MURASHKIN. I do sympathize.
TOLKACHOV. I can see the way you sympathize . . . Good-bye. I’m off to get some sardines and salami . . . there’s still the tooth powder, and then to the station.
MURASHKIN. Where’s the cottage you’re renting?
TOLKACHOV. On Dead Man’s Creek.
MURASHKIN (delighted). Really? Listen, do you know a woman who’s renting there, Olga Pavlovna Finberg?
TOLKACHOV. I do. In fact she’s a friend of ours.
MURASHKIN. Is that so? Well, what a coincidence! It’s so convenient, it would be so kind of you . . .
TOLKACHOV. What are you getting at?
MURASHKIN. Dear old pal, could you run me a little errand? Be a friend! Now, promise me that you’ll do it?
TOLKACHOV. What is it?
MURASHKIN. A friend in need is a friend indeed! For my sake, my dear man. First of all, convey my regards to Olga Pavlovna and tell her that I’m alive and well, and kiss her hand. Second, bring her a little something. She asked me to buy her a portable sewing machine, and there’s no one to deliver it to her . . . Bring it, dear boy! And, while you’re at it, bring along this canary in a cage . . . only very carefully, otherwise the door will break off . . . Why are you looking at me like that?
TOLKACHOV. A sewing machine . . . a canary in a cage . . . Tweety birds and dicky birds . . .
MURASHKIN. Ivan Ivanovich, what’s wrong with you? Why are you turning so red?
TOLKACHOV (stamping his feet). Hand over the sewing machine! Where’s the cage? Now you pile yourself on top! Devour a man! Tear him to pieces! Finish him off! (Clenching his fists.) I must have blood! Blood! Blood!
MURASHKIN. You’ve gone out of your mind!
TOLKACHOV (bearing down on him). I must have blood! Blood!
MURASHKIN (terrified). He’s gone out of his mind! (Shouts.) Petrushka! Mariya! Where are you? Somebody, help!
TOLKACHOV (chasing him around the room). I must have blood! Blood!
Curtain
VARIANT TO
An Involuntary Tragedian
The variant comes from the censor’s copy (C), Bazarov’s published edition (B), and the lithographed script (L).
page 558 / After: buy him a bicycle; — The Kuritsyns’ baby died, and I have to get a child’s coffin. (C, B, L)
NOTES
1 Suggestive comic names: Murashkin from murashka, ant, and Tolkachov from tolkach, go-getter.
2 Comic name from khrap, snore.
3 Comic name from vikhr, whirlwind.
4 In the original, Motnya, a farce by K. A. Tarnovsky. Scandal in a Respectable Family was also a farce, this one by N. I. Kulikov. Chekhov had seen both as a schoolboy in Taganrog.
5 The Ten Plagues that God visited upon the Egyptians to compel them to release the Hebrews from slavery and let them go (Exodus 7–10).
6 “Say not that her youth,” a ballad based on a poem by N. A. Nekrasov (“A heavy cross fell to her lot,” 1855) and set to music by many composers. “Once again,” the opening of a “gypsy” ballad from a lyric by V. I. Krasov. Chekhov cites them frequently in his plays.
7 In the original, Cechott and Merzheevsky. O. A. Chechott (b. 1842) and I. P. Merzheevsky (1838–1908) were well-known St. Petersburg psychiatrists.
8 From Shakespeare’s Othello (Act III, scene 3): “Blood, O Iago, blood!”
THE WEDDING
Chekhov characterized The Wedding as a “play in one act,” thus distinguishing it from his one-act comedies called “jokes” (shutki). It differs, too, in being based on real experiences and individuals from Chekhov’s past. The Greek confectioner Dymba was modeled on a clerk in his father’s grocery store in Taganrog; the flirtatious midwife he had met when serving as best man at a wedding in 1887. Between 1885 and 1886, Chekhov had lived in a Moscow flat beneath the quarters of a caterer who rented out rooms for weddings and balls. At times, he seemed obsessed with nuptial ceremonials, which are the subject of many of his stories written in the 1880s. This play was first performed at the Art and Literary Society at the Moscow Hunt Club on November 28, 1900, as part of a Chekhov evening. Lev Tolstoy, who was present, laughed till he cried.
The Wedding masterfully displays the dissolution of social convention. Every pretense kept up by one character is demolished by another. No one’s secrets are safe. Over the course of the play, we discover that the groom has married the bride for the sake of a paltry dowry, which has yet to be paid; that the bride is herself totally insensitive to her situation; that her parents are the most narrow and parsimonious of philistines; and that the guests bear no particular goodwill to the newlyweds. The play revolves around one principal deception: to dress out the banquet, a “General,” that is, a high-ranking official, a V.I.P., is required as guest of honor. The bride’s mother has charged a friend with this task; he has pocketed the money and brought a deaf naval captain. The mother discovers the swindle and turns the old man out without further ado. At that moment, the farcical tone of the play alters. The old captain, disabused and stripped of any consideration, can only gasp in horror, “How disgusting! How revolting!” After the old man’s exit, the guests and hosts revert to their squabbling. The moment of genuine feeling has made no dent in their thick hides.
Again, Chekhov employed the comic device of the gap between reality and the characters’ aspirations. Hoping to sound refined, they mangle French and mispronounce polysyllabic words. Zmeyukina, a midwife whose profession is of the earthiest, constantly demands “atmosphere” and delicate feelings. In anticipation of Solyony in Three Sisters, she quotes the romantic poet Lermontov. The father of the bride invariably dismisses anything unfamiliar with contempt, branding it “monkeyshines.” The main oration of the evening is delivered by a Greek who butchers the Russian language. Yet when a native Russian speaker rises to address the guests, it is the retired Captain, whose naval lingo is every bit as incomprehensible. Assuming that he is entertaining the company, the old salt bores the guests into stupor and then mutiny.