Also referred to as Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, although both are two seperate (but closely related) diseases. Essentially, both are brain disorders due to thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency.

Lack of vitamin B1 is common in people with alcoholism. It is also common in persons whose bodies do not absorb food properly (malabsorption), as sometimes occurs with a chronic illness or after obesity (bariatric) surgery.

Korsakoff syndrome, or Korsakoff psychosis, tends to develop as Wernicke symptoms go away. Wernicke encephalopathy causes brain damage in lower parts of the brain called the thalamus and hypothalamus. Korsakoff psychosis results from permanent damage to areas of the brain involved with memory.

Symptoms of Wernicke encephalopathy include:

• Confusion and loss of mental activity that can progress to coma and death

• Loss of muscle coordination (ataxia) that can cause leg tremor  

• Vision changes such as abnormal eye movements (back and forth movements called nystagmus), double vision, eyelid drooping

• Alcohol withdrawal

Symptoms of Korsakoff syndrome:

• Inability to form new memories

• Loss of memory, can be severe

• Making up stories (confabulation)

• Seeing or hearing things that are not really there (hallucinations)

Information above is taken from here. Follow link for further information, or try here for another source.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/in+vino+veritas

vahy-noh ver-i-tas

The link above also includes a sound clip.

Hulloo!: "Ay!" (pronounced "Ah-ooh!") in the original.  As Richard Peace poinmts out "Ahoo!" is a cry used to establish contact between people lost in a forest; as such its constant repetition has a poignant relevance for the lack of communication exhibited by the characters throughout the play.  But "Ahoo!" also has an idiomatic usage which means "it's all up," "it's done for"  (Peace, 1983, p. 112.)

This is quoted in:

Chekhov, Anton. Three Sisters.  Trans. Michael Frayn.  Commentary and notes by Nick Worrall. London: Methuen Drama. 2006.

Most recent copyright: the revised translation, 1988; Translator's Introduction: 1991; Commentary and Notes by Nick Worrall, 2006.

Worrall is referring to:  Peace, Richard. Chekhov: A Study of the Four Major Plays.  New Haven and London:  Yale University Press.1983.

We need more information on the context of this question in order to answer it. Father Prozorov has one son, Andrey, and there is no reference in the text that suggests that he was waiting for another one, or that Andrey displeased him in any way. In fact all the information we have in the text suggests that Father Prozorov (if he shared the town/familial opinion) supported Andrey, and thought he was capable of great success.

Act 1 takes place in May, and Act 2 takes place in February.

Possibility # 1: Andrey and Natasha got married and conceived the child immediately after Act 1 ends. 9 months have passed and Bobik is a newborn baby.

Possiblility # 2: Andrey and Natasha got married some number of months after Act I ends, they conceive the child and it is born before the next February which would mean that 21 months have passed between Act 1 and Act 2 and Bobik could be as old as 12 months (at the very oldest).

The only information we have is Andrey's own word on the matter. He says that he is not gambling. The fact that he is thirty-five thousand in debt and is being forced to mortgage the house suggests that he may no longer even have an option to gamble. The sisters do not talk about him with the knowledge that he is still gambling, but rather that he is simply in a great amount of debt.

With tensions rising between the sisters and Natasha, it is possible that Masha has less faith in Andrey's ability to act on behalf of the family. In fact Masha says that Natasha is now involved in the finances, "his wife’s got her hands on all the money", this stresses the financial situation further, and also creates more need for Masha to grasp for control. Keep in mind also that Andrey could have been gambling for as long as a year prior to the beginning of Act III. Even a sister might give up faith in his ability to make a rational decision with finances and assets after a year of consistent poor behavior. By Act IV Masha speaks of him as a fallen bell. As if he proved her point and continued in his downward trajectory.

 There is no concrete evidence in the text, but we can get a general picture. Tusenbach jokes somewhat casually with Chebutykin in Act 1 which indicates that they know each other well, this implies a long term relationship. We know that Tusenbach grew up in St. Petersburg and was therefore transferred by the military to the setting of the play (Perm). In Act II Tusenbach says he has been thinking of giving up his army career for five years, which dates us back to about three years before the play begins. If we assume that this is when Tusenbach was transferred, then Tusenbach knew the Prozorov's for no less than three years, and General Prozorov for two. This would also mean that Tusenbach could arguably be as young as 23 when the play begins.
However there is no hard evidence against a possibility of him being as old as forty or even older, and thus, he could have been stationed in the town (Perm) for over twenty years, but there is no dramatic justification for this choice.

Here is one possibility, based off of this article and the table of ranks.

"Theoretically, every nobleman started off at the very bottom and had to work his way up, his parentage notwithstanding."

There may be a certain value placed on work which came directly from the government and social elite. While the sisters and their companyay may be using 'work' as a way to find or make meaning of their lives, to pass boredom, to have an active role in their circumstances, or even as a means to regain their former lifestyle by supplementing income or achieving a respected position, they may additionally have high society itself imposing this value system upon them. It implies that there may be a belief that to do any work at all is an honorable act in itself.

"The Emperor was not a great fan of the nobility, who preferred to spend their time enveloped in scheming and plotting in palatial residences, doing nothing for the country.

After the Table of Ranks came into effect, everyone’s position and status was determined according to service, and not birthright – something which was met with antipathy from the nobility, many of who at this point were illiterate and shunned an active duty."

The sisters, through the deaths of their parents, have lost any social or monetary benefits that may have been their birthrights, and are now instead working. Two of them at a school, the very opposite of illiteracy. In some ways, the sisters' attitudes toward work may be an idealistic interpretation or representation of the feelings and structures of the time.

Chekhov deliberately does not list a specific song in the text, which leaves only speculation. The most prominent Russian composers of the time were known as “The Five”. They were group who met together in Saint Petersburg and created a nationalist movement in Russian music. The following are the members of the group and their most famous pieces:

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov – Scheherazade

Mily Balakirev - Tamara

Cesar Cui - Orientale (op. 50, No. 9)

Modest Mussorgsky – Night on Bald Mountain

Alexander Borodin - In the Steppes of Central Asia

Another possibility that is thematically relevant is the opera Ruslan and Lyudmila composed by Mikhail Glinka. This opera is based off of the poem Masha quotes “On a far seashore an oaktree grows…” A link to the overture (the most famous part of the piece) is below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkBhbH0LezM

Regardless of their use in the show, these are works of music that the Prozorov family might have heard during their time in Moscow. They were the pinnacle of musical culture at the time.

Straight from the letters of Chekhov to his wife Olga, who asked the same question while playing the role of Masha: "Vershínin pronounces the words tram-tram-tram as a kind of question and you as a kind of answer, and this seems to you such an original joke that you say your tram-tram with a laugh. . . . You should say tramtram and start to laugh, but not out loud, just a little, almost to yourself.’”

There are many possibilities. One is that Kulygin simply does not give much importance to the argument between Solyony and Tusenbach. Then he gets distracted by “random” thought about his teacher. This is unlikely because of his personal involvement with both the sisters and the other soldiers.

A second possibility is that Kulygin changes his mind about explaining the argument for a different reason. He might see that Tusenbach does not want Irina to know when Tusenbach “goes off into the house”, and purposefully undercuts himself with a trivial story. Adding to this action is the fact the Chebutykin is diffusing the situation with his “It doesn’t matter” sentiment. Finally, Kulygin himself might want to protect Irina from the truth. In the beginning of the exchange he might feel that Irina needs to know, but once he comes face to face with telling her, Kulygin can not follow through.

As for the content of the passage. Perhaps he chooses a light hearted story to lighten the mood. Also, the subject of Kulygin’s story is “far away” which distances the conversation from the subject of the duel. Once he succeeds (or at least attempts) in lightening the conversation, Kulygin is able to introduce the touchy subject of the argument again without talking about the duel; “Apparently Solyony’s in love with Irina, and he’s conceived a great hatred for the baron… It’s quite understandable.”

No, the band would not be playing the same song. They would be playing a military march. Korsakov was one composer who wrote music for the Russian military. The origin of the "Ta ra ra boom de ay" song is not known with certainty. It first appeared in the early 1890's and was performed in Greece, England, America, Russia and in many more countries across the western world. There is a tale that the song was first played as a sort of practical joke in Greece as a replacement for the British national anthem "God Save the Queen".

The implication that life will improve over the course of time is made very often in the play. However, the idea that one has a choice in their own future is not mentioned very often. Even the hopeful Vershinin eventually concedes that “there is no happiness for us” that the choices we make in this life will be for descendants many generations away. In Act 1 Olga also implies that time allows for improvement with her line in reference to her father’s death, “now here’s a year gone by, and we can think about it again quite calmly.” But again, this does not imply one’s own choice in creating a better future for themself. Irina implies in a trivial way that she might be able to work toward a better future when talking to Chebutykin on her name day: “better to be a simple horse, just so long as you work.” There are many such references to work as a means towards a better life, but this is the closest we come to another mention of choice in one’s own future. Many characters mention possibilities outside themselves as a means of shaping their future, ie. Tusenbach feels that a life with Masha would be an improvement, but there is no other mention of one choosing their own future.

Andrey's exact age is never stated within the text. Here, however, is an article which makes an argument that Andrey is the second oldest, after Olga.

"The accession of Alexander II brought a social restructuring that required a public discussion of issues and the lifting of some types of censorship. When an attempt was made to assassinate the tsar in 1866, the government reinstated censorship, but not with the severity of pre-1855 control. The government also put restrictions on universities in 1866, five years after they had gained autonomy. The central government attempted to act through the zemstva to establish uniform curricula for elementary schools and to impose conservative policies, but it lacked resources. Because many liberal teachers and school officials were only nominally subject to the reactionary Ministry of Education, however, the regime's educational achievements were mixed after 1866." -Source.

From Wikipedia:

In Imperial Russia, according to the 1897 Population Census, literate people made up 28.4 percent of the population. Literacy levels of women were a mere 13%.

Women in Russia were also working for higher education during this time.

This text is a quote from the poem Ruslan and Ludmila, a poem that can be found in its entirety here, linked as well under "About the Play" tab on the "Relevant Work" page.

The text suggests a variety of possibilities. It seems that each of the three sisters has a different relationship to Anfisa.

Olga defends her in Act III suggesting a close emotional relationship, which might result in a slightly less formal relationship between the two.

Masha speaks to Anfisa somewhat harshly in Act II "Be quiet! Stop pestering! You give me no peace..." which might suggest slightly less empathy for her position and therefore a slightly more formal relationship.

Irina seems to have less contact in general with Anfisa which could be indicative of many possibilities; her desire to be independent as she comes of age, the independence common in a youngest child, a difference in personality, or the possibility that there is another reason we don't see the relationship on stage i.e. she likes to spend time with her Nanny alone, or she prefers her sister's company to the nanny. However she does make the effort to say "Thank you" to Anfisa even on her name day, in the midst of her party which suggests a level of respect and politness. Perhaps this relationship is more complex; formal in action (or in the public view), yet softer and closer in private.