On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco (О вреде табака) is a one act play with only one character (Ivan Ivanovich Nyukhin), written by Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n author Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...

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Plot

The action takes place in a town hall. The main character has been told by his wife to give a lecture about "the harmful effects of tobacco" even though he himself is a smoker. He emphasizes that this will be a dry and boring lecture, but always postpones the actual subject by talking about his problems with his dominant wife.

"I must tell you, by the way, that my wife runs a boarding school. Well, not exactly a boarding school, but something in the nature of one. Just between us, my wife likes to complain about hard times, but she has put away a little nest egg... some forty or fifty thousand rubles. As for me, I haven't a kopek to my name, not a penny . . . "

He wants to stand up against his wife, he wants to run away, to forget and to be alone. He throws off his old, shabby waistcoat (it being a metaphor for himself), but suddenly picks it back up, because

"She is here. My wife is there in the wings waiting for me."

At the end of the monologue, he has hardly said anything relevant about the harmful effects of tobacco, but asks the audience not to betray him:

"If she asks you, please, I beg you, tell her that her scarecrow husband, I mean, the lecturer, me, behaved with dignity."

History

Originally published in 1886, Chekhov revised it later into the better-known 1902 version. The first English publication was in The Unknown Chekhov.