Swan Song

Swan Song by Anton Chekhov (1889)

Chekhov's short play for two characters is set on the empty stage of a country theatre, late at night after a benefit performance. Vasili Svietlovidoff, a sixty-eight-year-old comedian, wakes in his dressing-room, still drunk and in his fool's costume, to find that everyone has gone home. Calling in vain for Yegorka and Petrushka, he looks out at the darkened auditorium for the first time in his forty-five years on the stage, and it seems to him a black, bottomless pit like a grave. He shrieks with terror at a figure in a long white coat, but it is only the old prompter, Nikita Ivanitch, who has nowhere else to sleep and spends his nights in the dressing-rooms. Svietlovidoff pours out his loneliness: the audience called him out sixteen times and brought him three wreaths, yet no one stayed to take him home, and he has no wife, no children and no one who loves him. He remembers his youth, when he served in the artillery and was proud of the blood of noble ancestors, and the woman who loved him for his acting but told him to give up the stage, since she could love an actor but never marry one. From that day, he says, he stopped believing in applause, took the parts of buffoons and threw away his talent. To prove he was once a great artist, he declaims from memory: the dead Dimitri's vow against Boris, Lear's storm speech with Nikita taking the Fool's part, the recorder scene from Hamlet, and lines about the setting moon. For a moment he insists that old age and genius cannot exist together, but when the doors are heard opening he weeps that it is all over for them both, calling himself a squeezed lemon and Nikita the old rat of the theatre. Quoting Othello's farewell, he goes out with the prompter as the curtain falls slowly.

By Anton Chekhov · First published 1889 · Genre: Drama, Romance, Realism · 2,701 words

First lines

CHARACTERS. VASILI SVIETLOVIDOFF, a comedian, 68 years old; NIKITA IVANITCH, a prompter, an old man.

The scene is laid on the stage of a country theatre, at night, after the play. To the right a row of rough, unpainted doors leading into the dressing-rooms. To the left and in the background the stage is encumbered with all sorts of rubbish. In the middle of the stage is an overturned stool.

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Drama · One Act Plays · Russia · Russian drama · Social life and customs · Translations into English · age · asleep · audience · calls · day · death

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