# The Cherry Orchard: every role by lines, words, and stage time > Anton Chekhov, translated by Constance Garnett. 19 speaking roles, 13,486 words, about 96 minutes of speech. - URL: https://www.offbook.com/plays/the-cherry-orchard - Last updated: 2026-10-08 **Lopahin** has the most to say in The Cherry Orchard: about 305 lines and 2,595 words, 19.2% of the play. The Cherry Orchard follows a family that cannot bring itself to save its estate before it is sold. It is a true ensemble: Lopahin and Lyubov share the lead almost exactly, each with about a fifth of the words, and the six largest roles all speak in every act. Trofimov and Gaev follow with about a tenth each. - Speaking roles: 19 - Scenes: 4 - Words: 13,486 - Speech time: 96 min ## Every role, largest first | Role | Lines | Words | Share | Minutes | Scenes | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Lopahin | 305 | 2,595 | 19.2% | 18.5 | 4 | | Lyubov | 306 | 2,531 | 18.8% | 18.1 | 4 | | Trofimov | 184 | 1,542 | 11.4% | 11.0 | 4 | | Gaev | 171 | 1,346 | 10% | 9.6 | 4 | | Varya | 148 | 1,156 | 8.6% | 8.3 | 4 | | Anya | 123 | 943 | 7% | 6.7 | 4 | | Pishtchik | 91 | 771 | 5.7% | 5.5 | 3 | | Epihodov | 66 | 576 | 4.3% | 4.1 | 4 | | Dunyasha | 73 | 561 | 4.2% | 4.0 | 4 | | Firs | 65 | 515 | 3.8% | 3.7 | 4 | | Yasha | 66 | 498 | 3.7% | 3.6 | 4 | | Charlotta | 46 | 376 | 2.8% | 2.7 | 4 | | Wayfarer | 7 | 48 | 0.4% | 0.3 | 1 | | Voice | 1 | 7 | 0.1% | 0.1 | 1 | | Varya’s Voice | 2 | 6 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 | | Voices from Larger Room | 1 | 5 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 | | Station Master | 1 | 4 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 | | Voice of Trofimov | 2 | 4 | 0% | 0.0 | 1 | | Voice of Anya | 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. - **Lopahin**: Act 1 (974), Act 2 (565), Act 3 (410), Act 4 (646) - **Lyubov**: Act 1 (571), Act 2 (701), Act 3 (862), Act 4 (397) - **Trofimov**: Act 1 (69), Act 2 (848), Act 3 (258), Act 4 (367) - **Gaev**: Act 1 (858), Act 2 (259), Act 3 (30), Act 4 (199) - **Varya**: Act 1 (614), Act 2 (41), Act 3 (351), Act 4 (150) - **Anya**: Act 1 (554), Act 2 (119), Act 3 (124), Act 4 (146) - **Pishtchik**: Act 1 (217), Act 3 (302), Act 4 (252) - **Epihodov**: Act 1 (129), Act 2 (228), Act 3 (163), Act 4 (56) - **Dunyasha**: Act 1 (297), Act 2 (133), Act 3 (93), Act 4 (38) - **Firs**: Act 1 (178), Act 2 (125), Act 3 (141), Act 4 (71) - **Yasha**: Act 1 (48), Act 2 (135), Act 3 (139), Act 4 (176) - **Charlotta**: Act 1 (29), Act 2 (199), Act 3 (107), Act 4 (41) ## The longest speeches | Speech | Scene | Words | Lines | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Lopahin: “I have bought it! Wait a bit, ladies and gentlemen, pray. My head’s a bit muddled, I can’t speak . We came to the auction. Deriganov was there already. Leonid Andreyevitch only had fifteen thousand and Deriganov bid thirty thousand, besides the arrears, straight off. I saw how the land lay. I bid against him. I bid forty thousand, he bid forty-five thousand, I said fifty-five, and so he went on, adding five thousands and I adding ten. Well … So it ended. I bid ninety, and it was knocked down to me. Now the cherry orchard’s mine! Mine! My God, the cherry orchard’s mine! Tell me that I’m drunk, that I’m out of my mind, that it’s all a dream . Don’t laugh at me! If my father and my grandfather could rise from their graves and see all that has happened! How their Yermolay, ignorant, beaten Yermolay, who used to run about barefoot in winter, how that very Yermolay has bought the finest estate in the world! I have bought the estate where my father and grandfather were slaves, where they weren’t even admitted into the kitchen. I am asleep, I am dreaming! It is all fancy, it is the work of your imagination plunged in the darkness of ignorance . She threw away the keys; she means to show she’s not the housewife now . Well, no matter. Hey, musicians! Play! I want to hear you. Come, all of you, and look how Yermolay Lopahin will take the axe to the cherry orchard, how the trees will fall to the ground! We will build houses on it and our grandsons and great-grandsons will see a new life springing up there. Music! Play up!” | Act 3 | 281 | 29 | | Trofimov: “Humanity progresses, perfecting its powers. Everything that is beyond its ken now will one day become familiar and comprehensible; only we must work, we must with all our powers aid the seeker after truth. Here among us in Russia the workers are few in number as yet. The vast majority of the intellectual people I know, seek nothing, do nothing, are not fit as yet for work of any kind. They call themselves intellectual, but they treat their servants as inferiors, behave to the peasants as though they were animals, learn little, read nothing seriously, do practically nothing, only talk about science and know very little about art. They are all serious people, they all have severe faces, they all talk of weighty matters and air their theories, and yet the vast majority of us—ninety-nine percent—live like savages, at the least thing fly to blows and abuse, eat piggishly, sleep in filth and stuffiness, bugs everywhere, stench and damp and moral impurity. And it’s clear all our fine talk is only to divert our attention and other people’s. Show me where to find the crèches there’s so much talk about, and the reading-rooms? They only exist in novels: in real life there are none of them. There is nothing but filth and vulgarity and Asiatic apathy. I fear and dislike very serious faces. I’m afraid of serious conversations. We should do better to be silent.” | Act 2 | 238 | 24 | | Lopahin: “No, what with the luggage and one thing and another . Lyubov Andreyevna has been abroad five years; I don’t know what she is like now. … She’s a splendid woman. A good-natured, kindhearted woman. I remember when I was a lad of fifteen, my poor father—he used to keep a little shop here in the village in those days—gave me a punch in the face with his fist and made my nose bleed. We were in the yard here, I forget what we’d come about—he had had a drop. Lyubov Andreyevna—I can see her now—she was a slim young girl then—took me to wash my face, and then brought me into this very room, into the nursery. “Don’t cry, little peasant,” says she, “it will be well in time for your wedding day” … . Little peasant. … My father was a peasant, it’s true, but here am I in a white waistcoat and brown shoes, like a pig in a bun shop. Yes, I’m a rich man, but for all my money, come to think, a peasant I was, and a peasant I am . I’ve been reading this book and I can’t make head or tail of it. I fell asleep over it .” | Act 1 | 206 | 21 | | Lyubov: “Oh, my sins! I’ve always thrown my money away recklessly like a lunatic. I married a man who made nothing but debts. My husband died of champagne—he drank dreadfully. To my misery I loved another man, and immediately—it was my first punishment—the blow fell upon me, here, in the river … my boy was drowned and I went abroad—went away forever, never to return, not to see that river again … I shut my eyes, and fled, distracted, and he after me … pitilessly, brutally. I bought a villa at Mentone, for he fell ill there, and for three years I had no rest day or night. His illness wore me out, my soul was dried up. And last year, when my villa was sold to pay my debts, I went to Paris and there he robbed me of everything and abandoned me for another woman; and I tried to poison myself. … So stupid, so shameful! … And suddenly I felt a yearning for Russia, for my country, for my little girl … . Lord, Lord, be merciful! Forgive my sins! Do not chastise me more! I got this today from Paris. He implores forgiveness, entreats me to return . I fancy there is music somewhere .” | Act 2 | 203 | 21 | | Trofimov: “All Russia is our garden. The earth is great and beautiful—there are many beautiful places in it . Think only, Anya, your grandfather, and great-grandfather, and all your ancestors were slave-owners—the owners of living souls—and from every cherry in the orchard, from every leaf, from every trunk there are human creatures looking at you. Cannot you hear their voices? Oh, it is awful! Your orchard is a fearful thing, and when in the evening or at night one walks about the orchard, the old bark on the trees glimmers dimly in the dusk, and the old cherry trees seem to be dreaming of centuries gone by and tortured by fearful visions. Yes! We are at least two hundred years behind, we have really gained nothing yet, we have no definite attitude to the past, we do nothing but theorise or complain of depression or drink vodka. It is clear that to begin to live in the present we must first expiate our past, we must break with it; and we can expiate it only by suffering, by extraordinary unceasing labour. Understand that, Anya.” | Act 2 | 185 | 19 | | Lyubov: “What truth? You see where the truth lies, but I seem to have lost my sight, I see nothing. You settle every great problem so boldly, but tell me, my dear boy, isn’t it because you’re young—because you haven’t yet understood one of your problems through suffering? You look forward boldly, and isn’t it that you don’t see and don’t expect anything dreadful because life is still hidden from your young eyes? You’re bolder, more honest, deeper than we are, but think, be just a little magnanimous, have pity on me. I was born here, you know, my father and mother lived here, my grandfather lived here, I love this house. I can’t conceive of life without the cherry orchard, and if it really must be sold, then sell me with the orchard . My boy was drowned here . Pity me, my dear kind fellow.” | Act 3 | 145 | 15 | | Lyubov: “That’s a telegram from Paris. I get one every day. One yesterday and one today. That savage creature is ill again, he’s in trouble again. He begs forgiveness, beseeches me to go, and really I ought to go to Paris to see him. You look shocked, Petya. What am I to do, my dear boy, what am I to do? He is ill, he is alone and unhappy, and who’ll look after him, who’ll keep him from doing the wrong thing, who’ll give him his medicine at the right time? And why hide it or be silent? I love him, that’s clear. I love him! I love him! He’s a millstone about my neck, I’m going to the bottom with him, but I love that stone and can’t live without it . Don’t think ill of me, Petya, don’t tell me anything, don’t tell me …” | Act 3 | 144 | 15 | | Lopahin: “I want to tell you something very pleasant and cheering . I’m going directly … there’s no time to say much … well, I can say it in a couple of words. I needn’t tell you your cherry orchard is to be sold to pay your debts; the 22nd of August is the date fixed for the sale; but don’t you worry, dearest lady, you may sleep in peace, there is a way of saving it. … This is what I propose. I beg your attention! Your estate is not twenty miles from the town, the railway runs close by it, and if the cherry orchard and the land along the river bank were cut up into building plots and then let on lease for summer villas, you would make an income of at least 25,000 roubles a year out of it.” | Act 1 | 139 | 14 | | Varya: “We must go to bed. I’m going. Something unpleasant happened while you were away. In the old servants’ quarters there are only the old servants, as you know—Efimyushka, Polya and Yevstigney—and Karp too. They began letting stray people in to spend the night—I said nothing. But all at once I heard they had been spreading a report that I gave them nothing but pease pudding to eat. Out of stinginess, you know. … And it was all Yevstigney’s doing. … Very well, I said to myself. … If that’s how it is, I thought, wait a bit. I sent for Yevstigney … . He comes. “How’s this, Yevstigney,” I said, “you could be such a fool as to? …” Anitchka! She’s asleep . Come to bed … come along! My darling has fallen asleep! Come …” | Act 1 | 130 | 13 | | Charlotta: “I haven’t a real passport of my own, and I don’t know how old I am, and I always feel that I’m a young thing. When I was a little girl, my father and mother used to travel about to fairs and give performances—very good ones. And I used to dance salto mortale and all sorts of things. And when papa and mamma died, a German lady took me and had me educated. And so I grew up and became a governess. But where I came from, and who I am, I don’t know. … Who my parents were, very likely they weren’t married … I don’t know . I know nothing at all . One wants to talk and has no one to talk to … I have nobody.” | Act 2 | 126 | 13 | ## 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. - Wayfarer and Voice - Wayfarer and Voices from Larger Room - Wayfarer and Station Master - Wayfarer and Voice of Trofimov - Wayfarer and Voice of Anya - Voice and Varya’s Voice - Voice and Voice of Trofimov - Voice and Voice of Anya - Varya’s Voice and Voices from Larger Room - Varya’s Voice and Station Master - Varya’s Voice and Voice of Trofimov - Varya’s Voice and Voice of Anya ## Questions actors ask ### Who has the most lines in The Cherry Orchard? Lopahin, with about 305 lines and 2,595 words, 19.2% of everything spoken in the play. Lyubov is next, with about 306 lines (18.8%). ### How long is The Cherry Orchard? The full text has 13,486 spoken words, about 96 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 The Cherry Orchard? 19 named roles speak in this edition, across 4 scenes. 7 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/the-cherry-orchard/constance-garnett) (public domain; retrieved 2026-10-08). 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).