The sea-gull

About the book

On a country estate, Constantine Treplieff prepares a play with Nina as its performer, hoping for a response that might affirm both his art and his place beside his famous actress mother. The visit of the successful author Trigorin introduces another model of literary life and another focus for desire. Chekhov arranges a network of attachments in which affection is rarely returned in the form or direction its giver hopes for. Conversations about talent and work continually disclose personal needs, while the passage of time changes what artistic ambition has come to mean for different characters. The play combines comic awkwardness with painful failures of attention. Its central tensions concern the wish to be recognised and the difficulty of seeing another person's life without turning it into evidence about one's own.

• Artistic ambition
• Recognition
• Unreturned love

Why read it

For a Chekhov play that makes artistic arguments inseparable from the ordinary, often unnoticed need for affection.

Four-act play · English translation