# Ivanov: every role by lines, words, and stage time

> Anton Chekhov, translated by Constance Garnett. 17 speaking roles, 19,524 words, about 140 minutes of speech.

- URL: https://www.offbook.com/plays/ivanov
- Last updated: 2026-10-08

**Ivanov** has the most to say in Ivanov: about 548 lines and 4,911 words, 25.2% of the play. Chekhov’s first full-length play to reach the stage follows Ivanov, a landowner sunk in debt and despair whose wife Anna Petrovna is dying of consumption. Ivanov holds about a quarter of the words and has the play’s longest speeches, including a 450-word soliloquy of self-disgust in Act 3. Lebedyev, Shabelsky, and Sasha each have 10% to 16%, and Anna Petrovna, at about 7%, is gone after Act 3.

- Speaking roles: 17
- Scenes: 4
- Words: 19,524
- Speech time: 140 min

## Every role, largest first

| Role | Lines | Words | Share | Minutes | Scenes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Ivanov | 548 | 4,911 | 25.2% | 35.1 | 4 |
| Lebedyev | 358 | 3,128 | 16% | 22.3 | 3 |
| Shabelsky | 249 | 2,125 | 10.9% | 15.2 | 4 |
| Sasha | 243 | 2,074 | 10.6% | 14.8 | 3 |
| Borkin | 204 | 1,809 | 9.3% | 12.9 | 4 |
| Lvov | 166 | 1,440 | 7.4% | 10.3 | 4 |
| Anna Petrovna | 168 | 1,437 | 7.4% | 10.3 | 3 |
| Kossih | 73 | 638 | 3.3% | 4.6 | 3 |
| Zinaida | 70 | 569 | 2.9% | 4.1 | 2 |
| Madame Babakin | 66 | 536 | 2.7% | 3.8 | 2 |
| Avdotya | 59 | 476 | 2.4% | 3.4 | 2 |
| Third Guest | 20 | 179 | 0.9% | 1.3 | 1 |
| First Guest | 22 | 171 | 0.9% | 1.2 | 1 |
| Zinaida Savishna | 2 | 14 | 0.1% | 0.1 | 1 |
| Yegorushka | 2 | 4 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| Young Ladies | 2 | 4 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |
| Second Guest | 2 | 2 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 |

## Who speaks in which scene

Words each role speaks in each scene (scene: words). Scenes: Act 1 = Act 1; Act 2 = Act 2; Act 3 = Act 3; Act 4 = Act 4.

- **Ivanov**: Act 1 (1,072), Act 2 (531), Act 3 (2,069), Act 4 (1,239)
- **Lebedyev**: Act 2 (755), Act 3 (1,230), Act 4 (1,143)
- **Shabelsky**: Act 1 (771), Act 2 (737), Act 3 (370), Act 4 (247)
- **Sasha**: Act 2 (599), Act 3 (654), Act 4 (821)
- **Borkin**: Act 1 (944), Act 2 (333), Act 3 (447), Act 4 (85)
- **Lvov**: Act 1 (618), Act 2 (42), Act 3 (443), Act 4 (337)
- **Anna Petrovna**: Act 1 (979), Act 2 (179), Act 3 (279)
- **Kossih**: Act 2 (141), Act 3 (175), Act 4 (322)
- **Zinaida**: Act 2 (547), Act 4 (22)
- **Madame Babakin**: Act 2 (515), Act 4 (21)
- **Avdotya**: Act 2 (262), Act 3 (214)

## The longest speeches

| Speech | Scene | Words | Lines |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [Ivanov: “I am a bad, abject, worthless man. One has to be as abject, broken and shattered as Pasha to like and respect me. How I despise myself, my God! How I hate my voice, my step, my hands, these clothes, my thoughts! Isn’t it absurd, isn’t it mortifying? It’s not a year since I was strong and well, I was inexhaustible, full of warmth and confidence, I worked with these same hands, I could speak so as to move even the ignorant to tears, I could weep at the sight of sorrow, was moved to wrath at the sight of wrongdoing. I knew the meaning of inspiration, I felt the charm and poetry of still nights when from sunset to sunrise one sits at one’s writing-table or gladdens one’s soul with dreams. I had faith, I could look into the future as into my mother’s eyes. … But now, oh, my God! I am worn out, I have no faith, I spend days and nights doing nothing. My brains do not obey me, nor my hands nor my feet. My property is going to ruin, the forest is falling under the axe . My land looks at me like a deserted child. I expect nothing, I regret nothing; my soul shudders with fear of the morrow. … And the way I have treated Sarra! I swore to love her forever, I promised her happiness, I displayed before her a future she had not imagined in her dreams. She believed me. For five years I’ve seen her pining away under the weight of her sacrifice, and worn out by the struggle with her conscience, but, as God is above, there has not been one doubtful glance, not one word of reproach! And here I’ve ceased to love her. … How? Why? What for? I don’t understand it. Here she is suffering; her days are numbered, and I, like the meanest sneak, run away from her pale face, her sunken chest, her supplicating eyes. It’s shameful, shameful! Sasha, a child, is touched by my misery. She tells me, at my age, that she loves me, and I am intoxicated, forget everything in the world, enchanted as though by music, and shout “A new life! happiness!” And next day I believe as little in that new life and happiness as in goblins. … What’s the matter with me? To what depths am I making myself sink? What has brought this weakness on me? What has happened to my nerves? If my sick wife wounds my vanity or a servant does not please me, or my gun misses fire, I become brutal, angry and unlike myself . I don’t understand, I don’t understand! I might as well shoot myself and have done with it!”](https://www.offbook.com/monologues/i-am-a-bad-abject-worthless-man) | Act 3 | 454 | 46 |
| Ivanov: “Listen, poor fellow. … I am not going to tell you what I am—honest or a fraud, healthy or a neurotic. There is no making you understand. I used to be young, ardent, earnest, and not a fool: I loved, I hated, and I believed not as others do; I hoped and did the work of ten; I fought with windmills, I knocked my head against the wall; not measuring my strength, not considering, knowing nothing of life, I took up a burden which broke my back and strained my muscles; I made haste to spend all of myself in my youth; I was intoxicated, I worked myself up, I toiled, I knew no moderation. And tell me, could I have done otherwise? We are few, you know, and there is so much to do, so much! My God! how much! And see how cruelly the life with which I struggled has paid me out! I have overstrained myself. At thirty came the awakening, I was already old and slothful. Exhausted, overstrained, broken, with my head heavy and my soul indolent, without faith, without love, without an object in life, I linger like a shadow among men and don’t know what I am, what I am living for, what I want. … And I fancy that love is nonsense and tenderness, mawkish, that there is no sense in work, that songs and words of enthusiasm are vulgar and stale, and everywhere I bring with me misery, chilly boredom, dissatisfaction, distaste for life. … I am lost beyond all hope! Before you stands a man worn out at thirty-five; disillusioned, crushed by his own paltry efforts; he is burning with shame, mocking at his own feebleness. … Oh, how my pride revolts, how I choke with rage! There, what I have brought myself to! I am simply reeling. … I feel ill. Where is Matvey? Let him take me home.” | Act 4 | 315 | 32 |
| Borkin: “No, seriously! Would you like me to marry Marfusha? We’ll go halves over the dowry. … But there, why do I talk about it to you? As though you would understand! “Shut up with your silly rot.” You are a fine man, an intelligent man, but you’ve none of that streak in you, you know—none of that go … To have a fling to make the devils sick with envy. … You are a neurotic, a drooper, but if you were a normal man you would have a million in a year. For instance, if I had at this moment two thousand three hundred roubles, I would have twenty thousand in a fortnight. You don’t believe it? You call that silly rot too? No, it’s not silly rot. … There, give me two thousand three hundred roubles and in a week I’ll bring you twenty thousand. On the other side of the river Ovsyanov is selling a strip of land just opposite us for two thousand three hundred roubles. If we were to buy that strip, both sides of the river would be ours, and if both banks were ours, you know, we should have the right to dam up the river, shouldn’t we? We’d set about building a mill, and, as soon as we let people know we were going to make a dam, all the people living down the river would make a hullaballoo, and we’d say—kommen sie hier, if you don’t want to have a dam, buy us off. Do you understand? Zarevsky’s factory would give us five thousand, Korolkov three thousand, the monastery five thousand. …” | Act 1 | 267 | 27 |
| Sasha: “There is a great deal men don’t understand. Any girl will prefer a man who is a failure to one who is a success, because every woman longs to love actively. … Do you understand, actively? A man is absorbed in his work and so love with him is in the background. To talk to his wife, to walk in the garden and spend the time pleasantly with her and weep on her grave—that’s all he wants. While with us love is life. I love you, that means that I am dreaming how I shall heal you of your misery, how I shall go to the ends of the earth with you. If you go uphill, I go uphill too; if you go down into a pit, I go down into the pit too. To me, for instance, it would be a great happiness to spend a whole night copying your papers, or the whole night watching that no one should wake you, or walking a hundred miles with you! I remember once three years ago at threshing time you came to see us, all covered with dust, sunburnt and exhausted and asked for water. By the time I brought you a glass, you were lying on the sofa, sleeping like the dead. You slept for twelve hours, and all the time I stood on guard at the door that no one should come in. And how happy I was! The harder the work, the better the love, that is, the more strongly it’s felt, you understand.” | Act 3 | 257 | 26 |
| Lebedyev: “One can only throw up one’s hands in amazement, that’s all. Listen, Nikolay! To you all this seems clever, subtle, and according to all the rules of psychology, but to me it seems a scandal and a misfortune. Listen to an old man for the last time! This is what I advise you: give your mind a rest! Look at things simply, like everyone else! Everything is simple in this world. The ceiling is white, the boots are black, sugar is sweet. You love Sasha, she loves you. If you love her—stay; if you don’t love her—go; we won’t make a fuss. Why, it’s so simple! You are both healthy, clever, moral, and you have food to eat and clothes to wear, thank God. … What more do you want? You’ve no money? As though that mattered. … Money does not give happiness. … Of course I understand … your estate is mortgaged, you have no money to pay the interest, but I am a father, I understand. … Her mother can do as she likes, bless the woman; if she won’t give the money, she need not. Sasha says she does not want a dowry. Principles, Schopenhauer. … That’s all tosh … I have a private ten thousand in the bank . Not a dog in the house knows of it. … Granny’s money … that is for you too. … Take it, only on one condition: give Matvey two thousand. …” | Act 4 | 233 | 24 |
| Ivanov: “It’s all true, quite true. … I expect I am terribly to blame, but my thoughts are in a tangle, my soul is paralysed by inertia, and I am incapable of understanding myself. I don’t understand others or myself … . We may be overheard, let us go for a stroll. I’d tell you the whole story from the beginning, my dear fellow, but it’s a long story and so complicated that I shouldn’t be finished by tomorrow morning. Anyuta is a remarkable, exceptional woman. … For my sake she has changed her religion, given up her father and mother, abandoned wealth, and if I wanted a hundred more sacrifices she would make them without the quiver of an eyelash. Well, and I am in no way remarkable, and I have made no sacrifices. But it’s a long story. … The point of it all is, dear doctor , is that … The long and the short of it is that I was passionately in love when I married and vowed I would love her forever; but … five years have passed, she still loves me, and I … . Here you tell me that she is soon going to die, and I feel neither love nor pity, but a sort of emptiness and weariness. … If one looks at me from outside it must be horrible. I don’t myself understand what is happening in my soul.” | Act 1 | 226 | 23 |
| Ivanov: “No, I am not whining now. Jeering? Yes, I am jeering. And if I could jeer at myself a thousand times more bitterly and set the whole world laughing, I would do it. I looked at myself in the looking-glass and it was as though a shell exploded in my conscience! I laughed at myself and almost went out of my mind with shame . Melancholy! Noble sorrow! Mysterious sadness! To crown it all I ought to write verses. … To whine, to lament, to make people miserable, to recognise that vital energy is lost forever, that I have gone to seed, outlived my day, that I have given in to weakness and sunk over my ears in this loathsome apathy—to feel all this when the sun is shining brightly, when even the ant is dragging his little load and is satisfied with himself—no, thanks! To see some people thinking you a fraud, others sorry for you, others holding out a helping hand, while some—worst of all—listen with reverence to your sighs, look upon you as a prophet, and are all agog for you to reveal some new religion. … No, thank God I have still some pride and conscience! As I came here, I laughed at myself and felt as though the very birds, the trees, were laughing at me. …” | Act 4 | 222 | 23 |
| Ivanov: “Do you think so? No, I am not mad. Now I see things in their true light and my mind is as clear as your conscience. We love each other, but we shall never be married! I can rave and be melancholy as much as I like, but I have no right to ruin other people. I poisoned the last year of my wife’s life with my whining. While you have been engaged to me, you have forgotten how to laugh and have grown five years older. Your father, to whom everything in life was clear, is at a loss to understand people, thanks to me. Whether I go to a meeting, or on a visit, or shooting, wherever I am, I bring boredom, depression, and dissatisfaction with me. Wait, don’t interrupt me! I am harsh and savage, but forgive me, I am choked with fury and cannot speak in any other way. I used never to tell lies about life or abuse it, but now that I have become an old grumbler I unconsciously abuse life falsely, repine against destiny and complain, and everyone who hears me is affected by the distaste for life and begins abusing it too. And what an attitude! As though I were doing a favour to nature by living! Damnation take me!” | Act 4 | 218 | 22 |
| Lvov: “It’s past four. I suppose it is just time for the blessing. … They will bless her, and take her to church to be married. Here is the triumph of virtue and justice! He did not succeed in robbing Sarra; he worried her into her grave, and now he has found another. He will play a part to her too until he has plundered her, and then he will lay her in her grave like poor Sarra. It’s the old money-grubbing story … . He is in the seventh heaven of bliss: will live happily to old age, and will die with an easy conscience. No, I’ll expose you! When I tear off your damnable mask and all learn what sort of a creature you are, you will fall headlong from the seventh heaven into depths such as the very devil cannot pull you out of! I am an honest man: it’s my duty to interfere and open their blind eyes. I will do my duty, and tomorrow leave this cursed district forever! But how am I to do it? Talking to the Lebedyevs is waste of time. Challenge him to a duel? Make a row? My God, I am as nervous as a schoolboy and have quite lost all power of reflection! What am I to do? A duel?” | Act 4 | 217 | 22 |
| Ivanov: “I don’t know myself. I fancy it is either … but no! You see, what I meant to say was this. I had a workman called Semyon—you remember him. One day at threshing time he wanted to show the girls how strong he was, put two sacks of rye on his back, and ruptured himself. He died soon after. It seems to me that I have ruptured myself, too. The high-school, university, then managing my estate, plans, schools. … My beliefs were not like other people’s, my marriage was not like other people’s. I was enthusiastic, I took risks, threw away my money right and left, as you know. I have had more happiness and more misery than anyone in the whole district. All this was like those sacks for me, Pasha. … I took a burden on my back, and my back was broken. At twenty we are heroes—we tackle anything, we can do anything; and at thirty we are already exhausted and good for nothing. How do you explain that liability to exhaustion, tell me? But perhaps it’s not that, though. … That’s not it, that’s not it! … Go along, Pasha, God bless you; I have been boring you.” | Act 3 | 199 | 20 |

## Small roles that can be doubled

These pairs of small roles never speak in the same scene, so one actor could play both. Check entrances and silent appearances in your script before you cast it this way.

- Avdotya and Zinaida Savishna
- Third Guest and Zinaida Savishna
- First Guest and Zinaida Savishna
- Zinaida Savishna and Yegorushka
- Zinaida Savishna and Young Ladies
- Zinaida Savishna and Second Guest

## Roles and monologues in depth

- [Ivanov: I am a bad, abject, worthless man (Ivanov’s soliloquy)](https://www.offbook.com/monologues/i-am-a-bad-abject-worthless-man)

## Questions actors ask

### Who has the most lines in Ivanov?

Ivanov, with about 548 lines and 4,911 words, 25.2% of everything spoken in the play. Lebedyev is next, with about 358 lines (16%).

### How long is Ivanov?

The full text has 19,524 spoken words, about 140 minutes at 140 words a minute before pauses, scene changes, and cuts. Most productions cut the text, so running times vary.

### How many speaking roles are in Ivanov?

17 named roles speak in this edition, across 4 scenes. 6 of them have less than 2% of the words, which is why small parts are often doubled.

## How we count

Counts are computed from the full text of the [Standard Ebooks edition](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/anton-chekhov/ivanov/constance-garnett) (public domain; retrieved 2026-11-11). Words are every spoken word, with stage directions removed. Lines are verse lines as printed, plus prose at 10 words a line, because prose has no fixed line breaks; editions differ, so other sources give slightly different line counts. Time is words at 140 words a minute, before pauses and stage business. A role is counted in a scene when it speaks there. To count a script that is not in the library, paste it into the [script line counter](https://www.offbook.com/tools/script-line-counter).