.....It is noon on a hot day. In front of Sorin's house, with the lake on one side reflecting the sun, Irina, Doctor Dorn, and Masha are sitting on a bench chatting. Irina is bragging about how youthful and agile she is for her age while Masha talks about how miserable she is. Sorin and Nina join the group and Semyon pulls up a chair. Nina is in high spirits, for her father and mother have gone away for three days, leaving her to do as she pleases. Irina tells the group that she is worried about Konstantin, who seems depressed and spends a lot of time alone at the lake.
.......“His heart is heavy,” Masha says.
.......Sorin dozes off, and Irina says the sixty-five-year old ought to do something for his health—go to a spa, for example. Semyon says he should quit smoking, and Dorn agrees. Sorin rejects Semyon's advice, saying he has never really lived—during or after he put in twenty-eight years in the Department of Justice. Now he wants to live. Drinking wine and smoking cigars help him do that. When Masha goes inside, the conversation turns to country life vs city life. Irina prefers the excitement of the city, and Nina says she understands her point of view. Sorin, too, likes city life. Irina is planning to go to Moscow that very day, but Ilya comes in to inform her that the workers will be hauling rye and that no horses will be available to take her to the train station.
.......“You do not know, Madam, what it is to run a farm,” he says.
....... Angry, Irina orders him to provide a carriage for the trip. Ilya loses his temper, resigns his position, and walks away. Irina then says she is treated this way every summer and will not sojourn at the estate in the future. She goes into the house, followed by Trigorin with a fishing rod and bucket.
.......Sorin is angry now, and Nina tells Polina that Ilya cannot treat a famous actress that way. Sorin and Nina go in to ask Irina to stay. Dorn predicts that “old Granny” Sorin will kowtow to Ilya and ask him to keep his job. Polina tells Dorn that she can no longer brook Ilya's rough ways. She asks him to declare publicly that they love each other. But Dorn says it is too late for him to make changes in his life. Nina comes out and tells them that Irina is crying and Sorin is having an asthma attack.
.......Everyone goes into the house. When Nina sees Irina and Trigorin, she is surprised that Trigorin rejoices over some minnows he caught and that Irina cries and flies into a passion. Nina thought famous people were above all that.
.......Outside, Konstantin approaches Nina with dead sea gull and a gun. Laying the bird before her, he says, “So shall I soon end my own life.” In recent days, he says, she has ignored him. Apparently, she does not want him around. He thinks her behavior is due to the failure of his play, which he has burned—every last page.
.......“You have no faith in my powers,” he says. “You think me commonplace and worthless.”
.......Trigorin appears. He is reading a book.
.......After Konstantin goes away, Trigorin says he is leaving and regrets that he probably will not be seeing Nina again. She asks him how it feels to be famous. He replies that he does not feel it in any special way. If critics praise him, he is happy. If they do not, he is “out of sorts for the next two days.” When she praises him as one in a million, he thanks her but says praise means little to him. What drives him, he says, is writing. He must write, write, write. And even when he is not writing, he sees images—the shape of a cloud, for example—that he carries with him for the next time he writes. Writing is an all-consuming profession, he says. When he was young trying to break in, it was agony. But it is a pleasure when he finishes a book and reads the proofs. However, after the book is in print, he has regrets about it. Then readers say it is clever or lovely, but not as good as the writing of Tolstoy or Turgenev.
.......“For the bliss of being a writer or an actress,” she replies, “I could endure want, and disillusionment, and the hatred of my friends, and the pangs of my own dissatisfaction with myself.”
.......Trigorin notices the dead sea gull, and Nina tells him Konstantin shot it. Trigorin then writes something in a small book he carries in a pocket. When Nina asks him what he wrote, he says, "An idea for a short story. A young girl grows up on the shores of a lake, as you have. She loves the lake as the gulls do, and is as happy and free as they. But a man sees her who chances to come that way, and he destroys her out of idleness, as this gull here has been destroyed."
.......Irina calls out and tells Trigorin she has decided to delay their return to Moscow.