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The Seagull · Anton Chekhov · 1896
NINA
Two years ago she wanted to be an actress. She is one now, in provincial theatres, and it cost her everything.
The speech97 words · 4 beats
0:00 / 1:10
I am a seagull... No, that's not it. I am an actress.
Do you remember, you shot a seagull? A man came by chance, saw it, and, having nothing better to do, destroyed it. A subject for a short story.
I know now, I understand, Kostya, that in our work — in acting or writing — what matters is not fame, not glory, not what I used to dream of. What matters is knowing how to endure.turn
Know how to bear your cross and have faith. I have faith, and it does not hurt so much now.
- Speaking to
- Treplev, who still loves her and has not moved on.
- What just happened
- She has walked in out of the rain, unannounced, at night, in the house where she used to be happy. She will leave again within the hour.
- Objective
- To say it out loud to the one person who knew her before, and then get out before she agrees to stay.
- The turn
- 'No, that's not it' — she catches herself using the old image and refuses it.
- Watch out for
- Chekhov's hardest kind of scene: no rhetoric to lean on. Everything is in what she doesn't say and where she stops.