2 h 9 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 2 h 9 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
Beside a quiet lake, everyone wants love, recognition, or a life that seems just out of reach.
On Sorin’s country estate, Konstantin Treplev builds a small stage beside the lake. He wants a new kind of theater, his mother’s approval, and Nina Zarechnaya’s love. Nina dreams of becoming an actress. But Konstantin’s mother, the celebrated Irina Arkadina, struggles to share attention, even when her son’s hopes are on the line.
In Anton Chekhov’s four-act play The Sea-Gull, tea, cards, and conversation sit beside bruised hearts and artistic hunger. Nina meets Boris Trigorin, a successful author whose work she admires. Masha loves Konstantin without return. As desire draws these people toward one another, their talk reveals how hard it is to feel seen, loved, or satisfied with a life.
What you’ll discover
- A stage beside the lake Enter the garden where Konstantin puts his hopes for a different theater before an audience.
- Love without an answer Follow the ache of people whose deepest feelings find no welcome in the person they love.
- The hunger to create Explore Konstantin’s search for new forms and Trigorin’s restless habit of turning life into stories.
- Dreams of the stage Meet Nina, whose longing to act draws her toward artists and the lives she imagines.
- Comedy beneath the hurt Discover ordinary foolishness and quiet humor within a drama of longing, disappointment, and artistic doubt.
Who will love it
This is for readers who love plays about family quarrels, secret longings and the daily life of artists, and for anyone who enjoys listening to people who say one thing while feeling another.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A young playwright wants to matter
- Mockery breaks the evening apart
- Admiration begins to redirect Nina
- The dead gull becomes a story
- Tenderness gives way to fear
- Artistic arguments conceal a personal hunger
- Love keeps looking the other way
- Objects speak where people cannot
- Art and love share one need
Who’s who
- Constantine TreplieffA young writer who wants new forms for the theater and longs for his mother's love and Nina's.
- Irina ArkadinaA famous actress, his mother, who loves applause and her lover and cannot bear to feel old.
- Nina ZarietchnayaA young woman from a neighboring estate who dreams of fame on the stage.
- Boris TrigorinA well-known author who notes down life for stories and drifts toward whatever is warm.
- MashaThe estate manager's daughter, who dresses in black and loves Treplieff without hope.
- Peter SorinArkadina's elderly brother and owner of the estate, who regrets that he never really lived.
- Eugene DornThe local doctor, calm and kindly, who sees much and does little.
- Simon MedviedenkoA poor schoolteacher who loves Masha and walks miles to see her.
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Poetry & DramaFree shelf
The Sea-Gull
by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov · 1896
A young playwright lays a dead gull at the feet of the girl he loves, and a famous writer jots down an idea.
Medium levelUnder 2 hours to read20 languages
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“The Sea-Gull must be considered one of the most characteristic, and therefore one of the most remarkable of Tchekhov's works.”
In short
What happens when a young man builds a stage by a lake, and the one person he wants to watch it is his own mother? The Sea-Gull opens on exactly that evening, in the park of a country estate, with a rising moon and a play nobody quite understands.
The Sea-Gull at a glance
- Reading time
- About 1 h 15 min1 h fast, 1 h 30 min slow
- Length
- 17,600 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1896by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A stage is built beside the lake
The play opens in the park of Sorin's estate, in the last light of a summer day. Constantine Treplieff, Sorin's nephew, has built a rough little stage for a play he has written himself. He wants no painted scenery. The real lake and the rising moon will serve as his backdrop.
Before the guests arrive, Chekhov shows how unhappy people already are. Masha, the daughter of the estate manager, dresses in black and says she wears it to match her life. The schoolteacher Medviedenko loves her and talks only of his twenty-three rubles a month. He walks six miles each way every day to meet her coldness.
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Details
- First published
- 1896
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 1 h 20 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich. The Sea-Gull. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-sea-gull.
Chekhov, A. P. (2026). The sea-gull. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-sea-gull (Original work published 1896)
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich. The Sea-Gull. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-sea-gull.
@book{chekhov2026seagull,
author = {Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich},
title = {The Sea-Gull},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-sea-gull},
note = {First published 1896}
}
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What is The Sea-Gull about?
It follows a young writer, his actress mother, her famous companion and a girl who dreams of the stage. Their loves, rivalries and ideas about art meet on a country estate by a lake.
What does the sea-gull symbolize in the play?
The gull stands for freedom and for the harm done to it. Treplieff shoots one and lays it at Nina's feet, and Trigorin uses it as the seed of a story about a girl destroyed out of idleness.
Who is Treplieff and what is his play about?
Constantine Treplieff is the son of the actress Arkadina. He writes a dreamlike play in which Nina speaks as the soul of the world, to bring new forms to the theater.
The author
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
1860–1904 · Russian playwright and story writer
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904) was a Russian writer and physician. He was born in Taganrog and lived in Moscow and later Yalta. He wrote short stories and plays, including The Seagull (1896), Uncle Vanya (1897), and The Cherry Orchard (1904). He died in Badenweiler, Germany.
“Everyone must write as they feel, and as well as they can.”
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