Act One: The Name Day

The drawing room of the Prozorovs' house, at noon on a bright spring day, the fifth of May. In the dining room beyond, a table was being laid for lunch.

Olga, the eldest sister, a schoolteacher, in the blue uniform dress of a girls' high school, was correcting exercise books. Masha, in black, sat reading, her hat on her lap. Irina, the youngest, in white, stood lost in thought.

"Father died exactly a year ago, on this very day, the fifth of May — your name day, Irina. It was very cold then, and snowing. I thought I would never live through it; and you lay in a faint as if you were dead. But now a year has passed, and we can remember it easily; you're in white already, and your face is shining." The clock struck twelve. "The clock struck then too . . ." And Olga remembered Moscow, which they had left eleven years before: "I remember so well, at the beginning of May, at this time, in Moscow everything was already in bloom, it was warm, everything was flooded with sunshine. Eleven years have passed, and I remember it all as if we had left yesterday. My God! This morning I woke up, saw the masses of light, the spring, and joy stirred in my soul, and I longed passionately to go home." "To go to Moscow," said Irina. "To sell the house, finish with everything here, and go to Moscow . . ." "Yes! To Moscow, as soon as possible."

Olga was tired: four years of teaching had drained her strength and her youth, drop by drop. Masha, who had married at eighteen a schoolmaster she had thought the cleverest man in the world, whistled a tune to herself. Irina, twenty years old, was full of the joy of the spring. "Man must work, must toil in the sweat of his brow, whoever he is, and in that alone lies the meaning and purpose of his life, his happiness, his delights. How good it is to be a workman who gets up at dawn and breaks stones in the street, or a shepherd, or a schoolteacher who teaches children, or an engine driver . . ."

Their brother Andrey played the violin in his room; he was the clever one of the family, and would be a professor in Moscow some day.

Officers of the garrison came in, friends of the house. Baron Tuzenbach, a lieutenant, ugly, good-natured, in love with Irina, agreed with her: "The time is coming when a great storm will sweep away the idleness, the indifference, the prejudice against work, the rotten boredom of our society. I shall work, and in twenty-five or thirty years everyone will work." Captain Solyony, sullen and touchy, who fancied that he looked like the poet Lermontov, sprinkled his hands with scent and made stupid jokes. Chebutykin, the old army doctor, sixty, who lived in the house, and had loved the sisters' dead mother, came in carrying a silver samovar as a name-day present for Irina — a present for a wedding anniversary, everyone said, not for a young girl. "My darlings, my dears, you are all I have; you are the most precious thing in the world to me. I shall soon be sixty, I'm an old man, a lonely, insignificant old man . . ."

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A new officer arrived: Lieutenant-Colonel Vershinin, the new commander of the battery, who had known the family in Moscow when the girls were children. He came from Moscow! They surrounded him with joy, and he was delighted: "And so these are the three little sisters . . . I remember your mother." He had lived in Old Basmannaya Street. "We lived there too!" Moscow, Moscow!

Vershinin loved to philosophise. He had a wife who was always trying to poison herself, and two little girls. Masha, who had been about to leave, took off her hat and stayed. And he spoke:

"What seems to us serious, significant, very important, will in time be forgotten, or seem unimportant . . . And it's interesting, we can't know now what will be thought lofty and important, and what pitiful and absurd . . . In two or three hundred years, life on earth will be unimaginably beautiful, marvellous. Man needs such a life; and if it doesn't exist yet, he must have a presentiment of it, wait for it, dream of it, prepare for it . . . You are only three in this town; but in later generations there will be more and more like you; and a time will come when everything will change and be as you would have it, and people will live like you, and then you too will become old-fashioned, and people will be born who are better than you."

Andrey came in, shy, and was teased: he was in love with a local girl, Natasha.

Masha's husband, Kulygin, the schoolmaster, came in, good-natured, pedantic, quoting Latin, delighted with himself and his school, and gave Irina a copy of his own book — the history of their school over fifty years — which he had already given her once before.

They sat down to lunch: thirteen at table, Kulygin counted. Natasha arrived, late, flustered, in a pink dress with a green sash, and Olga told her gently that the green sash didn't suit her. The officers teased her at table; she ran out of the room in tears, and Andrey ran after her.

"Natalya Ivanovna, darling, don't pay any attention to them . . . Oh youth, wonderful youth! My darling, my lovely, don't be so upset! . . . I love you, love you as I have never loved anyone . . . Be my wife!" They kissed. Two officers came in, saw them, and stopped in amazement.