Popova, a beautiful widow with
dimpled cheeks, is mourning the death of her late husband. She seems to have
been trying to crush the very basic human needs of herself while her servant,
Luka, an old and practical man is trying to advise her: "It isn't right,
madam.... You're just destroying yourself."
While in a deep sentimental tone she rejects his advice: "My
life is already at an end. He is in his grave, and I have buried myself between
four walls....We are both dead". He says that she has not been going out.
She has confined herself between the four walls of her house.
He advises her to go about and get married because "you're
young and beautiful, with roses in your cheek". She rebukes him saying:
"when Nicolai Mihailovich died, life lost all its meaning for me. I vowed
never to the end of my days to cease to wear mourning".
She seems impractical and
childish when she tells Luka that: "I know it's no secret to you that he
was often unfair to me, cruel, and... and even unfaithful, but I shall be true
till death, and show him how I can love". She wishes to prove her
unfaithful husband that she is faithful to him after his death.
She looks
at the picture of her husband and vows: "My love will die out with me,
only when this poor heart will cease to beat."
A bell rings, and Popova, wondering who could be visiting her,
instructs Luka to turn the person away. The guest is Smirnov a retired
lieutenant from whom her late husband used to buy oats. He has come to seek his
money which is due on her husband. She asks him to come the day after tomorrow
as she does not have petty cash with her.
She refuses and he insists on having his amount of one thousand
and two hundred roubles the same day. She asks him: "You'll have your
money the day after to-morrow." But he would not listen: "I don't
want the money the day after tomorrow, I want it to-day."
She leaves the room and Smirnov expresses his anger in a
soliloquy in which he goes onto say: "I'd rather sit on a barrel of
gunpowder than talk to a woman." Smirnov declares he won't leave the house
unless she pays him. Popova comes again and asks him to leave and they argue
again.
She calls him: "You're a rude, ill-bred man! Decent people
don't talk to a woman like that!".
He says that he has had great number of love
affairs in his life and knows women: "all women, great or little, are
insincere, crooked, backbiters, envious, liars to the marrow of their bones,
vain, trivial, merciless, unreasonable".
He says that no woman is true in the world: "You'll meet a
cat with a horn or a white woodcock sooner than a constant woman!" Popova
counters him that men are not faithful either.
She says that her husband was probably the best of men she knew
and even he deceived her for other women though "I worshiped him as if I
were a heathen".
Here Smirnov accuses women of being sentimental and false. He
blames her: "You may have buried yourself alive, but you haven't forgotten
to powder your face! " She gets infuriated and calls him and abuses him.
Smirnov challenges her for a duel and she agrees to fight a duel
with him. She goes away to take the pistols from inside her house. While she is
away, Smirnov talks to himself: "She is a woman! That's the sort I can
understand! A real woman! Not sour-faced jelly bag, but fire, gunpowder, a
rocket!"
Popova come with the
pistols and says in the utmost innocent manner: "Here are the pistols....
But before we fight you must show me how to fire. I've never held a pistol in
my hands before." Smirnov teaches her how to fire a pistol but then he
refuses to fight her.
She asks him why and he says that he is in love with her. She
says she hates him and asks him to go away. He stays there and begs her love:
"I'm off my head, I'm in love like a boy, like a fool!" He offers her
to marry him but she keeps on refusing.
He pleads her love while on his knees and she asks him to go
away. Suddenly Popova asks him to stop. Then the couple come near and Smirnov
gives her a long kiss.
just as Luka(servant) returns with the gardener,
the coachman, and various workmen, all armed with tools. Popova turns to Luka
and tells him not to give Toby any oats at all.
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| Team Members-Kalakars of Play "Bear" |
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| Team Members-Kalakars of Play"Bear" |
The End
Note:--Plot
Summary has been copied from net ,with thanks.