Description
The Three Sisters
The action takes place in a provincial town.
[Ages are stated in brackets.]
ACT I
[In PROSOROV’S house. A sitting-room with pillars; behind is seen a
large dining-room. It is midday, the sun is shining brightly outside. In
the dining-room the table is being laid for lunch.]
[OLGA, in the regulation blue dress of a teacher at a girl’s high
school, is walking about correcting exercise books; MASHA, in a black
dress, with a hat on her knees, sits and reads a book; IRINA, in white,
stands about, with a thoughtful expression.]
OLGA. It’s just a year since father died last May the fifth, on your
name-day, Irina. It was very cold then, and snowing. I thought I would
never survive it, and you were in a dead faint. And now a year has
gone by and we are already thinking about it without pain, and you are
wearing a white dress and your face is happy. [Clock strikes twelve] And
the clock struck just the same way then. [Pause] I remember that there
was music at the funeral, and they fired a volley in the cemetery. He
was a general in command of a brigade but there were few people present.
Of course, it was raining then, raining hard, and snowing.
IRINA. Why think about it!
[BARON TUZENBACH, CHEBUTIKIN and SOLENI appear by the table in the
dining-room, behind the pillars.]
OLGA. It’s so warm to-day that we can keep the windows open, though the
birches are not yet in flower. Father was put in command of a brigade,
and he rode out of Moscow with us eleven years ago. I remember perfectly
that it was early in May and that everything in Moscow was flowering
then. It was warm too, everything was bathed in sunshine. Eleven years
have gone, and I remember everything as if we rode out only