Anton Chekhov

In case the jury finds against me, I'll turn to my old friend ... A loyal, trusty friend! (Tales a large pistol from his suitcase.) here he is! How's the boy? I traded Cheprakov a couple of dogs for him. What a beauty! Just shooting yourself with him would be a kind of satisfaction . . . (Tenderly.) You loaded, boy? (In a piping voice, as if answering for the pistol.) I'm loaded ... (In his own voice.) I'll bet you'll go off with a bang, right? A real rip-roaring ear-splitter? (Piping.) A real rip-roaring ear-splitter ... (In his own voice.) Oh, you silly little thing, gun o'my heart. . . All right, now lie down and go to sleep . . . (Kisses the pistol and places it in the suitcase.) As soon as I hear 'Guilty as charged,' then right away - bang to the brain and the sweet bye-and-bye . . .

This ventriloqual exchange as he croons endearments to his suicide weapon is a comic device that goes back at least as far as the commedia delVarte and the folk comedies of Ruzzante. Zaytsev turns into an updated Harlequin, amoral and appetitive, whose ruminations on self- destruction reflect satirically on the suicides in Chekhov's serious works.

Did Chekhov, as he refined his full-length plays and purged them of the grossness of contemporary melodrama and farce, relegate his more exuberant and ironical spirits to the one-act form? The increasing grotesquerie of the series that begins with Tatyana Repina certainly suggests it.

5

'The Seagull⁹

I asked what was most requisite to make a piece fit for the theatre.

'It must by symbolical,' replied Goethe; 'that is to say, that each incident must be significant by itself, and yet lead naturally to something more important.' Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe (26 July 1826)

Baldly put, the plot of The Seagull has the makings of a conventional romance. Arkadina, a flashy and egocentric actress, carrying on a liaison with a famous writer, has a neglected son, who wants to make a name for himself in literature. In his first effort, a play of symbolist tendency, he has featured a naive and beautiful girl, who longs for fame. But the young man meets with failure in every direction: his play is scoffed at by his mother; the girl, whom he claims to love, becomes infatuated with the famous writer and runs off with him to Moscow; the youth is unable to leave his uncle's estate because his mother will not give him any money and he attempts to take his life, without success. Two years later, all the characters return to the same place: her affair with the writer long over, the girl, Nina, has become a provincial actress, reduced to playing one-night stands in backward county towns. The young man, Treplyov, is now a published writer, his work appearing in the same journal as that of his mother's lover, Trigorin. Masha, the daughter of the estate's overseer, still carries a torch for the young writer, but he ignores her. While the other characters are at supper offstage, Nina and Treplyov have a final interview. Despite his pleas, Nina leaves to pursue her career; frustrated and confused, Treplyov destroys his manuscripts and shoots himself, this time successfully. Any actor, confronted with this scenario, might be excused for falling into standard patterns of characterisation.

The first production of the The Seagull at the Alexandra Theatre in St. Petersburg on 17 October 1896 has come down in theatrical legend as a classic fiasco. But this is an exaggeration. The cast was strong, with Davydov (the original Ivanov) as the uncle Sorin, the popular comedian Varlamov (who had already played Lebedev in Ivanov and Chubukov in The Proposal) as the overseer Shamrayev, the handsome jeune premier Roman Apollonsky as Treplyov, and the brilliant young actress Vera Komissarzhevskaya 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 rehearsal time and the actors' predilection for superficial characterisations that stunted his brainchildren; but by the last rehearsals his expectations had risen.

These expectations were dashed on opening night, for the spectators had come with expectations of their own, hoping to see their favorite comedienne Levkeyeva, whose benefit it was. They laughed, booed and whistled at whatever struck them as funny, from Nina's soliloquy to