Alexander Vladimirovich Serebryakov

A retired professor of art, son of a plain deacon who rose through academic degrees to a chair and "his excellency," now living in querulous, gout-ridden retirement on the country estate that belonged to his late first wife (Voinitsky's sister) and now, by inheritance, to his daughter Sonya. Married a second time, to the much younger Yelena Andreyevna, and has settled at the estate against everyone's comfort, disrupting years of quiet, laborious routine. His proposal in Act Three to sell the estate and convert the proceeds into securities -- ostensibly for the family's benefit, without apparent awareness that it is not legally his to sell -- triggers Voinitsky's breakdown and the attempt on his life. Voinitsky's bitter private assessment (Act One) is that after twenty-five years of writing about art without understanding it, Serebryakov's academic career amounts to nothing of substance; the play offers no scene that clearly contradicts this judgment, though Serebryakov himself is treated with a degree of pathos as a frightened, aging, self-pitying man rather than pure villain.