Chekov Monologue Three Sisters

 

 

The devil take them all…

 all the lot of them! 

They think I can treat anything 

just because I’m a doctor, 

but I know positively nothing at all. I

’ve forgotten everything I used to know. 

I remember nothing, positively nothing… 

The devil take them! 

Last Wednesday I attended a woman at Zasyp. 

She died, and it’s all my fault that she did die. 

Yes… I used to know a thing or two twenty five years ago, 

but now I don’t remember anything. Not a thing! 

Perhaps I’m not a man at all, 

but I just imagine that I’ve got hands and feet and a head. 

Perhaps I don’t exist at all, 

and I only imagine that I’m walking about and eating and sleeping. 

[Weeps.] Oh, if only I could simply stop existing! [Stops crying, glumly.] 

God knows… 

The other day they were talking about Shakespeare and Voltaire at the club. … 

I haven’t read either, never read a single line of either, 

but I tried to make out by my expression that I had. 

The others did the same. How petty it all is! How despicable! 

And then suddenly I thought of the woman I killed on Wednesday. 

It all came back to me, and I felt such a swine, 

so sick of myself that I went and got drunk…