THREE SISTERS
A Drama in Four Acts
Characters
PROZOROV, ANDREY SERGEYEVICH
NATALIA IVANOVNA, his fiancée, later his wife
KULYGIN, FEDOR ILYCH, a teacher at a secondary school, Mashaâs husband
VERSHININ, ALEXANDER IGNATIEVICH, lieutenant colonel and battery commander
TUZENBACH, NIKOLAI LVOVICH, baron, lieutenant
SOLYONY, VASILY VASILIEVICH, captain
CHEBUTYKIN, IVAN ROMANOVICH, army doctor
FEDOTIK, ALEXEY PETROVICH, second lieutenant
RODEH, VLADIMIR KARLOVICH, second lieutenant
FERAPONT, caretaker at the county council offices, an old man
ANFISA, nanny, old woman aged 80
The action takes place in a provincial town.
ACT ONE
The Prozorovsâ house. A drawing room with columns; on the other sideâa large reception room. It is noon; outside the weather is sunny and cheerful. In the dining room, the table is being set for lunch. Olga, wearing the regulation dark blue dress of a teacher at a secondary school for girls is continuously correcting studentsâ exercise books, standing and pacing about the room; Masha, in a black dress, sits with her hat on her lap reading a book; Irina, in a white dress, stands lost in thought.
OLGA: Father died exactly a year ago, this very day, May fifth, your name day,1 Irina. It was very cold then, and snowing. I thought that Iâd never get over it, and you fainted: were lying there lifeless. But now, a year later, it is easy for us to think back on it, and youâre already in a white dress, looking radiantâŠ
The clock strikes twelve.
The clock was striking then, too.
I remember when they were carrying Father, the band was playing, and shots were fired at the cemetery. He was a general, a brigade commander, and yet, there were very few people there. Probably because it was raining. A heavy rain with snow.
IRINA: Why bring that up!
Baron Tuzenbach, Chebutykin, and Solyony appear behind the columns, near the table in the dining room.
OLGA: Itâs warm today; you can keep the windows wide open, but the leaves on the birch trees havenât opened yet. Father was given a brigade here and left Moscow with us eleven years ago, and I remember it so well; it was early May then too, and everything is in bloom in Moscow; itâs warm and everything is bathed in sunlight. Eleven years ago, but I remember it all as though we left just yesterday. Oh, my God! I woke up this morning, saw all this light, saw the spring, and joy stirred in my heart, and I wanted so much to go back home.
CHEBUTYKIN [To Solyony and Tuzenbach]: The hell you will!
TUZENBACH: Of course, thatâs all nonsense.
Masha, absorbed in reading, softly whistles a song.
OLGA: Stop whistling, Masha. How can you do that!
A pause.
Because Iâm at school every day and then I give private lessons into the evening, my head hurts all the time, and the thoughts that come to meâŠas if I were already old. Come to think of it, in the four years that Iâve been working at the school, I feel my youth and energy draining out of me every day, drop by drop. And only one hope keeps getting strongerâŠ
IRINA: To go to Moscow. To sell the house, drop everything here, and go to MoscowâŠ
OLGA: Yes! To Moscow, as soon as possible.
Chebutykin and Tuzenbach laugh.
IRINA: Our brother will probably become a professor, and he wonât live here anyway. The only thing keeping us from going is poor Masha.
OLGA: Masha will come to Moscow for the summer every year.
Masha whistles a tune softly.
IRINA: With Godâs help everything will work out. [Looking out of the window] The weatherâs beautiful today. I donât know why I feel so blissful! This morning, I remembered it was my name-day and I suddenly felt such joy, and I remembered my childhood when Mama was still alive. And such delightful thoughts stirred inside me!
OLGA: Youâre so radiant today and you look unbelievably beautiful. Mashaâs beautiful, too. Andrey would look good, except that heâs put on too much weight and it doesnât suit him. And Iâve aged and lost a lot of weightâprobably because I get upset with the girls at school. Today Iâm free; Iâm home, and my head doesnât hurt, and I feel younger than I did yesterday. Iâm only twenty-eightâŠEverythingâs all right, itâs Godâs will, but I think if Iâd been married and stayed home all day, it would be better.
A pause.
I would love my husband.
TUZENBACH [To Solyony]: What youâre saying is such nonsense; Iâm fed up listening to you. [Entering the drawing room] Oh, I forgot to tell you that our new battery commander, Vershinin, is going to call on you today. [Sits down at the piano]
OLGA: Well, then! Iâm glad to hear it.
IRINA: Is he old?
TUZENBACH: No, not particularly. Forty, forty-five at the most. [Plays softly] Seems like a good fellow. Definitely not stupid. Only he talks a lot.
IRINA: Is he good-looking?
TUZENBACH: Heâs all right; only he has a wife, a mother-in-law, and two girls. Itâs his second marriage. He calls on everyone and tells them that he has a wife and two girls. Heâll tell you, too. His wifeâs loony: she wears her hair in a long braid like a schoolgirl, speaks always in this high-flown manner, philosophizes, and attempts suicide frequently, probably to spite her husband. I wouldâve left a woman like that long ago, but he puts up with her and only complains.
SOLYONY [Walking with Chebutykin from the dining room into the living room]: With one hand I can lift only fifty-five pounds, but with both, I can lift over two hundred pounds. From this I deduce that two men are not twice as strong as one, but three times as strong, and even moreâŠ
CHEBUTYKIN [Reading a newspaper as he walks in]: To prevent hair lossâŠeight grams of naphthalene to a half bottle of pure alcoholâŠdissolve and apply dailyâŠ[Writes in his notebook] Weâll make a note of it! [To Solyony] So, as I was saying, you put a little cork into a little bottle and you have a small glass tube running through itâŠThen you take a pinch of ordinary, everyday alumâŠ
IRINA: Ivan Romanych, dear Ivan Romanych!
CHEBUTYKIN: What is it, my darling little girl?
IRINA: Tell me, why do I feel so happy today? As if I had wind in my sails, this immense blue sky, and big white birds soaring above me. Why is that? Why?
CHEBUTYKIN [Kisses both her hands, tenderly]: My white birdâŠ
IRINA: When I woke up this morning, got up, washed my face, I suddenly got this feeling that everything in the world was clear to me, and I knew how to live. Dear Ivan Romanych, I know everything. People must work by the sweat of their brow, no matter who they are, and thatâs the meaning and goal of their lives; their happiness and joy. How good it feels to be a worker who gets up at dawn and crushes stones in the street, or a shepherd, or a schoolteacher who teaches children, or a machinist on the railroadâŠHeavens, forget being human, Iâd rather b...