven’t read a single book, nothing but newspapers … (He takes another newspaper out of his pocket.) Look, see … I know from the papers that there was somebody called Dobrolyubov, but what he wrote about, I haven’t a clue. God knows …

Someone knocks up from downstairs.

Ah!...