Content Warning: The source text and this section of the guide mention death by suicide.

The play opens on a chilly May morning in a room that is “still called the nursery” though it hasn’t been used as one in years (2). It is not quite sunrise, and Lopakhin, a merchant, and Dunyasha, a housemaid, await the arrival of the estate’s owner, Lubov Andreyevna Ranevsky. The train is late, and Lopakhin laments that he overslept and missed going to meet it at the station. Lubov has been living in France for five years, ever since her young son drowned. Lopakhin wonders if she will recognize him after all this time. He recalls that Lubov was always kind to him. Once, when he was a little boy, his father, who was a shopkeeper, hit him and made his nose bleed; Lubov cleaned him up and comforted him. Lopakhin remarks that while his father was a peasant, Lopakhin is now rich. However, he claims that he is still a peasant in “the marrow of [his] bones” (3), remarking that he remains uneducated.

Just then, Dunyasha says that she feels faint. Lopakhin tells her that she is too dressed up for a chambermaid; she “should know [her] place” (4).