The Seagull · Act 4

Nina: “I am a seagull” (Nina’s last-act speech)

What is happening, what every line means, how to perform it, and how to use it in an audition, with the full text.

The Offbook team

Oct 8, 2026

What is happening

This is Act 4 of The Seagull, in Constance Garnett’s translation. Two years have passed since Act 3. On a windy evening at Sorin’s country house by the lake, his nephew Konstantin Treplev, now a published writer, works in a drawing-room turned into a study. Konstantin’s mother, the famous actress Arkadina, has come back with her lover, the writer Trigorin, because Sorin is ill.

Nina grew up across the lake and dreamed of fame. Two years ago she went to Moscow to become an actress and to be with Trigorin. She had his child, the child died, and Trigorin tired of her and went back to Arkadina. She has been acting in provincial towns, badly by Konstantin’s account, and signing her letters to him “the Seagull.” That comes from Act 2, when Konstantin shot a seagull and laid it at her feet, and Trigorin jotted down “a subject for a short story”: a girl who lives by a lake, free and happy as a seagull, until a man comes by chance and destroys her.

Tonight Nina has come to Konstantin’s window. He tells her he still loves her, that he kisses the earth she walks on, and begs her to stay or to take him with her. She has an engagement for the winter and leaves in the morning, third class. As she gets ready to go, she asks whether Arkadina is in the house, and then this pours out. When she has gone, Konstantin tears up his manuscripts, leaves the room, and shoots himself.

Lines

29

Words

311

At 150 wpm

2.1 min

Form

Prose

The speech, beat by beat

The full text in 5 beats. Under each beat: what it means in plain English, and a note for playing it.

Hard words

How to perform it

• Play the objective. Nina came tonight to find out whether she still has a place in the world. In this speech she is trying to tell Konstantin, and herself, who she is now: not the destroyed seagull but a working actress. Play the fight between those two answers, and let the second one win by the end.
• Treat the fragments as thoughts, not mood. Garnett’s text is full of broken-off sentences marked with “…”. Each one is an impulse she abandons. Give each fragment its own reason to start and its own reason to stop, instead of one long sad tone.
• Use Chekhov’s directions. She bends over the table, raises her head, hears the laughter, runs to the door and looks through the keyhole, turns back, and rubs her forehead. In an audition, keep the keyhole as a turn of the head toward an offstage door; it explains “He is here too.”
• Find the arc and let the breath follow it: exhaustion (lines 1 to 4), confusion (5 to 10), confession (11 to 15), the seagull memory (16 to 22), clarity (23 to 29). Early on the breaths are short and broken; the last three lines need long, steady ones.
• Know who you are talking to. Konstantin has just told her he kisses the ground she walks on, and he is the one person who followed her career from town to town. Line 15, “You can’t understand,” is said to someone who perhaps can.
• Common mistakes: playing her as mad from the first line; wallowing in the sad middle; and giving the ending a tidy, uplifting glow. “It all doesn’t hurt so much” admits that it still hurts.

Using it in an audition

A demanding prose speech for a young woman, and a fine test of whether you can make broken thoughts specific. Nina is a girl when the play begins and two years older now, so it suits actors from about eighteen to their late twenties. The full speech runs about two minutes at a conversational pace, which is a good length. The 60-second cut marked in the text falls at line 18, which ends on a question (“Do you remember you shot a seagull?”), so it is not a good stopping place. The 90-second mark at line 25 (“I feel that I am splendid”) works as a hopeful ending but drops her lesson about patience and faith, which is the reason to do the speech. Use the full version if you can. Pair it with a quick comic piece, such as Rosalind’s “And why, I pray you?” or the Gaoler’s Daughter’s “Why should I love this gentleman?” Other translations word this speech differently; this page uses Garnett’s public domain version.

Nina, The Seagull, Act 4. Anton Chekhov. Public domain text.

How long it runs

These are speech times before pauses. To time your own run, paste the text into the monologue timer. The cut marks in the text stop at a full sentence near 60 seconds (line 18) and 90 seconds (line 25).

More lists: Monologues for women, Dramatic monologues, Monologues from modern classics.

Sources

• The Seagull Act 4 Summary & Analysis | LitCharts
• Nina Mikhailovna Zarechnaya Character Analysis in The Seagull | LitCharts
• The Seagull (Wikipedia)
• Anton Chekhov | Britannica
• The Seagull, translated by Constance Garnett (Standard Ebooks text)