One-act-play with only two characters: Vasili Svietlovidoff, a 68 year old comic actor and Nikita Ivanich, an even older man, the theater's prompter.

Chekhov's hero finds himself locked in a theatre and who, attended only by a prompter, dwells on impending death, the life unlived and memories of past glories. His thoughts reflected on whether it is still worth living or whether he should crawl towards death. Eventually he chose life, with Shakespeare to guide him. The best bits are the quotations from Aeschylus and Shakespeare.