[crying] if i could only stop existing. damn, god knows. just the other day in the club they were-- they were talking about shakespeare and voltaire. i've never read either. i've never read a single line of either. i try to make out from my expression that i had... the others did the same. also petty and despicable.

suddenly i remembered that woman i'd killed at zasyp. it all came back to me. i was such a swine. i'm so sick of myself that i went out and got drunk. let's sit down in here for a while. no one will come in here. the whole town would have burnt down but for the soldiers. they're a fine lot of fellows, excellent fellows. oh, oh, yeah. yes, they're a fine lot. what is the time? almost three. it's beginning to get light. well, everyone's sitting in the ballroom and no one thinks of leaving. that man solyony there too. you should go to bed, doctor. oh, well i'm all right.

perhaps he's-- you're a fine one. in vino veritas as they used to say in rome? everybody keeps asking me to arrange a concert in aid of the victims of the fire. huh, who would you get to perform in it? it can be done if we wanted to. maria sergeyevna plays the piano wonderfully well in my opinion. yes, wonderfully well. she's forgotten how to. she hasn't played for three years, maybe it's four. nobody understands music in this town, not a single person, but i do, i really do and i assure you that maria sergeyevna plays magnificently. she's almost a genius for it. yes, you're quite right, baron. i am so fond of masha, she's such a nice girl. fancy being able to play so exquisitely and yet having nobody, nobody at all to appreciate. yeah, but would it be quite proper for her to play at the concert? well, of course, i don't know anything about these things but it will be perfectly all right although our director as you all know is a very good man, a very good man indeed and most intelligent but i do know that he does hold certain views in this.

oh god, it doesn't really concern him, does it? no. but i'd better ask him about, it's all the same. if you like-- i've got my clothes in such a mess helping to put out the fire, i must look like nothing on earth. yesterday i heard a rumor that our brigade might be transferred to somewhere a long way away. some said it is supposed to be poland and some said chita in siberia. yes, i heard that too. well, the town will seem quite deserted. we'll go away too. oh god. oh, smashed to smithereens. fancy breaking such a valuable thing. ivan romanovich, ivan romanovich, you'll get a bad mark for that. that was my mother's clock. i suppose it was. -- if it was your mother's, then it was your mother's.

perhaps i didn't break it. perhaps it only appears that i did. perhaps it only appears that we exist when, in fact, we don't exist at all, i don't know. i don't know anything. no one knows anything. why are you all staring at me? natasha is having a nice little affair with protopopov but you don't see it at all. you don't see anything. you sit here seeing nothing. natasha is having a nice little affair with protopopov. would you like to date. so, how odd it all is really?

when the fire started, i ran back home as fast as i could. and when i got near i could see that our house was all right and out of danger. okay. the two little girls were standing in the doorway in their night clothes. their mother wasn't there. people were rushing about, horses and dogs and in the children's faces i saw a frightened, anxious appealing look i don't know what. my heart sank when i saw their faces. my god, i thought, what will these children have to go through in the course of their poor lives? and they may live a long time too. i picked them up and i ran back here with them and all the time i was running i was thinking the same thing. what will they have to go through? [bell ringing] and when i got here, my wife was here already, angry and shouting and when my little girls were standing there in the doorway

with nothing on but their night clothes and the street was red with the glow from the fire and full of terrifying noises, it struck me that the same sort of thing used to happen years ago when armies would make a sudden raid on towns and plunder them and set them on fire. anyway, is there any essential difference between things as they were and as they are now? before very long, say in another two or three hundred years people may look at our present life as we look at the past now with horror and scorn. our own times may seem uncouth to them, boring, frightfully uncomfortable and strange. oh, what a great life it would be then, what a life. please forgive me, i'm philosophizing my head off again but may i go on please, i'm bursting to philosophize, just at the moment i'm in the mood for it.

you all seem as if you've gone to sleep. as i was saying, what a great life it will be in the future. just try to imagine it. at the present time there are only three people of your intellectual caliber in the whole of this town but future generations will be more productive with people like you. they will go on producing more and more of the same sort until at long last the time will come when everything will be just as you'd wish it yourselves. people will lead their lives in your way and then even you may be outmoded and a new lot will come along that will be even better. i'm in quite a special mood today. i feel full of a tremendous urge to live, to love. all ages are in free, and passion is good for you and me. [humming]

burned. everything i've got is burned. well, it's hardly a joking matter. is everything really burned? everything, completely, i've got nothing left. my guitar's burned. my photographs are burned. all my letters are burned, even the little notebook i was going to give to you has been burned. [laughing] no please, go away vasilyevich, you can't come in here. can't i? why, why can the baron come in here if i can't? we really must leave, all of us. what's the fire doing? it's dying down, they say. well, i must say it's a peculiar thing that the baron can come in here if i can't. let's go to the ballroom. very well, we'll make a note of this.

i need hardly make my moral yet more clear that might be teasing this idea. [clucks] solyony has smoked the whole room out. the baron's asleep. baron, baron? i'm awfully tired. the brickworks. no, i'm not talking in my sleep. i really do intend to go to the brickworks and start working there quite soon. i've already had a talk with the manager. you're so pale, so beautiful, so fascinating. your color seems to light up the darkness around you as if it were luminous somehow.

you're sad? you're dissatisfied with the life you have to live. oh, come away with me. let's go away and work together? nikolai lvovich, i wish you'd go away. oh, you're here, are you? i didn't see you. goodbye, i'm going. you know, when i look at you now i keep on thinking of that day, it was a long time ago, your saint's day when you talked to us about the joy of working. you were so gay and high-spirited then and what a happy life i saw ahead of me. where is it all now? there are tears in your eyes? you should go to bed. beginning to get light, it's almost morning. oh, if only i could give my life for you.

nikolai lvovich, please go away, really now. i'm going. fyodor, are you asleep? why don't you go home? my darling masha, oh my sweet, precious masha. she's tired freddy, let her rest a while. yes, i'll go in a minute. my dear wife, my own good wife, if only you know how much i love you, only you. -- yes. we really shouldn't do messing work. i married you seven years ago and it seemed as if it were only yesterday. my dear, well, you are amazing.

oh, i am so happy, happy, happy. and i'm so bored, bored, bored. i can't get it out of my head. it's simply disgusting. it's like having a nail driven in your head. no, i can't keep quiet any longer. it's about andrei. he has actually mortgaged this house to a bank and his wife's got hold of all the money and yet this house doesn't belong to him. it belongs to all four of us. surely he must realize that if he has any honesty. masha, why bring this up? why we talk about it now? andrei owes money all around, let him alone. anyway, it's disgusting. well, we aren't poor. i have my job. i teach at the county school. i give lessons in my spare time. i'm just a plain, honest man. omnia mea mecum porto. as they say. oh, i'm not asking for anything. i'm just disgusted by injustice. why don't you go home fyodor.

yes, yes you're tired. you stay here and rest while i go home and i'll wait for you. you have a little sleep. i am happy, happy, happy. truth is that andrei is getting to be shallow-minded. he's aging and since he's been living with that woman he's lost all the inspiration he used to have. long ago he was working for a professorship and yet only yesterday he boasted of having at last been elected a member of the county council. fancy him a member with protopopov, his chairman. they say the whole town's laughing at him and he's the only one that doesn't know anything or see anything. and now you see everyone's at the fire while he is just sitting in his room not taking the slightest notice of it, just playing his violin.

oh how dreadful it all is, how dreadful, dreadful. i can't stand it any longer, i can't. i really can't. you must take me out of here, take me out. i can't bear it anymore. what is it, what is it darling? where has it all gone to? where is it? god, i'd forgotten, i'd forgotten everything, nothing but a muddle in my head. i don't remember what the italian for window is or for ceiling. i'm forgetting more and more every day and life's slipping by and it'll never come back and we shall never go to moscow. i can see that we shall never go. don't my dear, don't. i'm so miserable, i can't work. i won't work. i've had enough of it, enough.

first i worked at the telegraph and now i'm at the county council office and i hate and despite everything they give me to do there. i'm 23 years old, i've been working all this time and i feel as though my brain's dried up. i know i've gotten thinner and uglier and older and i find no kind of satisfaction in anything, not at all. the time's passing and i feel as if i'm moving away from any hope of a genuine fine life. i'm moving further and further away and sinking into a kind of abyss. i feel in despair and i don't know why i'm still alive, why i haven't killed myself. oh, don't cry my dear child, don't cry. it hurts me. i'm not crying anymore. that's enough of it, enough.

look, i'm not crying now. that's enough of it, enough. darling, let me tell you something. i just want to speak as your sister, as your friend, that is, if you want my advise. why don't you marry the baron? after all, you do respect him. you think a lot of him. it's true, he's not good looking, but he's such a decent, cleanminded sort of man. after all, one doesn't marry for love but to fulfill a duty-- at least i think so.

and i'd marry, even if i weren't in love. i'd marry anyone that proposed to me as long as he was a decent man. i'd even marry an old man. i have been waiting all this time, imagining that we'd be moving to moscow and i'd meet the man i'm meant for there, dreamt about him and i've loved him in my dreams. and it's all turned out to be nonsense. nonsense? oh, my darling sweetheart, i understand everything perfectly. when the baron resigned his commission and came to see us in his civilian clothes, i thought he looked so plain that i actually started to cry. he asked me why i was crying but how could i tell him? but, of course, if it were god's will

that he should marry you, i'd feel perfectly happy about it. that's quite a different matter, quite different. she goes about looking as if she'd started the fire. oh, you're silly, masha. you're the stupidest person in our family, forgive me for saying so. oh my dear sisters, i've got something to confess to you, i must get some relief. i feel the need of it in my heart. i'll confess it to you two alone and then never again, never to anyone.

i'll tell you in a minute. it's a secret, but you'll have to know everything. i can't keep silent any longer. i'm in love, in love, in love. i love that man. you saw him there just now. well, what's the good, i love vershinin. don't say it. i don't want to hear it. oh, what's to be done? i thought he was strange at first and then i started to pity him and then i began to love him, love everything about him, his voice, his talk, his misfortunes, his two little girls. nevertheless, i don't want to hear it. you can say any nonsense you'd like, i'm not listening. oh olya, you're stupid. if i love him, that's my fate. that's my destiny. he loves me too. it's all rather frightening, isn't it?

it's not a good thing, is it? oh my dear, how are we going to live through the rest of our lives? what's going to become of us? when you read a novel, everything in it seems so old and obvious. but when you fall in love yourself you suddenly discover that you don't know anything and you've got to make your own decisions. oh my dear sisters, my dear sisters, i've confessed it all to you and now i'll be quiet. i'll be like that madman in the story by gogol, silence, silence, silence. well, what do you want? i don't understand you. and i've told you 10 times already andrei sergeyevich... in the first place you're not to call me andrei sergeyevich, call me, your honor. the firemen are asking, your honor, if they can drive through your garden to get to the river? they've been going the long way around all this time,

it's a terrible business. all right, tell them it's all right. they keep on plaguing me. where's olya? i wanted to see you. will you give me the keys to the cupboard, i've lost mine, you know, the key. i mean, the small one you've got. what a terrific fire. it's going down though. that ferapont annoying, may the devil take him. silly thing he made me say, telling him to call me, your honor. why don't you say anything olya? it's about time you stopped this nonsense, sulking like this for no reason whatever. you're here masha and irina's here too, that's excellent. we can talk it over then. frankly, and once and for all, what have you got against me? what is it? drop it now andrusha, let's talk it over tomorrow.

what a dreadful night. don't get upset. i'm asking you quite calmly what have you got against me? tell me frankly. good night olya, god bless, sleep well. good night andrei, i should leave them now, they're tired, tired. talk it over tomorrow. really andrusha, let's leave it till tomorrow. it's time to go to bed. i only want to say one thing then i'll go, in a moment. first of all you've got something against my wife, against natasha. i've always been conscious of it from the day we got married. natasha is a fine woman. she's honest, straightforward and high-principled. that's my opinion. i love and respect my wife. do you understand that i respect her and i expect others to respect her too?

i repeat, she's an honest, high-principled woman and all your grievances against her if you don't mind my saying so are just imagination and nothing more. secondly, you seem to be annoyed with me for not making myself a professor and not doing any academic work, but i'm working in the council office, i'm a member of the county council and i feel that my service there is just as fine and valuable as any academic work i might do. i'm a member of the county council and if you want to know i'm proud of it. thirdly, there's something else i must tell you. i know i mortgaged the house without asking your permission. that was wrong, i admit it, and i ask you to forgive me but i was driven to it by my debts. i'm in debt for about 35,000 rubles.

i don't play cards anymore. i've given it up long ago. the only thing i can say to justify myself is that, well you girls get an annuity while i don't get anything, no income, i mean. is masha there? oh, is masha here? and where can she be then? it's very strange. so you won't listen? natasha is a good, honest woman, i tell you. when i married her i thought we were going to be happy. i thought we should all be happy.

oh god. [crying] my dear sisters, my dear good sisters, don't believe what i've been saying. don't believe it. where's masha, she isn't here? extraordinary. [bells ringing] [knocking] olya, who's that knocking on the floor? it's the doctor, ivan romanovich. he's drunk. it's been one thing after another all night. olya, have you heard, the troops are being moved from the district. they're being sent somewhere a long way off.

that's only a rumor. we'll be left quite alone then. olya? what? i do respect the baron. i think a lot of him. he's a very good man. i'll marry him olya. i'll agree to marry him if only we can go to moscow, oh let's go, please do let's go. there's nowhere in all the world like moscow. let's go olya, let's go. what a variety of characters. though we can't expect to understand every word and gesture they make,

we can try to understand by suspending judgment. in doing so, we will make possible the enjoyment of a great play by a writer unsurpassed in his ability to depict real people. according to psychiatrist bruno bettelheim, if we hope to live not just from moment to moment but in true consciousness of our existence, then our greatest need and most difficult achievement is to find meaning in our lives. many of chehkov's characters persist in that attempt. we in the audience observe the search, knowing neither they nor we will necessarily succeed. as in life, there will be no grand moment of revelation. if life is tragedy to those who feel and comedy to those who think, chehkov in encouraging both compassion and thought, rises above any one category in favor of truth.

this was a co-production of miami dade community college and british broadcasting corporation, british open university. [music]

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