[I-10]

[Chekhov]

IRINA: Are we about to start, dear?

TREPLEV: Any minute now, mother.

IRINA: (quoting Shakespeare) "Oh Hamlet, speak no more - thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul--"

(She is drowned out by a horn blowing behind stage - and she quits.)

TREPLEV: Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please! (He thumps on the stage three times with a stick.) We're starting now. (He thumps again and speaks more loudly.) Oh, you timeless shapes that float over the lake at night, lull us to sleep so we might dream of what life will be like two-hundred thousand years from now.

SORIN: In two-hundred thousand years, there will be nothing.

TREPLEV: Then let the shapes present us with nothing.

IRINA: Yes, let them - and we'll all fall asleep.

(The curtain rises. The moon is rising over the lake, casting its reflection on the water. Nina, dressed in white, sits on a rock.)

NINA: Men and lions, eagles and quail, stags and geese and spiders, the silent fishes of the sea, starfish and creatures invisible to the naked eye - every form of life on earth has become extinct. For thousands of centuries, the earth has been barren. The moon shines her light in vain. No cranes wake and cry in the meadow. In the lime grove, no hum of beetles is heard. The earth is cold - and empty - and filled with cold, empty terror.

Living bodies have crumbled into dust; Eternal Matter has forged them into stone and water and clouds, but their souls have merged with the One Soul. And I am that Cosmic Oversoul. I encompass the spirit of Alexander the Great and Caesar, of Shakespeare and Napoleon, as well as of the worm and leech. Through me, the consciousness of man and the instincts of animals have become one. I remember everything that ever happened; I embrace everything that ever lived.

IRINA: (whispering) This is the theater of decadence.

TREPLEV: Mother, sshh!

[continue]