The Seagull

Anton Chekhov’s play set on a country estate, where the young writer Constantine Treplieff, son of a famous actress, stages his experimental play and loves Nina, a neighbour’s daughter who longs to go on the stage.

Start reading4 acts, about 19,000 words

Famous quotes

• Violent obsessions sometimes lay hold of a man: he may, for instance, think day and night of nothing but the moon. I have such a moon. Day and night I am held in the grip of one besetting thought, to write, write, write!

  Act II, spoken by TrigorinIn context

  • Writing

• To my dying day I shall hear people say: “Clever and pretty; clever and pretty,” and nothing more; and when I am gone, those that knew me will say as they pass my grave: “Here lies Trigorin, a clever writer, but he was not as good as Turgenieff.”

  Act II, spoken by TrigorinIn context

  • Fame
  • Writing

• For the bliss of being a writer or an actress I could endure want, and disillusionment, and the hatred of my friends, and the pangs of my own dissatisfaction with myself; but I should demand in return fame, real, resounding fame!

  Act II, spoken by NinaIn context

  • Fame

• The conviction is gradually forcing itself upon me that good literature is not a question of forms new or old, but of ideas that must pour freely from the author’s heart, without his bothering his head about any forms whatsoever.

  Act IV, spoken by TreplieffIn context

  • Writing

• I know now, I understand at last, Constantine, that for us, whether we write or act, it is not the honour and glory of which I have dreamt that is important, it is the strength to endure. One must know how to bear one’s cross, and one must have faith.

  Act IV, spoken by NinaIn context

  • Faith
  • Fame

Contents

1. Act I
2. Act II
3. Act III
4. Act IV