The Seagull

The Seagull is the first of Anton Chekhov’s four great plays, written in 1895 and set on a country estate where a group of unhappy people love where they are not loved in return. The young writer Konstantin longs for new forms in art and for his mother, a fading actress, to take him seriously, while the girl he adores, Nina, is drawn instead to a famous older author. Around this chain of unanswered love Chekhov weaves ambition, failure, and the cost of art, ending in quiet tragedy. Its disastrous first night gave way to triumph when the Moscow Art Theatre revived it, and it remains a cornerstone of the modern stage. This free PDF and EPUB presents Constance Garnett’s translation.