[In the following essay, Winner explores parallels between The Seagull and Shakespeare's Hamlet.]

Chekhov's use of literary allusions or echoes represents one of the most striking variations of the playwright's many evocative devices. Such devices, which stand outside the immediate action of his later plays, frequently are of symbolic significance and sometimes have a commentary function similar to that of the Greek chorus. Chekhov's use of literary or folklore allusions in his later plays is usually eclectic and may shift from author to author, folksong to folksong. Quotations from Shakespeare, especially from Hamlet, occur in various plays of Chekhov. But in the Seagull we find more than incidental background snatches from Hamlet. For Hamlet appears related to the total structure of the play, and it would seem that the image of Hamlet is, in the intent of the playwright, most intimately connected with the situations and characters of the Seagull.

It is the task of this paper to analyze the role of the Hamletian elements in the Seagull and to suggest their relationship to, and role in, the dramatic structure and intent of the play. These remarks are offered in a suggestive mood, since the complexity of the relationship of Hamlet and the Seagull could doubtlessly lead to various interpretations. But it is hoped that such a study will aid in clarifying a frequently puzzling aspect of the Seagull.

In Chekhov's works, in his notes and letters, we find ample evidence of his preoccupation with Shakespeare's tragedies. As early as 1882, Chekhov, at twenty-two years, reviewed an apparently poor performance of Hamlet in the Pushkin Theater in Moscow.¹ While attacking what he considered the misrepresentation of the character of Hamlet by the actor Ivanov-Kozel'skij, he expressed strong praise for the play and its author, voicing the hope that Hamlet would aid in the much-needed rejuvenation of the Russian stage, even if played in mediocre fashion. “Better a badly acted Hamlet, than boring emptiness (skuchnoe nichego),” he exclaimed. Hamlet, he said, had been represented as a whiner, especially in Act I, although “Hamlet was incapable of whining. A man's tears are valuable and must not be wasted (nado dorozhit' imi) on the stage. Mr. Ivanov-Kozel'skij,” Chekhov complains, “was frightened of the ghost, so much so that one even felt pity for him. … Hamlet was a man of indecision, but he was never a coward.”² This interpretation of Hamlet as a relatively strong personality must be kept in mind in considering the use Chekhov made of this character.

Unfortunately, we have no further record of any critical comment of Chekhov's concerning Hamlet, and thus much of our insight into Chekhov's interpretation of Shakespeare's much-disputed play must be left to inference. Incidental references to Hamlet, however, can be found frequently in Chekhov's letters and notebooks, revealing Chekhov's considerable preoccupation with this play.

References to Hamlet are frequent in Chekhov's creative writings. We know from his correspondence that in 1887 he was planning, in collaboration with his friend A. S. Lazarev-Gruzinskij, to produce what he called a “vaudeville” skit entitled Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.³ However, the skit was never completed and there are no extant copies of a draft. The skit apparently was to serve primarily as a critique of existing Russian stage practices and while Chekhov's letters to Lazarev-Gruzinskij regarding this work reveal considerable information about his views of dramatic technique, they disclose nothing of his views on Hamlet. Chekhov's first “vaudeville,” Kalkhas (1887), contains, among many excerpts lifted without alteration from the dramatic repertoire of the Russian stage, excerpts from King Lear, Othello, and Hamlet. The Hamletian references and quotations in the short stories and plays are too numerous to cite. It is not clear whether Chekhov read Shakespeare in the original or in Russian, though evidence available in his own notes and letters would tend to support the latter hypothesis, as he frequently refers admiringly to the Shakespeare translations of Peter Isaevich Vejnberg (1830-1908), the dramatic theoretician and translator of Shakespeare, Goethe and Heine. At no point in Chekhov's writings is Shakespeare quoted in the original, nor could any reference to his knowledge of English be found.

What are some of the most striking characteristics of the use of Hamletian themes which permeate the Seagull? First the intensity of the Hamlet motif must be noted, in contrast to the incidental use of the theme in the other plays. Hamlet sounds, as it were, as a constant background music to the play and references to Shakespeare's tragedy and its characters are contained not only in quotations and brief references, but in broad dramatic situations, as the play within the play, and in some aspects of the dramatic structure of Chekhov's play as well. Secondly, we must note the frequent identification of Chekhovian characters with characters from Hamlet, notably Treplev with Hamlet and Arkadina with Gertrude. These identifications grow in intensity as they are presented against a background of other Hamletian themes. Particularly striking is the bandaging scene with its clear echoes of the closet scene between Hamlet and Gertrude. While the relationship between Arkadina and Treplev shows some striking resemblances to the Hamlet-Gertrude relationship, they are by no means exactly parallel.⁴ The disparities between the two relationships, as we shall see later, fulfill a definite function in Chekhov's dramatic plan. The relationship between Treplev and Nina again evokes the echo of Hamlet's frustrated relationship to Ophelia. Nina's resemblance to Ophelia is less obvious, however, than Treplev's to Hamlet, for, unlike Treplev, she does not herself express a feeling of identification.

Chekhov's intent and method may be clarified by a chronological analysis of the Hamletian evocations in the play.

We meet Treplev at the beginning of Act I and learn of his play and his relationship to Nina and his mother. “I love my mother,” he tells Sorin, “but she is always running around with this writer.” We are reminded of the much stronger words which Hamlet uses concerning the relationship of his uncle to his mother. The Hamletian mood is strengthened, as we learn that Treplev has recently returned from the university, just as we meet Hamlet upon his return from Wittenberg. When Nina enters in the same scene, we are confronted with the first, yet weak, shadow of the Ophelia motif which also grows in intensity as the play progresses. We learn from her that her father strongly objects to her association with the Arkadina-Treplev-Sorin household, as Polonius objects to Ophelia's association with Hamlet. We learn that Nina's mother, just like Ophelia's, is dead. More important, however, Nina introduces, for the first time, the symbol of the seagull, the central symbol of the play. A discussion of the many-levelled significance of this image in relation to Nina and the central idea of the play cannot fall within the scope of this paper. There is, however, one aspect of the seagull image which we might consider. The seagull is an image which gently hints at the connection we are to make between Nina and Ophelia. This is how Nina introduces the image: “I am drawn here, to the lake, like a seagull.” Here, there appears to be a combination of two related images: the free-flying, and later to be destroyed bird, and the lake, which also serves as the natural backdrop to Treplev's symbolic play. As Chekhov's play progresses, we notice that the image of water is frequently associated with Nina. She mentions it as she first enters the stage; she sits against the background of water when she represents the world spirit in Treplev's abortive play; in Act II she enters and interrupts a joint reading of Maupassant's Sur l'eau; she tells Trigorin of her love for the lake on the shores of which she was raised and Trigorin notes it down as “a subject for a small tale. …” Finally, her name, Zarechnaja, seems also related to the water image. We are thus led to associate Nina not only with the image of the seagull, as she does herself, but also with the image of the closeness to water, an image with which the seagull, as a water bird, is of course closely connected. Are we not again dealing here with a gentle echo from Hamlet? For water, so frequently representing the death image in Shakespeare, is closely tied to Ophelia's end.⁵ It is my suggestion then, that throughout the play Nina is identified not only with the destroyed seagull but also, unconsciously, with the fate of Ophelia, an identification which strengthens the premonition of her doom brought about by her relationship to the image of the bird.

We are now led into the central, climactic scene of the “play-within-the-play” which brings to the fore the conflict between Treplev and his mother. Two quotations from Hamlet are introduced, just as Treplev's play is about to begin, which direct our attention to the Hamlet theme and strengthen the association of the Treplev-Arkadina and Hamlet-Gertrude relationships, an association which has already formed in our minds. We are thus reminded of Hamlet, just before the play begins, by the interplay between Treplev and his mother. Arkadina quotes directly from Gertrude in the closet scene and Treplev answers with a weakened paraphrase of Hamlet's remarks about his mother's adultery in the same scene, which further illustrates his conscious identification with Shakespeare's hero.

ARKADINA:
(reciting Hamlet) My son! Thou turn'st my eye into my very soul.
And there I see such black and grained spots as will not leave their tinct.
TREPLEV:
(from Hamlet) And why did you give yourself to vice and sought love in the abyss of vice. (I dlja chego z ty poddalas' poroku, ljubvi iskala v bezdne prestuplen'ja.)(6)

Reminiscent of “The Murder of Gonzago” is Arkadina's assertion, after Treplev's play has been abruptly terminated, that Treplev regards it only as a joke, calling to mind Hamlet's answer to Claudius' query as to whether offense is meant in the “play-within-the-play”: “No, no! They do but jest, poison in jest, no offence i'th'world.”⁷ Actually, both plays have, of course, a very serious intent. In objective function the two plays-within-the-play have very little relationship to each other: “The Murder of Gonzago” is the “mousetrap” by which Hamlet desires to entrap Claudius, while Treplev's play represents his attempt to create a new form of art. But perhaps both plays-within-the-play have satirical elements also. It has been suggested that the “Murder” represents Shakespeare's burlesque of the style of melodramatic acting prevalent in his days.⁸ It is clear that Chekhov's play-within-the-play is a parody, a parody on the aimlessness of the “decadent” drama of Chekhov's days. Furthermore, both plays are used as devices to project discussion concerned with the proper role of art: in Hamlet through Hamlet's admonition to the players (“Suit your action to your words. …” III, 2); in the Seagull in Nina's conversation with Treplev,⁹ as well as in Dorn's remark to Treplev about Treplev's failure to express an important idea in his “play” (Act I).¹⁰ Both plays end abruptly and abortively. “The Murder of Gonzago” ends because the “mousetrap,” which had been its goal, has been sprung and Claudius has become aware of the parallel between the murder of Gonzago and that of Hamlet's father. The “play” ends with the success which Hamlet had desired. Treplev's play, however, as an artistic experiment, ends in failure. Both plays end abruptly because of the offense they give to some of the spectators and because of the passions they arouse. The dismal ending of Treplev's play is perhaps symbolic of Treplev's inability to cope with a life which is filled with as many meaningless and empty formulae as is his play. The obvious echoes of the Hamlet “play-within-a-play” only help in pointing to Treplev's impotence, which becomes increasingly clear during the course of the play.

At the beginning of Act II we find the ironic identification of Treplev and Hamlet further strengthened by Masha's elevated vision of Treplev: “When he reads, his eyes burn, his face turns pale; he has a beautiful, sad voice.” Here Masha, whom we have already learned not to take seriously, evokes a pointed image of Hamlet, the “man of pale cast.” But lest we forget the satirical element in this association, there is Sorin, acting as a chorus and snoring loudly, having fallen asleep at Masha's words. The very same scene brings to mind a further identification of Nina with Ophelia in Nina's refusal to support the man who loves her and in her attack on Treplev's play, which she calls “uninteresting” in the presence of Arkadina. It is now, after the collapse of his “play” that Treplev needs Nina more than ever and just at this crucial point she turns from him and refuses him the solace of love and of the moral support he craves, just as Ophelia fails to give Hamlet the support he needs after the cellarage scene.

During the crucial scene in which the dejected Treplev presents Nina with the gull he has shot and expresses his weariness of life, there enters the other protagonist, Trigorin, with whom the image of the unhappy bird is also forever connected. Here the use of the Hamlet theme is rather complex. As Trigorin, whom Treplev has learned to hate and fear as a rival in love as well as art (and the two concepts are here symbolically one), enters reading a book, Treplev refers to him as walking like Hamlet and bitterly quotes Hamlet's “Words, words, words.” To fathom the significance of this passage, we must again turn to Hamlet (II, 2). The lines quoted by Treplev occur after Polonius has plotted with the King and Queen to “loose” Ophelia on Hamlet in order to determine the cause of his distemper. J. Dover Wilson¹¹ holds that Hamlet has overheard this plot and thus he accuses Polonius of being a “fishmonger” (in Elizabethan terms: a procurer) and of prostituting Ophelia to entrap him. This interchange is followed by Hamlet's expression of his weariness of life.¹² Apparently Treplev is reminded of the Hamlet-Polonius scene as Trigorin enters. He is also in despair over his disintegrating relationship to Nina, which he blames on Trigorin (with only partial justification). His despair is accentuated by his realization that his play has been an artistic failure. While he would like openly to taunt Trigorin, as Hamlet had taunted Polonius, he—unlike Hamlet—satisfies himself with a sneer and walks away, thus avoiding decisive action.

After Treplev's first suicide attempt, of which we hear in Act III, Trigorin tells us that Treplev plans to challenge him to a duel. Here the double meaning of the Treplev-Hamlet identification becomes more pronounced, since Treplev of course never challenges his opponent. While Hamlet fulfills the challenge of his life by killing Claudius, Treplev only meekly suggests a duel and is ready to forgive and forget at his mother's behest.

The scene which bears the closest single reference to Hamlet and which sheds further light on Chekhov's skillful manipulation of the Hamlet theme, is the bandaging scene in the third act, presented in a manner which must remind us of the closet scene (III, 4), in which Hamlet, in passionate tones, accuses his mother of adultery. We are the more let down when Treplev gives further illustration of his immature emotions. He feels sorry for himself and asks from his mother the sympathy which he no longer can get from Nina. He is incapable of a mature relationship with his mother, or with anyone else, just as he is incapable of producing real works of art. And when he chides his mother over her affair with Trigorin, his is a childish complaint. His squabble with his mother never attains the tragic; it remains on the level of the petty: a silly, name-calling duel, soon patched up by a sentimental reconciliation and an acceptance by Treplev of Arkadina's request to be reconciled with Trigorin. When the latter appears, again in the Hamletian pose of reading a book as he walks on the stage, Treplev flees, embarrassed and afraid of meeting his rival. Hamlet, in the end of the closet scene, breaks down Gertrude's defenses and forces her to speak the very words which Arkadina quotes to Treplev before the beginning of his play. Hamlet, unlike Treplev, never weakens in his tirade against Gertrude. And when, after the ghost's disappearance, he speaks kind words to his mother (“I must be cruel only to be kind”), these are the result of his conviction that his argument has been at least partially successful. Hamlet thus can afford to be tender from a mature conviction of the righteousness of his cause. Treplev, however, can be tender only when he assumes the position of a child.

It is the events in Act IV which point to the true significance of the Hamlet theme in the Seagull. The complex relationship of the characters of the Seagull with their Hamletian counterparts has been built up in the minds of the audience. While Treplev continues to think of himself as a Hamlet, charged with the task of righting the wrongs in the state of literature, the audience has become increasingly aware of the contradictions and irony of this identification. The Nina-Ophelia association is also strongly suggested by now, though with none of the ironic overtones with which Chekhov tempers the Treplev-Hamlet self-identification.

During the final dialogue between Treplev and Nina the intent of Chekhov's use of the Hamlet motif becomes more than clear. For, in the final interview between Treplev and Nina, which brings us to what we might term a Chekhovian peripetia, we are forcibly made to realize that the two protagonists are not what they had pictured themselves to be. Nina, far from being an unhappy Ophelia, who is destroyed as the unhappy bird was destroyed, is actually the only one in the play who has had the strength to realize her convictions and to achieve the aim for which Treplev has suffered: true art. She has outgrown her youthful romanticism and conquered the sufferings of her earlier unsuccessful attempts to act; and while Treplev has only talked, she has finally met reality. “Know how to bear your cross and have faith,” she tells Treplev, “I have faith and I no longer hurt. And when I think of my profession, I am not afraid of life.” How very unlike Ophelia and the seagull symbol as Nina had applied it to herself! “I am a seagull,” she keeps repeating to Treplev in the state of semi-hysteria into which she has been brought by walking back into past memories. But no, she interrupts herself, “that is not so” (ne to). And Treplev suddenly realizes that the table of symbols has been turned: Nina is neither a seagull nor an Ophelia. And it comes to him with terrifying force that he is not a Hamlet, but that a part of the seagull symbol actually applies to him.

Thus what we have is a Hamlet in the wrong key. Treplev does not, as does Hamlet, end in grandeur; instead, he ends “not with a bang, but a whimper,” as a total failure, walking quietly out of life, his last remarks being concern lest his mother be irritated by Nina's visit. The hero is an artist who failed, instead of a defender of kingdoms. For Treplev does what Chekhov, in his early essay, had asserted that the Prince of Denmark never did: he whines; he is a coward who poses as the bearer of Hamlet's indecision to hide from himself his inability to act in the creation of the new art which he craves.

The finale in Hamlet, beginning with the graveyard scene, is death. So is Treplev's finale. But what difference in deaths. There is no catharsis in Treplev's death as there is in Hamlet's. Hamlet, in the end, has abandoned his suicidal ideas. His antic disposition and indecision are gone and he has his mind on revenge. He is noble, though he has a weak strain, while Treplev is weak, though we cannot deny him a noble strain.

It is vital, says J. D. Wilson,¹³ to Shakespeare's purpose that we maintain our sympathy with Hamlet right to the end. “Rob us of our respect for the hero and Hamlet ceases to be a tragedy.” Yet, this is essentially what Chekhov has done with his hero. We cannot respect this self-styled Hamlet, though we cannot deny him our sympathy. While Hamlet is a tragedy about genius, perhaps we might call Treplev's, in so far as it is a tragedy, a tragedy about mediocrity, a mediocrity which is sharpened in our minds by the constant allusions to Hamlet.

Thus, the use of the Hamlet theme in the Seagull has fulfilled a dual purpose. It has acted as an ironic commentary on Treplev's pretensions. By suggesting to us somewhat parallel situations and thus playing with our expectations, it has also been used by Chekhov as a device for heightening the tension, as we are led, in Act IV, into a variant of the Aristotelian peripetia.

Notes

1. This review, signed “Man Without Spleen,” appeared in the journal Moskva, No. 3, 1882, and referred to the Hamlet performance of January 11, 1882. Cf. A. P. Chekhov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenij i pisem (Moscow, 1944-51), I, 489-91, 596-70, hereafter referred to as PS.

2. PS, I, 490.

3. Cf. Letters No. 218, 322 (1887), PS, XIII.

4. David Magarshak (Chekhov the Dramatist [London, 1952], pp. 173, 192, 194-95, 198-99) discusses briefly the mother fixation parallel and has suggested some aspects of Chekhov's variations on this theme. Magarshak's analysis of parallels between the Seagull and Hamlet, however, is limited to the mother fixation problem and is not concerned with the many other aspects of the relationship of Chekhov's play to Hamlet.

5. Cf. Hamlet, IV, 7: after Gertrude informs Laertes of Ophelia's drowning—Laertes: “Too much water hast thou, poor Ophelia.”

6. Magarshak (op. cit., p. 199) incorrectly quotes Hamlet's rejoinder to Gertrude:

   HAMLET:

   Nay, but to live

   In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,

   Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love

   Over the nasty sty.

   Here Chekhov uses verbatim the Hamlet translation of N. A. Polevoj (Gamlet, princ datskij). This translation is available in the Folger Library in an edition of 1876 (Shkol'nyj Shekspir, P. N. Polevoj, ed. [SPB, 1876]). It is interesting to note that among all the Hamlet translations which existed in Chekhov's time and which are available in this country, Polevoj's is the only one which deliberately softens Hamlet's reply to Gertrude. All other translations use a rather accurate translation of Hamlet's angry words hurled at his mother. (Cf. Gamlet, tragedija v pjati dejstvijax, M. V., transl. [SPB, 1828]; Gamlet, A. Kronenberg, transl., 2nd ed. [Moscow, 1861]; Gamlet, princ datskij, M. Zaguljajev, transl. [SPB, 1861]; Gamlet, A. L. Sokolovskij, transl. [SPB, 1883]; Polnoe sobranie sochinenij V. Shekspira, P. A. Kanshin, transl. [SPB, 1893], vol. 1.) Whether Chekhov was aware of the softening of the lines in the translation he used and deliberately chose them to hint at the difference between Treplev and Hamlet, or whether he was acquainted only with Polevoj's translation, is unfortunately not clear.

7. Hamlet, III, 3.

8. Cf. J. Dover Wilson, What Happened in Hamlet (New York, 1935), p. 301.

9. NINA:

   Your play is hard to act. There are no live characters in it.

   TREPLEV:

   Live characters! One must depict life not as it is in reality and not as it ought to be, but as it presents itself to us in dreams.

   (Act I)

10. Both Nina's and Dorn's criticisms represent Chekhov's views. Cf.: “Remember that the writers whom we consider immortal or even just good, possess one very important common characteristic: they get somewhere and call upon us to go with them. We feel not only with our reason but with the whole of our being that they have an aim. … The best of them are realists and depict life as it is, but because every line they write is permeated … with the consciousness of a goal … one feels not only life as it is in reality, but as it should be and that is what delights you.” (Letter to Suvorin, No. 1186, November 25, 1892, PS, XV, 446.)

11. Wilson, op. cit., p. 106.

12. POL.:

    What are you reading my lord?

    H.:

    Words, words, words.

    and then …

    POL.:

    … Will you walk out of the air, my lord?

    H.:

    Into my grave?

    POL.:

    … I most humbly take my leave of you.

    H.:

    You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal—except my life, except my life, except my life.

13. Wilson, op. cit., p. 102.