The sea-gull
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
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.
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 night
across the surface of this lake, blind you our eyes with sleep, and show
us in our dreams that which will be in twice ten thousand years!
SORIN. There won’t be anything in twice ten thousand years.
TREPLIEFF. Then let them now show us that nothingness.
ARKADINA. Yes, let them--we are asleep.
The curtain rises. A vista opens across the lake. The moon hangs low
above the horizon and is reflected in the water. NINA, dressed in white,
is seen seated on a great rock.
NINA. All men and beasts, lions, eagles, and quails, horned stags,
geese, spiders, silent fish that inhabit the waves, starfish from the
sea, and creatures invisible to the eye--in one word, life--all, all
life, completing the dreary round imposed upon it, has died out at last.
A thousand years have passed since the earth last bore a living creature
on her breast, and the unhappy moon now lights her lamp in vain. No
longer are the cries of storks heard in the meadows, or the drone of
beetles in the groves of limes. All is cold, cold. All is void, void,
void. All is terrible, terrible--[A pause] The bodies of all living
creatures have dropped to dust, and eternal matter has transformed them
into stones and water and clouds; but their spirits have flowed together
into one, and that great world-soul am I! In me is the spirit of the
great Alexander, the spirit of Napoleon, of Caesar, of Shakespeare,
and of the tiniest leech that swims. In me the consciousness of man has
joined hands with the instinct of the animal; I understand all, all,
all, and each life lives again in me.
[The will-o-the-wisps flicker out along the lake shore.]
ARKADINA. [Whispers] What decadent rubbish is this?
TREPLIEFF. [Imploringly] Mother!
NINA. I am alone. Once in a hundred years my lips are opened, my voice
echoes mournfully across the desert earth, and no one hears. And you,
poor lights of the marsh, you do not hear me. You are engendered at
sunset in the putrid mud, and flit wavering about the lake till dawn,
unconscious, unreasoning, unwarmed by the breath of life. Satan, father
of eternal matter, trembling lest the spark of life should glow in you,
has ordered an unceasing movement of the atoms that compose you, and so
you shift and change for ever. I, the spirit of the universe, I alone
am immutable and eternal. [A pause] Like a captive in a dungeon deep and
void, I know not where I am, nor what awaits me. One thing only is not
hidden from me: in my fierce and obstinate battle with Satan, the source
of the forces of matter, I am destined to be victorious in the end.
Matter and spirit will then be one at last in glorious harmony, and the
reign of freedom will begin on earth. But this can only come to pass by
slow degrees, when after countless eons the moon and earth and shining
Sirius himself shall fall to dust. Until that hour, oh, horror! horror!
horror! [A pause. Two glowing red points are seen shining across the
lake] Satan, my mighty foe, advances; I see his dread and lurid eyes.
ARKADINA. I smell sulphur. Is that done on purpose?
TREPLIEFF. Yes.
ARKADINA. Oh, I see; that is part of the effect.
TREPLIEFF. Mother!
NINA. He longs for man--
PAULINA. [To DORN] You have taken off your hat again! Put it on, you
will catch cold.
ARKADINA. The doctor has taken off his hat to Satan father of eternal
matter--
TREPLIEFF. [Loudly and angrily] Enough of this! There’s an end to the
performance. Down with the curtain!
ARKADINA. Why, what are you so angry about?
TREPLIEFF. [Stamping his foot] The curtain; down with it! [The curtain
falls] Excuse me, I forgot that only a chosen few might write plays or
act them. I have infringed the monopoly. I--I---
He would like to say more, but waves his hand instead, and goes out to
the left.
ARKADINA. What is the matter with him?
SORIN. You should not handle youthful egoism so roughly, sister.
ARKADINA. What did I say to him?
SORIN. You hurt his feelings.
ARKADINA. But he told me himself that this was all in fun, so I treated
his play as if it were a comedy.
SORIN. Nevertheless---
ARKADINA. Now it appears that he has produced a masterpiece, if you
please! I suppose it was not meant to amuse us at all, but that he
arranged the performance and fumigated us with sulphur to demonstrate to
us how plays should be written, and what is worth acting. I am tired
of him. No one could stand his constant thrusts and sallies. He is a
wilful, egotistic boy.
SORIN. He had hoped to give you pleasure.
ARKADINA. Is that so? I notice, though, that he did not choose an
ordinary play, but forced his decadent trash on us. I am willing to
listen to any raving, so long as it is not meant seriously, but in
showing us this, he pretended to be introducing us to a new form of art,
and inaugurating a new era. In my opinion, there was nothing new about
it, it was simply an exhibition of bad temper.
TRIGORIN. Everybody must write as he feels, and as best he may.
ARKADINA. Let him write as he feels and can, but let him spare me his
nonsense.
DORN. Thou art angry, O Jove!
ARKADINA. I am a woman, not Jove. [She lights a cigarette] And I am not
angry, I am only sorry to see a young man foolishly wasting his time. I
did not mean to hurt him.
MEDVIEDENKO. No one has any ground for separating life from matter, as
the spirit may well consist of the union of material atoms. [Excitedly,
to TRIGORIN] Some day you should write a play, and put on the stage the
life of a schoolmaster. It is a hard, hard life.
ARKADINA. I agree with you, but do not let us talk about plays or atoms
now. This is such a lovely evening. Listen to the singing, friends, how
sweet it sounds.
PAULINA. Yes, they are singing across the water. [A pause.]
ARKADINA. [To TRIGORIN] Sit down beside me here. Ten or fifteen years
ago we had music and singing on this lake almost all night. There are
six houses on its shores. All was noise and laughter and romance then,
such romance! The young star and idol of them all in those days was this
man here, [Nods toward DORN] Doctor Eugene Dorn. He is fascinating now,
but he was irresistible then. But my conscience is beginning to
prick me. Why did I hurt my poor boy? I am uneasy about him. [Loudly]
Constantine! Constantine!
MASHA. Shall I go and find him?
ARKADINA. If you please, my dear.
MASHA. [Goes off to the left, calling] Mr. Constantine! Oh, Mr.
Constantine!
NINA. [Comes in from behind the stage] I see that the play will never be
finished, so now I can go home. Good evening. [She kisses ARKADINA and
PAULINA.]
SORIN. Bravo! Bravo!
ARKADINA. Bravo! Bravo! We were quite charmed by your acting. With your
looks and such a lovely voice it is a crime for you to hide yourself
in the country. You must be very talented. It is your duty to go on the
stage, do you hear me?
NINA. It is the dream of my life, which will never come true.
ARKADINA. Who knows? Perhaps it will. But let me present Monsieur Boris
Trigorin.
NINA. I am delighted to meet you. [Embarrassed] I have read all your
books.
ARKADINA. [Drawing NINA down beside her] Don’t be afraid of him, dear.
He is a simple, good-natured soul, even if he is a celebrity. See, he is
embarrassed himself.
DORN. Couldn’t the curtain be raised now? It is depressing to have it
down.
SHAMRAEFF. [Loudly] Jacob, my man! Raise the curtain!
NINA. [To TRIGORIN] It was a curious play, wasn’t it?
TRIGORIN. Very. I couldn’t understand it at all, but I watched it with