Uncle Vanya

By Anton Chekhov.

Translated by Constance Garnett.

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Characters in the Play

Alexandr Valdimirovitch Serebryakov (a retired Professor)
Yelena Andreyevna (his wife, aged 27)
Sofya Alexandrovna (Sonya) (his daughter by his first wife)
Marya Vassilyevna Voynitsky (widow of a Privy Councillor and mother of Professor’s first wife)
Ivan Petrovitch Voynitsky (her son)
Mihail Lvovitch Astrov (a Doctor)
Ilya Ilyitch Telyegin (a Landowner reduced to poverty)
Marina (an old Nurse)
A Labourer

The action takes place on Serebryakov’s estate.

Uncle Vanya

Scenes from Country Life, in Four Acts

Act I

Garden. Part of the house can be seen with the verandah. In the avenue under an old poplar there is a table set for tea. Garden seats and chairs; on one of the seats lies a guitar. Not far from the table there is a swing. Between two and three o’clock on a cloudy afternoon.

	Marina, a heavy old woman, slow to move, is sitting by the samovar, knitting a stocking, and Astrov is walking up and down near her.
Marina	Pours out a glass of tea. Here, drink it, my dear.
Astrov	Reluctantly takes the glass. I don’t feel much like it.
Marina	Perhaps you would have a drop of vodka?
Astrov	No. I don’t drink vodka every day. Besides, it’s so sultry a pause. Nurse, how many years have we known each other?
Marina	Pondering. How many? The Lord help my memory.⁠ ⁠… You came into these parts⁠ ⁠… when? Vera Petrovna, Sonitchka’s mother, was living then. You came to see us two winters before she died.⁠ ⁠… Well, that must be eleven years ago. After a moment’s thought. Maybe even more.⁠ ⁠…
Astrov	Have I changed much since then?
Marina	Very much. You were young and handsome in those days, and now you have grown older. And you are not as good-looking. There’s another thing too⁠—you take a drop of vodka now.
Astrov	Yes.⁠ ⁠… In ten years I have become a different man. And what’s the reason of it? I am overworked, nurse. From morning till night I am always on my legs, not a moment of rest, and at night one lies under the bedclothes in continual terror of being dragged out to a patient. All these years that you have known me I have not had one free day. I may well look old! And the life in itself is tedious, stupid, dirty.⁠ ⁠… This life swallows one up completely. There are none but queer people about one⁠—they are a queer lot, all of them⁠—and when one has lived two or three years among them, by degrees one turns queer too, without noticing it. It’s inevitable twisting his long moustache. Ough, what a huge moustache I’ve grown⁠ ⁠… a stupid moustache.⁠ ⁠… I’ve turned into a queer fish, nurse. I haven’t grown stupid yet, thank God! My brains are in their place, but my feelings are somehow blunter. There is nothing I want, nothing I care about, no one I am fond of⁠ ⁠… except you, perhaps⁠—I am fond of you kisses her on the head. I had a nurse like you when I was a child.
Marina	Perhaps you would like something to eat?
Astrov	No. In the third week of Lent I went to Malitskoe, where there was an epidemic⁠ ⁠… spotted typhus⁠ ⁠… in the huts the people were lying about in heaps. There was filth, stench, smoke⁠ ⁠… calves on the ground with the sick⁠ ⁠… little pigs about too. I was hard at work all day, did not sit down for a minute, and hadn’t a morsel of food, and when I got home they wouldn’t let me rest. They brought me a signalman from the line. I laid him on the table to operate upon him, and he went and died under the chloroform. And just when they weren’t wanted, my feelings seemed to wake up again, and I was as conscience-stricken as though I had killed him on purpose. I sat down, shut my eyes like this, and thought: those who will live a hundred or two hundred years after us, for whom we are struggling now to beat out a road, will they remember and say a good word for us? Nurse, they won’t, you know!
Marina	Men will not remember, but God will remember.
Astrov	Thank you for that. That’s a good saying.
	Enter Voynitsky.
Voynitsky	Comes out of the house; he has had a nap after lunch and looks rumpled; he sits down on the garden-seat and straightens his fashionable tie. Yes⁠ ⁠… a pause. Yes.
Astrov	Had a good sleep?
Voynitsky	Yes⁠ ⁠… very yawns. Ever since the Professor and his wife