I thought Chekhov was all about bored middle-class Russians living on their country estates fantasising about getting away to Moscow. I thought his plays were notorious for being calm and bourgeois. I’ve been astonished to discover they are packed with melodramatic histrionics, wild declarations of passionate love and sudden suicides. Both Ivanov and The Seagull end with the young male lead shooting himself. It is hard to believe that Chekhov described a play in which at least three of the characters are stricken with unrequited love, and frustration, with a miserable sense of wasted lives, and the male lead’s misery leads him to commit suicide – as a comedy.
Summary
The play dramatises the romantic and artistic conflicts between four characters: the famous middlebrow story writer Boris Trigorin, the ingenue Nina, the fading actress Irina Arkadina, and her son the symbolist playwright Konstantin Treplev. But as in Ivanov, a lot of the interest (and actual comedy) is in the ‘secondary’ characters.
I genuinely don’t understand how Chekhov can be said to have changed the face of modern drama when his plays are about love, frustrated love affairs, the wrong people being in love with each other, a naive young woman (Nina) being taken up by a cynical old writer (Trigorin) then cast adrift when he gets bored of her. It sounds more like a Restoration Comedy from the 1680s than a ‘modern’ play from the 1890s.
Maybe the modernity is something to do with the way ‘The Seagull’ has a range of characters and critics (and actors) point out how well developed each one is. And, apparently, in contrast to the melodrama of mainstream 19th-century theatre, lurid actions such as Konstantin’s suicide attempts take place offstage. But they still take place, just as in those lurid melodramas.
Note: the Russian word Ча́йка should be translated as ‘gull’ so the play should rightfully be titled in English ‘The Gull’. There is no sea involved, especially seeing as it’s set on an estate in inland Russia by a lake. Makes you wonder how much else has been lost or garbled in translation.
The following cast list and plot synopsis rely heavily on the Wikipedia article.
Cast
- Irina Arkadina – an actress, married surname Trepleva (in love with the author Trigorin)
- Konstantin Treplev – Irina’s son (in love with Nina)
- Pyotr Sorin – Irina’s brother, owner of the country estate where the action is set
- Nina Zarechnaya – daughter of a rich landowner (also in love with Trigorin)
- Ilya Shamrayev – bad-temptered manager of Sorin’s estate
- Polina Andreyevna – Shamrayev’s wife (secretly in love with Dr Dorn)
- Masha – Polina’s daughter (loves Konstantin but resigned to marrying the schoolteacher Medvedenko)
- Boris Trigorin – a novelist, plays off Irina and Nina who both love him
- Yevgeny Dorn – a doctor (wise commentator on the action)
- Semyon Medvedenko – poor teacher in love with Masha
Act 1
Pyotr Sorin is a retired senior civil servant in failing health at his country estate. His sister, actress Irina Arkadina, arrives at the estate for a brief vacation with her lover, the writer Boris Trigorin. Pyotr and his guests gather at an outdoor stage to see an unconventional play that Irina’s son, Konstantin Treplev, has written and directed. The play-within-a-play features Nina Zarechnaya, a young woman who lives on a neighbouring estate, as the ‘soul of the world’ in a time far in the future. The play is Konstantin’s latest attempt at creating a new theatrical form. It is a dense symbolist work.
Irina laughs at the play, finding it ridiculous and incomprehensible; the performance ends prematurely after the audience keeps interrupting and Konstantin storms off in humiliation. Irina does not seem concerned about her son, who has not found his way in the world. Although others ridicule Konstantin’s drama, the physician Yevgeny Dorn praises him.
Act 1 also sets up the play’s various romantic triangles. The schoolteacher Semyon Medvedenko loves Masha, the daughter of the estate’s steward Ilya Shamrayev and his wife Polina Andryevna. However, Masha is in love with Konstantin, who is in love with Nina, but Nina falls for Trigorin. Polina is in an affair with Yevgeny. When Masha tells Yevgeny about her longing for Konstantin, Yevgeny helplessly blames the lake for making everybody feel romantic.
So it is a play about misplaced love, a theme which goes back to the ancient Greeks.
Act 2
A few days later, in the afternoon, the characters are outside the estate. Arkadina, after reminiscing about happier times, engages in a heated argument with the house steward Shamrayev and decides to leave. Nina lingers behind after the group leaves, and Konstantin arrives to give her a gull that he has shot. Nina is confused and horrified at the gift. Konstantin sees Trigorin approaching and leaves in a jealous fit.
Nina asks Trigorin to tell her about the writer’s life; he replies that it is not an easy one. Nina says that she knows the life of an actress is not easy either, but she wants more than anything to be one. Trigorin sees the gull that Konstantin has shot and muses on how he could use it as a subject for a short story: ‘The plot for the short story: a young girl lives all her life on the shore of a lake. She loves the lake, like a gull, and she’s happy and free, like a gull. But a man arrives by chance, and when he sees her, he destroys her, out of sheer boredom. Like this gull.’
Arkadina calls for Trigorin, and he leaves as she tells him that she has changed her mind – they will be leaving immediately. Nina lingers behind, enthralled with Trigorin’s celebrity and modesty, and gushes, ‘My dream!’
Act 3
Inside the estate, Arkadina and Trigorin have decided to depart. Between acts, Konstantin attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head, but the bullet only grazed his skull. He spends the majority of Act 3 with his scalp heavily bandaged.
Nina finds Trigorin eating breakfast and presents him with a medallion that proclaims her devotion to him, using a line from one of Trigorin’s own books: ‘If you ever need my life, come and take it.’ She retreats after begging for one last chance to see Trigorin before he leaves.
Arkadina appears, followed by Sorin, whose health has continued to deteriorate. Trigorin leaves to continue packing. After a brief argument between Arkadina and Sorin, Sorin collapses in grief. He is helped by Medvedenko. Konstantin enters and asks his mother to change his bandage. As she is doing this, Konstantin disparages Trigorin, eliciting another argument. When Trigorin reenters, Konstantin leaves in tears.
Trigorin asks Arkadina if they can stay at the estate. She flatters and cajoles him until he agrees to return with her to Moscow. After she has left the room, Nina comes to say her final goodbye to Trigorin and to inform him that she is running away to become an actress against her parents’ wishes. They kiss passionately and make plans to meet again in Moscow.
Act 4
Two years later in wintertime and we are in the drawing room that has been converted to Konstantin’s study. Masha finally accepts Medvedenko’s marriage proposal, and they have a child together, though Masha still nurses an unrequited love for Konstantin. Various characters discuss what has happened in the two years that have passed: Nina and Trigorin lived together in Moscow for a time until he abandoned her and went back to Arkadina. Nina gave birth to Trigorin’s baby, but it died in a short time. Nina never achieved any real success as an actress, and she is currently on a tour of the provinces with a small theatre group. Konstantin has had some short stories published, but he is increasingly depressed. Sorin’s health is still failing, and the people at the estate have telegraphed for Arkadina to come for his final days.
Most of the play’s characters go to the drawing room to play a game of bingo. Konstantin does not join them, instead working on a manuscript at his desk. After the group leaves to eat dinner, Konstantin hears someone at the back door. He is surprised to find Nina, whom he invites inside.
Nina tells Konstantin about her life over the last two years. Konstantin says that he followed Nina. She starts to compare herself to the gull that Konstantin killed in Act 2, then rejects that comparison and says ‘I am an actress’. She tells him that she was forced to tour with a second-rate theatre company after the death of the child she had with Trigorin, but she seems to have a newfound confidence. Konstantin pleads with her to stay, but she is in such disarray that his pleading means nothing. She embraces Konstantin and leaves. Despondent, Konstantin spends two minutes silently tearing up his manuscripts before leaving the study.
The group re-enters and returns to the bingo game. There is a sudden gunshot from off-stage, and Dorn goes to investigate. He returns and takes Trigorin aside. Dorn tells Trigorin to somehow get Arkadina away, for Konstantin has just shot himself.
Histrionics
From the very opening words the characters are living in an overwrought world of extreme emotions, routinely describing themselves or each other as hopelessly miserable, flying off the handle at the drop of a hat and, whenever they have moments alone with their secret loves, liable to ludicrously over-the-top histrionics. Thus, the opening lines of the play are:
MEDVEDENKO: Why do you wear black all the time?
MASHA: I’m in mourning for my life.
And other characters routinely echo this mood of hopeless despair.
SORIN: It’s a nightmare, that’s what it comes to.
TREPLEV: I suffered agonies of humiliation.
NINA: Something seems to lure me to this lake like a seagull. My heart’s full of feeling for you.
MASHA: I’m so unhappy. No one, no one knows how I suffer.
They sound like emo teenagers, stroppy self-pitying adolescents.
MASHA: I feel about a thousand years old. My life seems to drag on and on endlessly and I often think I’d rather be dead.
IRINA: Why is he so terribly bored and depressed?
POLINA: It’s agony to me being jealous.
TREPLEV: If you only knew how wretched I am…It’s as if someone had banged a nail into my head, damn it! And damn the selfishness that seems to suck my blood like a vampire.
Like a vampire? I can’t imagine how these over-the-top, immature outbursts can possibly be delivered with a straight face by supposedly grown-up actors in the theatre.
TRIGORIN: I’m possessed by visions of delight. Do set me free.
IRINA: No, no, no, you can’t talk to me like that, I’m only an ordinary woman. Don’t torture me, Boris, I’m terrified.
Is The Seagull meant to be ‘a comedy’ because the characters are so laughably preposterous? Take the scene where the ageing actress Irina gets down on her knees and clasps the legs of the writer she adores – is it intended to be laughable because that’s how it comes over?
IRINA: My marvellous, splendid man, you’re the last page in my life. [Kneels down] My delight, my pride, my joy! [Embraces his knees] If you leave me for one hour I shan’t survive, I shall go mad, my wonderful splendid one. My master.
Surely any audience with a sense of proportion would start tittering at the characters’ absurd histrionics:
TREPLEV: Since I lost you and began having my work published, life’s been unbearable, sheer agony. It’s as if I’d suddenly stopped being young, I feel as if I was ninety. I call upon you, kiss the ground you have trodden on…
Critics go on about the subtle sub-texts in Chekhov, which may well be there in various moments, but the central impression is of amazingly unsubtle and forthright declamations of absurdly over-the-top emotions. Take the final speech of the young female lead, Nina, which sounds as if it comes from a kind of stirring Christian pageant:
NINA: I know now that in our work, whether we’re actors or writers, the great thing isn’t fame or glory, it isn’t what I used to dream of, but simply stamina. You must know how to bear your cross and have faith. I have faith and things don’t hurt me so much now. And when I think of my vocation, I’m not afraid of life.
With a few tweaks, this could be the speech of a Young Communist in a Soviet propaganda play. Subtlety my ****.
Credit
Page references are to the 1980 World’s Classic paperback edition of Five Plays by Anton Chekhov, translated by Ronald Hingley.
Related links
Related reviews
- Chekhov reviews
- Russian reviews
Books & Boots 