could even say that here is the underlying “plot” of the entire first act—everyone dealing with this room, and the memories and ghosts it evokes.
Gaev’s “bookcase speech” then is not some random memory of a man who has random bursts of nostalgia, as it is often played. It is much more immediate and about an event that has recently occurred. He explains that just “last week” he pulled out the lower drawer. It seems, then, that they opened up this room only last week, no doubt in preparation for Lyubov Andreevna’s return. So this room is new for everyone.
One begins to sense that after all these years since the boy’s death, the family is now ready to try and deal with this nursery and its memories, wounds and guilt.
Trofimov enters. Why is he here? There is no suggestion in the play that he has come often or has ever been back since the boy in his charge accidentally drowned. It is even possible that this is his first time back. In any event, as the nursery has been closed off, he too has not been in this room for years; this room where he spent his youth, before the death of his charge and before the guilt that that would have brought him. A guilt that he now carries with him and constantly brings up, in different ways, throughout the rest of the play.
So at the end of Act One, when Trofimov, alone, says tenderly, “My sunshine. My springtime,” isn’t he referring to the eleven-year-old Anya, to this nursery, to the lost child, and to his own lost youth? Instead of the beginnings of a love affair that never evolves in the play, perhaps these last two words are the cri de coeur of a man wracked with a guilt evoked by all the associations he has with this room.
Knowing that this setting is unique to Act One, and will not need to also function as a passageway in Act Four, should free a director and designer to investigate the emotional weight of this room, and how the nursery acts as a catalyst for the play as a whole.
B) Charlotta and her magic.
In the 1903 text, unlike the post-rehearsal text, Charlotta does do a magic trick when she enters in Act One. This may seem like an unimportant difference; however, given the number of changes made to Charlotta’s character in the post-rehearsal text, the restitution of this trick goes a long way to clarifying Charlotta’s role in the play as a whole.
Her magic trick in Act One is to go to a door, and somehow create a “knocking” on this door from the outside. She then “asks” who it is. And so explains to the others—“this is my gentleman fiancé.” In other words, she implies—with a sort of wink—that this fiancé is but a figment of her imagination; he doesn’t exist, and will never appear.
Varya is right there in the room, and Varya (at somewhat greater length in the 1903 version) has just talked about waiting for Lopakhin to propose. So Charlotta, from her first entrance, via her “ventriloquism,” takes on the role of saying what everyone else knows to be true but dares not say—that Varya’s waiting for Lopakhin is perhaps in vain. In other words, from her entrance, she is very much like a Shakespearean fool, and this will be her role throughout the play.
C) What happens between Acts One and Two and other changes in Act Two.
Most of the changes made during the Moscow Art rehearsals occurred in Act Two. In the 1903 version, Act Two opens not with Charlotta talking to preoccupied servants about her life, but with Anya and Trofimov passing by Dunyasha, Epikhodov and Yasha in the field. Anya has just returned from three weeks at her great-aunt’s, where she went to ask for financial help.
Right away we discover that the family has indeed made an effort to save the estate; they have, in fact, tried to put into motion one of the plans Gaev thought up in Act One. So perhaps they are not as blind to their situation as has often been assumed.
Trofimov and Anya notice they are not alone and so head down to the riverbank. With Anya having been away for three weeks, they have hardly had a chance to talk since Act One. Anya, we later learn, wants to know all about life in the real world, as that is where she has decided she is headed (and by the end of Act Four that is where she goes). The two have so many things to share—about loss and guilt and fear; but nowhere is there talk of love for each other. Varya is the only person who suggests this; the same Varya who has marriage and fiancés on her mind from the beginning of the play to the very end.
In the 1903 script, Varya and Charlotta pass by. Varya is suspicious and is looking for Anya and Trofimov. She suspects a love affair. She notices the young couple on the bank of the river. Charlotta seems to be going hunting with gun in tow, and perhaps has only just bumped into Varya. Varya, having spied the young couple, hurries after them. Charlotta wanders off.
A while later, in both versions, Varya returns with Anya and Trofimov. Because of the earlier scene, we now know that Varya found the couple, and has dragged them back from the river, as their self-appointed chaperone. Knowing this creates a rich chemistry between them for the rest of the scene.
The next and perhaps most significant difference between the versions occurs at the end of the act. There is an entirely new scene in the 1903 text:
Firs returns to an empty and nearly dark stage. Charlotta wanders in and notices him. Charlotta and Firs sit together on the bench. Firs explains that his mistress has lost her purse. Charlotta replies that the mistress “constantly loses things. She’s lost her life, too.” And it is this thought that gets her to tell her own “life story” to Firs (rather than to two uninterested servants).
Firs then talks about a time in his youth when he was sent to jail. He goes on to tell a story about when he was a boy and was with his father on a wagon full of sacks. He noticed that inside one sack there was another sack, and in that other sack something went “wiggle-wiggle.” That makes Charlotta laugh (as she eats her cucumber). And with Varya’s voice from off calling, “Anya! Where are you?” this scene, worthy of Samuel Beckett, ends.
In his autobiography, My Life in Art (Routledge, 1987), Stanislavsky writes that he just couldn’t make the scene work and adds: “I suppose that it was mainly our own fault, but it was the author who paid for our inability.” What was lost as a result was perhaps the most subtle and seemingly inconsequential expression of Chekhov’s central concern in the play.
In our translation of the 1903 script, the changes made by Stanislavsky during rehearsals have been eliminated,*** and the cuts have been restored.
—Richard Nelson
*** With one small exception. In Act Four, Trofimov comments on Lopakhin’s hands: “I still like you. You have fine, delicate fingers, like an artist . . .” This was an addition made during the rehearsals. It is clear from his letters that Chekhov was concerned that Lopakhin not be portrayed as a coarse peasant. He added this description after the naturally elegant Stanislavsky, for whom he conceived the role, had turned it down (he played Gaev instead). The detail is as telling as Uncle Vanya’s foppish tie.
CHARACTERS
LYUBÓV ANDRÉEVNA RANÉVSKAYA (Lyúba), a landowner
ÁNYA (Ánechka), her daughter, seventeen years old
VÁRYA (Varvára Mikháilovna), her adopted daughter, twenty-four years old
