Pause.
What are you laughing at?
ZINOCHKA. You aren’t pretending to be a doctor, are you?
ZAITSEV. Certainly not! What do you take me for? Hm . . . nothing wrong with the pulse . . . M-yes . . . And a plump, dainty little hand . . . Damn it, I love roadside flings! You travel for miles on end and suddenly you come across this kind of . . . little hand . . . Do you like medicine?
ZINOCHKA. Yes.
ZAITSEV. Isn’t that nice! Awfully nice! Let me take your pulse!
ZINOCHKA. But, but, but . . . don’t get carried away!
ZAITSEV. What a lovely voice, charming eyes darting hither and yon . . . The smile alone could make you lose your mind . . . Is your husband jealous? Very? Your pulse . . . your pulse alone, and I could die happy!
ZINOCHKA. Excuse me, if I may, my dear sir . . . My dear sir! I see that you take me for some sort of . . . You are mistaken, my dear sir! I am a married woman, my husband occupies a position in society.
ZAITSEV. I know, I know, but can I help it if you are so beautiful?
ZINOCHKA. Well, I, my dear sir, shall not allow you . . . Please leave me alone, otherwise I shall have to take measures . . . My dear sir! I love and respect my husband too much to allow some passing smart-aleck to talk such smut to me . . . You’re on quite the wrong track if you think that I . . . Here’s my husband coming back, I think . . . Yes, yes, he’s coming . . . Why don’t you say something? What are you waiting for . . . Go on, go on . . . Kiss me or something!
ZAITSEV. My dearest. (Kisses her.) Sweetie-pie! Puggy-wuggy! (Kisses her.)
ZINOCHKA. But, but, but . . .
ZAITSEV. My pussy-kitten . . . (Kisses her.) My flibbertigibbet . . . (When he sees GUSEV enter.) One more question: when do you cough the most, on Tuesdays or Thursdays?
ZINOCHKA. Fridays . . .
ZAITSEV. Hm . . . Let me take your pulse!
GUSEV (aside). It looked as if he were kissing her . . . Exactly the same as with Sherventsov . . . I don’t understand a thing about medicine . . . (To his wife.) Zinochka, you be serious . . . You musn’t go on like this . . . You mustn’t neglect your health! You ought to pay close attention to what the doctor tells you. Nowadays medicine has made enormous progress! Enormous progress!
ZAITSEV. Oh, indeed! Listen, here’s what I’ve got to say. At the moment there’s nothing seriously wrong with your wife’s health, but if she doesn’t undergo a course of treatment, her illness may have dangerous consequences: a heart attack and inflammation of the brain . . .
GUSEV. There, you see, Zinochka! You see! The trouble I have with you . . . and I’d rather not even look at you, honestly . . .
ZAITSEV. I’m going to write a prescription . . . (Tears a piece of paper out of the station register, sits down and writes.) Sic transit. . . . two drachms . . . Gloria mundi6. . . one ounce . . . Aquae destillatae7. . two grains . . . Now you’ll take these powders, three times a day.
GUSEV. In water or in wine?
ZAITSEV. In water . . .
GUSEV. Boiled?
ZAITSEV. Yes, boiled.
GUSEV. I am truly grateful to you, doctor . . .
VARIANTS TO
The Eve of the Trial
Variants come from a manuscript rough draft.
page 727 / Before: You loaded, boy? — My little fool, you’re such a butterball . . .
page 728 / After: I’ve got to admit I like nothing better than a roadside fling — A little romance, a little affair, adultery . . .
page 728 / After: The bedbugs are about to eat me alive! — A line starts: It won’t be the bedbugs . . .
page 731 / After: Introverted, just like me . . . — A line starts: I love virtue
NOTES
1 Joke names: Mr. Goose and Mr. Hare.
2 Way stations set up by the government, where travelers could change horses and rest for the night. Postal couriers had first call on horses, so stays in posting stations were usually long and uncomfortable.
3 Joke name from cheprak, saddle-cloth.
4 A reference to the opening line of V. A. Sollogub’s poetic improvisation of the 1860s, which became a catchphrase.
5 In Russian, the pun is on entsiklopediya and klop (bedbug).
6 Latin proverb, So passes the glory of the world.
7 Latin: distilled water.
THE SEAGULL
The first production of The Seagull, at the Alexandra Theatre in St. Petersburg on October 17, 1896, has come down in theatrical legend as a classic fiasco. This is an exaggeration, however. The cast was a strong one, with Davydov, the original Ivanov, as Sorin and the luminous Vera Kommis-sarzhevskaya as Nina. During the scant week of rehearsals, Chekhov was in attendance, prompting the actors and correcting the director. Like most sensitive playwrights, he was dismayed by wasted time and the actors’ predilection for superficial characterizations that stunted his brainchildren; but by the last rehearsals his expectations had risen.
These were dashed on opening night, for the spectators had come with expectations of their own, hoping to see their favorite comedienne Levkeeva, whose benefit performance it was. They laughed, booed, and whistled at whatever struck them as funny, from Nina’s soliloquy to Treplyov’s entrance with the dead gull, to the actors’ ad-libs when they went up in their lines. Chekhov fled the theater, vowing never again to write for the stage. Nevertheless, the ensuing performances, with the actors more secure, played to respectful houses. Before The Seagull closed in November, it had become a succès d’estime, with Kommissarzhevskaya proclaimed as brilliant. It was successfully revived in Kiev, Taganrog, and other provincial centers, providing Chekhov with handsome royalties.
The writer Nemirovich-Danchenko, an admirer of the play, thought The Seagull was just the thing to rescue the flagging fortunes of his newly founded Moscow Art Theatre, whose first season was in danger of bankruptcy. Nemirovich pressed it upon his reluctant colleague Stanislavsky, who at first found the play incomprehensible and unsympathetic. Stanislavsky retired to his country estate to compose a directorial score, which he sent piecemeal to Moscow, where Nemirovich was rehearsing the actors.
Stanislavsky’s fundamental approach to staging The Seagull differed little from his direction of historical drama. He sought in contemporary Russian life the same picturesque groupings, the same telling mannerisms, the same pregnant pauses that had enthralled audiences when he reconstructed seventeenth-century Muscovy or Renaissance Venice. Rather than inquiring into Chekhov’s intentions, Stanislavsky took the play as romantic melodrama: Nina was an innocent ruined by that “scoundrelly Lovelace” Trigorin, and Treplyov was a misunderstood Byronic genius, the hero of the piece. Nor, at this stage of his development, did Stanislavsky try organically to elicit performances from the actors. Their every move, reaction, and intonation were prescribed by his score and learned by rote.