The Seagull

what farming means. Madame Arkadin Flaring up. That’s the old story! If that’s so, I go back to Moscow today. Give orders for horses to be hired for me at the village, or I’ll walk to the station. Shamraev Flaring up. In that case I resign my position! You must look for another steward goes off. Madame Arkadin It’s like this every summer; every summer I am insulted here! I won’t set my foot in the place again goes off at left where the bathing shed is supposed to be; a minute later she can be seen entering the house. Trigorin follows her, carrying fishing rods and tackle, and a pail. Sorin Flaring up. This is insolence! It’s beyond everything. I am thoroughly sick of it. Send all the horses here this minute! Nina To Polina Andreyevna. To refuse Irina Nikolayevna, the famous actress! Any wish of hers, any whim even, is of more consequence than all your farming. It’s positively incredible! Polina In despair. What can I do? Put yourself in my position: what can I do? Sorin To Nina. Let us go to my sister. We will all entreat her not to go away. Won’t we? Looking in the direction in which Shamraev has gone. Insufferable man! Despot! Nina Preventing him from getting up. Sit still, sit still. We will wheel you in. She and Medvedenko push the bath-chair. Oh, how awful it is! Sorin Yes, yes, it’s awful. But he won’t leave, I’ll speak to him directly. They go out; Dorn and Polina Andreyevna are left alone on the stage. Dorn People are tiresome. Your husband ought to be simply kicked out, but it will end in that old woman Pyotr Nikolayevitch and his sister begging the man’s pardon. You will see! Polina He has sent the carriage horses into the fields too! And there are misunderstandings like this every day. If you only knew how it upsets me! It makes me ill; see how I am trembling.⁠ ⁠… I can’t endure his rudeness. In an imploring voice. Yevgeny, dearest, light of my eyes, my darling, let me come to you.⁠ ⁠… Our time is passing, we are no longer young, and if only we could lay aside concealment and lying for the end of our lives, anyway⁠ ⁠… a pause. Dorn I am fifty-five; it’s too late to change my life. Polina I know you refuse me because there are other women too who are as near to you. You can’t take them all to live with you. I understand. Forgive me, you are tired of me. Nina appears near the house; she is picking flowers. Dorn No, it’s all right. Polina I am wretched from jealousy. Of course you are a doctor, you can’t avoid women. I understand. Dorn To Nina, who comes up to them. How are things going? Nina Irina Nikolayevna is crying and Pyotr Nikolayevitch has an attack of asthma. Dorn Gets up. I’d better go and give them both valerian drops. Nina Gives him the flowers. Please take these. Dorn Merci bien goes towards the house. Polina Going with him. What charming flowers! Near the house, in a smothered voice. Give me those flowers! Give me those flowers! On receiving them tears the flowers to pieces and throws them away; both go into the house. Nina Alone. How strange it is to see a famous actress cry, and about such a trivial thing! And isn’t it strange? A famous author, adored by the public, written about in all the papers, his photographs for sale, his works translated into foreign languages⁠—and he spends the whole day fishing and is delighted that he has caught two gudgeon. I thought famous people were proud, unapproachable, that they despised the crowd, and by their fame and the glory of their name, as it were, revenged themselves on the vulgar herd for putting rank and wealth above everything. But here they cry and fish, play cards, laugh and get cross like everyone else! Treplev Comes in without a hat on, with a gun and a dead seagull. Are you alone here? Nina Yes. Treplev lays the seagull at her feet. Nina What does that mean? Treplev I was so mean as to kill this bird today. I lay it at your feet. Nina What is the matter with you? Picks up the bird and looks at it. Treplev After a pause. Soon I shall kill myself in the same way. Nina You have so changed, I hardly know you. Treplev Yes, ever since the day when I hardly knew you. You have changed to me, your eyes are cold, you feel me in the way. Nina You have become irritable of late, you express yourself so incomprehensibly, as it were in symbols. This bird is a symbol too, I suppose, but forgive me, I don’t understand it lays the seagull on the seat. I am too simple to understand you. Treplev This began from that evening when my play came to grief so stupidly. Women never forgive failure. I have burnt it all; every scrap of it. If only you knew how miserable I am! Your growing cold to me is awful, incredible, as though I had woken up and found this lake had suddenly dried up or sunk into the earth. You have just said that you are too simple to understand me. Oh, what is there to understand? My play was not liked, you despise my inspiration, you already consider me commonplace, insignificant, like so many others⁠ ⁠… stamping. How well I understand it all, how I understand it! I feel as though I had a nail in my brain, damnation take it together with my vanity which is sucking away my life, sucking it like a snake⁠ ⁠… sees Trigorin, who comes in reading a book. Here comes the real genius, walking like Hamlet and with a book too. Mimics. “Words, words, words.”⁠ ⁠… The sun has scarcely reached