with: ANDREY. Oh, where is it, where has my past gone to, when I was young, cheerful, clever, when I dreamed and had refined thoughts, when both my present and my future lit up with hope? Why do we, having barely begun life, become boring, gray, uninteresting, lazy, indifferent, useless . . . Our town has been in existence for two hundred year, in it—it’s a joke! — are a hundred thousand inhabitants, and not one who isn’t like another, neither in the past or the present, not a single enthusiast, not a single scholar, not a single artist, not the least remarkable person, who might arouse envy or a passionate desire to emulate him . . . They only eat, drink, sleep, then die; others are born and they too eat, drink, sleep, and, in order not to be stupefied with boredom, vary their lives with nasty gossip, vodka, cards, and the women cheat on their husbands, and the husbands lie, pretend they don’t see anything, don’t hear anything, and irresistibly a vulgar influence weighs on the children—and the divine spark dies out in them, and they become the same pitiful, indistinguishable corpses as their fathers and mothers . . . (To Ferapont.) Whaddya you want?
FERAPONT. How’s that? Papers to be signed.
ANDREY (caught up in a feeling of tenderness). My dear sisters, my wonderful sisters!
FERAPONT (handing over the papers). The doorman at the gummint offices was just saying. Seems, he says, winter in Petersburg there was two hundred degrees of frost. Two thousand people froze to death. Folks, he says, was scared to death. Could be Petersburg, could be Moscow—I don’t rec’llect.
ANDREY. Every night now I lie awake and think . . . I think about how in two or three years I’ll end up drowning in unpaid debts, I’ll become a pauper, this house will be sold, my wife will run out on me—suddenly my soul becomes so buoyant, so airy, and in the distance a light begins to dawn, I have a presentiment of freedom, and then I’d like to run to my three sisters, run to them, and shout out: sisters, I’m saved, I’m saved!
NATASHA (through the window). You’re making too much noise there, Andryusha. You’ll wake Sophiekins. (Losing her temper.) If you want to talk, give the baby buggy to somebody else. Ferapont, take the buggy from the master!
FERAPONT. Yes, ma’am. (Takes the carriage.)
ANDREY (embarrassed). I’ll talk quietly.
NATASHA (behind the window, petting her little boy). Bobik! Naughty Bobik! Bad Bobik!
ANDREY (glancing at the papers). I’ll look over this rigmarole right now and sign whatever I have to, and you can take it back to the office . . .
He exits into the house, reading the papers; FERAPONT pushes the baby carriage; in the garden in the distance IRINA and TUSENBACH appear, the Baron is dressed foppishly, in a straw hat.
NATASHA (behind the window). Bobik, what’s your mommy’s name? Darling, darling! And who’s that? That’s auntie Olya. Say to auntie: afternoon, Olya!
Enter KULYGIN.
KULYGIN (to Irina). Where’s Masha?
IRINA. Somewhere in the garden.
KULYGIN. I haven’t seen her since this morning . . . She’s in a bad mood today . . . (Shakes his head.) And they still haven’t painted that bench! What a bunch, really . . . (Shouts.) Yoo-hoo! Masha, yoo-hoo! (Exits into the garden.) (Cens.)
page 949 / After: in life one way or another. —
Itinerant musicians, a man and a girl, play the fiddle and the harp. (Cens.)
page 952 / Replace: Which means, not being in Moscow. . . . (Laughs.) Life is hard.
with: It’s not up to me . . . I’ll do a bit of work and, I suppose, I’ll go to Moscow.
VERSHININ. Now where . . .
Pause.
Life follows its own laws, not ours. Yes. (Cens.)
page 954 / Replace: KULYGIN. She’s not crying any more . . . Enter NATASHA.
with: MASHA. We took the town of Turtukay, And all of us were standing by, We beat the English, beat the Turks . . . Damn it, I’m raving. (Drinks water.) I don’t need anything . . . I’ll be calm right away . . .It doesn’t matter . . . We took the town of Turtukay, And all of us were standing by . . . The ideas are whirling around in my head.
Enter IRINA; far away down the street a harp and fiddle are heard playing.
OLGA. Calm down, Masha. Let’s go to my room.
MASHA. It’s passed me by. There’s nothing now. (Smiles.) Which means, fate does what it wants, there’s nothing you can do about it . . . (Sobs and immediately stops.) Let it be.
A distant gunshot ís heard.
IRINA (shudders). Let’s go to the bottom of the garden, we’ll sit together, not saying a word . . .
A distant gunshot is heard. NATASHA enters. (Cens.)
page 955 / Replace: OLGA. What? . . . For God’s sake! (Weeps.)
with: OLGA. What?
CHEBUYTKIN (whispers in her ear). Yes . . . what a fuss . . . Well, sir, now I’ll have a bit of a sitdown, rest, then pack it up . . .(Sits far upstage on the
NOTES
1 There are fewer “speaking names” in this play than in the others. Ironically, Prozorov suggests “insight, perspicuity,” and Vershinin “heights, summit.” Solyony means “salty.” The name of the unseen Protopopov hints at descent from a line of archpriests.
2 Chekhov may have taken this unusual name from a well-known family of balalaika players and dancers, who came to prominence in the 1880s.
3 Zemskaya uprava, the permanent executive council of the zemstvo, or Rural Board, elected from among the members, and not unlike a cabinet in its operations. For zemstvo, see Ivanov, First Version, note 3.
4 The capital of the guberniya and hence the seat of the regional government.
5 According to V. V. Luzhsky:
In Three Sisters on the rise of the curtain, as Stanislavsky’s concept has it, birds are singing. These sounds were usually produced by Stanislavsky himself, A. L. Vishnevsky, I. M. Moskvin, V. F. Gribunin, N. G. Aleksandrov, and I, standing in the wings and cooing like doves. [Chekhov] listened to all these shenanigans, and, walking over to me, said: “Listen, you bill and coo wonderfully, only it’s an Egyptian dove!” And of the portrait of the sisters’ father—General Prozorov (me in the makeup of an old general) he remarked, “Listen, that’s a Japanese general, we don’t have that kind in Russia.”
(Solntse Rossii 228/25 [1914])
6 Olga and Kulygin teach at a gymnasium, or four-year high school, open to all classes of society; in 1876, to slow down the upward mobility of the lower classes, a heavy dose of Latin, Greek, and Old Church Slavonic replaced the more dangerous subjects of history, literature, and geography in the extremely rigorous curriculum. Hence Kulygin’s frequent citations from the classics.