“My heart’s bursting!" —Who is the speaker? What happens immediately after the above comment?

“My heart’s bursting!” —Who is the speaker? What happens immediately after the above comment?

The speaker of this line is Ivan Vassilevitch Lomov, in Anton Chekhov’s one-act play The Proposal’.

Lomov has come to propose marriage to Natalya but soon engage himself in a heated argument with Natalya. As Lomov is a nervous person, his heart starts palpitating because of the excitement of the argument. He requests Natalya to shut up. But Natalya along with Chubukov start teasing him for having a ‘half-dead’, ‘silly’ dog Guess. As a result, the situation becomes critical. They call each other names and try to prove their own dog better than the other by drawing the past reference of ‘Marusinsky hunt’. Lomov gets excited. He starts to feel numbness in his foot. Natalya and Chubukov never stop teasing him and drive him crazy. The comic spirit of the humourous dialogues is maintained throughout the play. At last, Lomov faints down and the situation takes another humorous dimension.

“I give you my blessing and so on. Only leave me in peace!”—Who is the speaker? Why did the speaker say so?

The above-mentioned line is taken from The Proposal’. Here, the speaker is Stepan Stepanovitch Chubukov.

Lomov came to Chubukov to seek permission for marrying his daughter Natalya. But when Natalya came to meet Lomov, they started quarrelling, firstly regarding the ownership of Oxen Meadows and then over their pet dogs. Their quarrel reached such an extent, that Lomov became sick. Chubukov intervened but could not stop them and lost his peace of mind. It appeared that he was tired and fed-up with Lomov and Natalya and the onerous task of getting Natalya married. So he wanted to be relieved of a father’s duty and made the remark.