Comedic Monologues for Women

Finding great comedic monologues for women can be quite tough. The perfect monologue can make or break your audition. If you’re going in to audition for a comedy role, it’s crucial that you choose a monologue that will accentuate your talent for comedy.

Deciding on a monologue is never easy, but it’s typical for performers to find that one monologue resonates with them over another. Spend some time before your audition reading through monologues, practicing the ones you’ve narrowed down, and picking one that works at both your talent and comfort level.

If you can’t seem to find the perfect monologue, we’ve put together a list of our favorites. Take a moment to read through and see what stands out for you! Here is our list of comedic monologues for women.

Dotty Otley from “Noises Off” – I Can’t Open the Sardines Can

“It’s no good you going on. I can’t open sardines and answer the phone. I’ve only got one pair of feet. Hello…. Yes, but there’s no one here, love…. No, Mr. Brent’s not here…He lives here, yes, but he don’t live here now because he lives in Spain… Mr. Philip Brent, that’s right…. The one who writes the plays, that’s him, only now he writes them in Spain… No, she’s in Spain, too, they’re all in Spain, there’s no one here… Am I in Spain? No, I’m not in Spain, dear. I look after the house for him, but I go home at one o’clock on Wednesday, only I’ve got a nice plate of sardines to put my feet up with, because it’s the royal what’s-it’s called on the telly — the royal you know — where’s the paper, then? And if it’s to do with letting the house then you’ll have to ring the house-agents, because they’re the agents for the house…. Squire Squire, Hackham and who’s the other one…? No, they’re not in Spain, they’re next to the phone in the study. Squire, Squire, Hackham, and hold on, I’ll go and look. Always the same, isn’t it. Soon as you take the weight off your feet, down it all comes on your head.”

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Mrs. Armstrong from “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” – Give Everyone a Chance

“[Let me]tell you again, Grace, how important it is to give everyone a chance. Here’s what I do — I always start with Mary and tell them we must choose our Mary carefully because Mary was the mother of Jesus… Yes, and then I tell them about Joseph, that he was God’s choice to be Jesus’ father. That’s how I explain that. Frankly, I don’t ever spend much time on Joseph because it’s always Elmer Hopkins, and he knows all about Mary and Joseph, but I do explain about the Wise Men and the shepherds and how important they are. And I tell them, there are no small parts, only small actors. Remind the angel choir not to stare at the audience, and don’t let them wear earrings and things like that. And don’t let them wear clunky shoes or high heels. I just hope you don’t have too many baby angels, Grace, because they’ll be your biggest problem. You’ll have to get someone to push the baby angels on, otherwise they get in each other’s way and bend their wings. Bob could do that, and he could keep an eye on the shepherds too. Oh, another thing about the angel choir. Don’t let them wear lipstick. They think because it’s a play that they have to wear lipstick, and it looks terrible. So tell them…. And, Grace, don’t use just anybody’s baby for Jesus… get a quiet one. Better yet, get two if you can… then if one turns out to be fussy, you can always switch them.”

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Lady Mary from “The Admirable Crichton” – A Herd Near Penguins Creek

“I sighted a herd near Penguin’s Creek, but had to creep round Silver Lake to get to windward of them. However, they spotted me and then the fun began. There was nothing for it but to try and run them down, so I singled out a fat buck and away we went down the shore of the lake, up the valley of rolling stones; he doubled into Brawling River and took to the water, but I swam after him; the river is only half a mile broad there, but it runs strong. He went spinning down the rapids, down I went in pursuit; he clambered ashore, I clambered ashore; away we tore helter-skelter up the hill and down again. I lost him in the marshes, got on his track again near Bread Fruit Wood, and brought him down with an arrow in Firefly Grove.”

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Sally Brown from “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” – I Got a C

“A ‘C’? A ‘C’? I got a ‘C’ on my coathanger sculpture? How could anyone get a ‘C’ in coathanger sculpture? May I ask a question? Was I judged on the piece of sculpture itself? If so, is it not true that time alone can judge a work of art? Or was I judged on my talent? If so, is it fair that I be judged on a part of my life over which I have no control? If I was judged on my effort, then I was judged unfairly, for I tried as hard as I could! Was I judged on what I had learned about this project? If so, then were not you, my teacher, also being judged on your ability to transmit your knowledge to me? Are you willing to share my ‘C’? Perhaps I was being judged on the quality of coathanger itself out of which my creation was made…now is this not also unfair? Am I to be judged by the quality of coat hangers that are used by the drycleaning establishment that returns our garments? Is that not the responsibility of my parents? Should they not share my ‘C’?”

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Lucy from “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” – What I Intend

“Do you know what I intend? I intend to be a queen. When I grow up I’m going to be the biggest queen there ever was, and I’ll live in a big palace and when I go out in my coach, all the people will wave and I will shout at them, and…and…in the summertime I will go to my summer palace and I’ll wear my crown in swimming and everything, and all the people will cheer and I will shout at them… What do you mean I can’t be queen? Nobody should be kept from being a queen if she wants to be one. It’s usually just a matter of knowing the right people.. ..well…. if I can’t be a queen, then I’ll be very rich then I will buy myself a queendom. Yes, I will buy myself a queendom and then I’ll kick out the old queen and take over the whole operation myself. I will be head queen.”

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Elaine Robinson from “The Graduate” – Nothing’s Perfect

“Well nothing’s perfect Benjamin. I wish my mother didn’t drink so much. I wish I’d never fallen out of that tree and broken my thumb because it so affects my fingering I’ll probably never play the violin as well as I’d love to but that’s about it for the bullshit, Benjamin. It’s only bullshit if you let it pile up. Heaven’s in the details. Someone said that. I think Robert Frost said that. I was in this diner with my roommate Diane? And this guy came along with a goat on a rope and it turns out the reason he’s got a little goat on a rope is that he was thrown out the day before for bringing in his dog? But the point is that Diane had stood up to leave when she saw the man walk in and she sat straight down again and said, well if there’s a goat I think I’ll have dessert. And that’s why I love Diane, because if you think like that you not only notice more little goats, you get more dessert.”

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Janet from “The West Wing” – Pigeons

“I’m sorry, but a good HALF of the United States hates pigeons. One third shoots them for game. I’m not the only bad guy here. You would have voted for an elephant if it had told you it could fix the economy. Which, by the way, is still not fixed. A giant goose egg. […] I’m sorry if I am offending you, but I find it more than a little offensive that I just walked my daughter past a portrait of a pigeon in the National Art Gallery before I came here.”

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Helena from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” – Out of Breath

“O, I am out of breath in this fond chase!

The more my prayer, the lesser is my grace.

Happy is Hermia, wheresoe’er she lies;

For she hath blessed and attractive eyes.

How came her eyes so bright? Not with salt tears:

If so, my eyes are oftener wash’d than hers.

No, no, I am as ugly as a bear;

For beasts that meet me run away for fear:

Therefore no marvel though Demetrius

Do, as a monster fly my presence thus.

What wicked and dissembling glass of mine

Made me compare with Hermia’s sphery eyne?

But who is here? Lysander! on the ground!

Dead? or asleep? I see no blood, no wound.

Lysander if you live, good sir, awake”

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Kim from “Rather be a Man” – I’d Rather be a Man

“I don’t know what it is with me lately but I just get so UGH! when guys come up to me, with their cheesy lines, (imitating guy) “Hey, you have such a beautiful smile” or “Can I just tell you that you are so beautiful”.Ugh!It disgusts me.I mean, who the hell does this guy or that guy think he is to give me such compliments?What gives him the right?I don’t do anything to give off any kind of interest whatsoever, I completely look the other way when I see eye contact happening and they STILL come over thinking they’re so suave and it’s simply repulsive.You know what I’m saying??What does a girl have to do these days?Maybe if I just vomited on myself the guy would walk the other way but I bet even then, I’d get, “The way you vomit on yourself is just so, so delightful.”…All I want is to be left alone.I have a man, I love my man and I do my best to be polite but the irritation and the cheesy lines are getting to be too much.Guys are blind, they really are, OBLIVIOUS to when a girl is not interested.There are days when I rather be a man.”

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Rosalind from “As You Like It” – And Why, I Pray You

“And why, I pray you? Who might be your mother,That you insult, exult, and all at once,Over the wretched? What though you have no beauty,–As by my faith, I see no more in youThan without candle may go dark to bed,–Must you be therefore proud and pitiless?Why, what means this? Why do you look on me?I see no more in you than in the ordinaryOf nature’s sale-work. Od’s my little life!I think she means to tangle my eyes too.No, faith, proud mistress, hope not after it:‘Tis not your inky brows, your black silk hair,Your bugle eyeballs, nor your cheek of cream,That can entame my spirits to your worship.You foolish shepherd, wherefore do you follow her,Like foggy south puffing with wind and rain?You are a thousand times a properer manThan she a woman: ‘tis such fools as youThat make the world full of ill-favour’d children:‘Tis not her glass, but you, that flatters her;And out of you she sees herself more properThan any of her lineaments can show her.But, mistress, know yourself: down on your knees,And thank heaven, fasting, for a good man’s love:For I must tell you friendly in your ear,Sell when you can; you are not for all markets.Cry the man mercy; love him; take his offer:Foul is most foul, being foul to be a scoffer.So take her to thee, shepherd. Fare you well.”

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Amanda Wingfield from “The Glass Menagerie” – That Old Trunk

“Possess your soul in patience – you will see!Something I’ve resurrected from that old trunk! Styles haven’t changed so terribly much after all.
[She parts the portières.]
Now just look at your mother ![She wears a girlish frock of yellowed voile with a blue silk sash. She carries a bunch of jonquils – the legend of her youth is nearly revived.][Feverishly]: This is the dress in which I led the cotillion, won the cakewalk twice at Sunset Hill, wore one spring to the Governor’s ball in Jackson ! See how I sashayed around the ballroom, Laura?[She raises her skirt and does a mincing step around the room.] I wore it on Sundays for my gentlemen callers ! I had it on the day I met your father. I had malaria fever all that spring. The change of climate from East Tennessee to the Delta – weakened resistance I had a little temperature all the time – not enough to be serious – just enough to make me restless and giddy. Invitations poured in – parties all over the Delta! – ‘Stay in bed,’ said mother, ‘you have fever!’ – but I just wouldn’t. – I took quinine but kept on going, going ! Evenings, dances ! – Afternoons, long, long rides! Picnics. – lovely! – So lovely, that country in May. – All lacy with dogwood, literally flooded with jonquils! – That was the spring I had the craze for jonquils. Jonquils became an absolute obsession. Mother said, ‘Honey, there’s no more room for jonquils.’ And still I kept on bringing in more jonquils. Whenever, wherever I saw them, I’d say, “Stop ! Stop! I see jonquils ! I made the young men help me gather the jonquils ! It was a joke, Amanda and her jonquils ! Finally there were no more vases to hold them, every available space was filled with jonquils. No vases to hold them? All right, I’ll hold them myself – And then I – [She stops in front of the picture.] met your father ! Malaria fever and jonquils and then – this – boy…. [She switches on the rose-coloured lamp.] I hope they get here before it starts to rain.”

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Original Monologue by Joseph Arnone – Don’t Look at Me

“Don’t look at me.(points) You.Eh, eh, eh…when I address you, do not look at me.No eye contact.Is that understood?Look away.(beat)Okay, look at me now.(snaps her fingers) I told you not to look at me.Even if I tell you to look at me, do not look at me. Understood?Good, good darling.(she removes her gloves and hands them to her assistant)Oh!I have something in my eye, can you help me?(pointing) Looking, looking, looking!NO looking under all circumstances.You must raise up that attention span of yours.A fish could retain more darling.That is true.I have read it.Less attention span than a fish.Do not let that be you darling.”

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Sarah Brown from “Guys and Dolls” – The Devil

“Brothers and sisters, resist the Devil and he will flee from you. That is what the Bible tells us. And that is why I am standing here, in the Devil’s own city, on the Devil’s own street, prepared to do battle with the forces of evil. Hear me, you gamblers! With your dice, your cards, your horses! Pause and think before it is too late! You are in great danger! I am not speaking of the prison and the gallows, but of the greater punishment that awaits you! Repent before it is too late!Just around the corner is out little mission where you are always welcome to seek refuge from this jungle of sin. Come here and talk to me. Do not think of me as Sergeant Sarah Brown, but as Sarah Brown, your sister. Join me, Brothers and Sisters, in resisting the Devil, and we can put him to flight forever.”

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Eliza Dolittle from “My Fair Lady” – My Aunt Died of Influenza “

My aunt died of influenza, so they said. But it’s my belief they done the old woman in. Yes Lord love you! Why should she die of influenza when she come through diphtheria right enough the year before? Fairly blue with it she was. They all thought she was dead. But my father, he kept ladling gin down her throat. Then she come to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon. Now, what would you call a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza, and what become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it, and what I say is, them that pinched it, done her in. Them she lived with would have killed her for a hatpin, let alone a hat. And as for father ladling the gin down her throat, it wouldn’t have killed her. Not her. Gin was as mother’s milk to her. Besides, he’s poured so much down his own throat that he knew the good of it.”

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Gwendolyn Fairfax from “The Importance of Being Earnest” – It is Strange

“Oh! It is strange he never mentioned to me that he had a ward. How secretive of him! He grows more interesting hourly. I am not sure, however, that the news inspires me with feelings of unmixed delight. [Rising and going to her.] I am very fond of you, Cecily; I have liked you ever since I met you! But I am bound to state that now that I know that you are Mr. Worthing’s ward, I cannot help expressing a wish you were—well, just a little older than you seem to be—and not quite so very alluring in appearance. In fact, if I may speak candidly— […] Well, to speak with perfect candour, Cecily, I wish that you were fully forty-two, and more than usually plain for your age. Ernest has a strong upright nature. He is the very soul of truth and honour. Disloyalty would be as impossible to him as deception. But even men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of others. Modern, no less than Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable.”

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Bachelorette by Leslye Headland – Regan’s Monologue ‘CAN I SAY SOMETHING?!’

Scene Three
Thirty minutes later.
The suite is empty as it was. A disaster.

After a moment, Regan emerges from the bedroom. A bed sheet wrapped around her. She goes for the coffee and gulps a mug full. The coffee is ice cold so she instantly opens her mouth and coffee spills all over he chest.

REGAN: Shit. Fuck. (Her cell phone catches her eye. She looks at it.) Douchebag. (She makes a call. Into the phone. ) What?!… Why the fuck are you calling me a million times? … It was on vibrate …I’m at Becky’s thing. I told you we would be out late … You go out every fucking Saturday with your meathead friends and I go out once … ONCE in the last six months and you give me shit for it … Uh huh .. Yeah … Well, I don’t care … because you’re an idiot … Yeah … I TOLD you we’d be OUT late … (She see’s Joe’s bowl, She finds a lighter and takes a hit. Into the phone.) You don’t care anyway… your residency my ass-fuck-face … No, I’m not smoking … I’m NOT SMOKING … I Fucking quit three years ago .. for you .. and you don’t trust me … thats what this comes down to … You … you … CAN I SAY SOMETHING?! (Jeff enters from the bedroom. He’s practically dressed. He picks up a coffee as well. He spits it back into the cup. Into the phone) Can I say one thing at this juncture before you start acting like … LISTEN! If you can’t trust me, then I don’t know what the fucking point of me EVER leaving the house … I’ll just bake a casserole and then lie around with my legs open until you feel like … YOU ARE SUCH A BABY! … That’s stupid … Well, I think you’re stupid … I’ll be home when I feel like coming home … FINE! MAYBE I WILL! (She hangs up and tosses the cell phone away.)

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The Last of the Red Hot Lovers By Neil Simon – Elaine’s Monologue- ‘You Hypocrite!’

Elaine:You hypocrite! You soul-searching, finger-smelling, hypocritical son of a bitch! Who are you to tell anybody how to go through life? What would you have done if I came in here all fluttery and blushing and ‘Ooh, Mr Cashman, don’t put your hand there, I’m a married woman’? Were you going to tell me how much you respect me? You know damn well tomorrow you’d be back behind that counter opening clams and praying to Christ I’d never come back in your restaurant. And you know something? That’s the way it should be. Forgive me for the terrible, sinful thing I’m about to say but I happen to like the pure physical act of making love. It warms me, it stimulates me and it makes me feel like a woman – but that’s another ugly story. That’s what I came up here for and that’s what you were expecting. But don’t give me, ‘When I was nine years old my mother ran off with the butcher and I’ve been looking for someone to love me ever since.’ I don’t know your problems and I don’t care. Keep your savory swordfish succotash stories to yourself. No one really cares about anything or anyone in this world except himself, and there’s only one way to get through with your sanity. If you can’t taste it, touch it or smell it, forget it! If you want a copy of that speech, send fifty cents and self-addressed envelope –

It’s getting late … and I have to feed the lion at six..

Don’t waste your time. We’re incompatible. You need Joan Fontaine and I need a box of lozenges.

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THE CHERRY ORCHARD By Anton Chekhov- Lyuba Ranevsky Monologue, ‘Oh My Sins!’

“Oh, my sins…. I’ve always scattered money about without holding myself in, like a madwoman, and I married a man who made nothing but debts. My husband died of champagne—he drank terribly—and to my misfortune, I fell in love with another man and went off with him, and just at that time—it was my first punishment, a blow that hit me right on the head—here, in the river… my boy was drowned, and I went away, quite away, never to return, never to see this river again…I shut my eyes and ran without thinking, but he ran after me… without pity, without respect. I bought a villa near Mentone because he fell ill there, and for three years I knew no rest either by day or night; the sick man wore me out, and my soul dried up. And last year, when they had sold the villa to pay my debts, I went away to Paris, and there he robbed me of all I had and threw me over and went off with another woman. I tried to poison myself…. It was so silly, so shameful…. And suddenly I longed to be back in Russia, my own land, with my little girl…. [Wipes her tears] Lord, Lord be merciful to me, forgive me my sins! Punish me no more! [Takes a telegram out of her pocket] I had this to-day from Paris…. He begs my forgiveness, he implores me to return…. [Tears it up] Don’t I hear music? [Listens.]”

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WOMEN OF MANHATTAN by John Patrick Shanley – Judy Monologue ‘I Will Dream On!’

Judy: I will! I will dream on. Because that is exactly what I am talking about. My dreams. Which you do not know. And which you don’t think are important enough to know. Do you think this body is something? What a joke! Any great poet the last three thousand years will tell you what a joke that is! This stuff, this flesh, this heavy breathing … We have this aptitude in our hearts and brains and souls to arrive at something so rich and inflamed and unspeakable and sacred and New! Not this tired shit you want to foist on me. That’s not what I want. I won’t give up my standards! I know what I know. If I tried to live on the kind of things you’re offering me, I’d starve to death. You’ve got to dig for treasure, Duke! Not settle for the stuff just lying out on the ground. You could sleep with me if you weren’t so god damn lazy and narcissistic and were willing to exert yourself a little and show some interest in the actual core of another human being! But you will not sleep with me because I will not perform a stupid mechanical pantomime, like I was trying and failing to remember something fine, something from a better world, something alien and beautiful and lost! What, you look vacant, don’t you get it? I’ll give it to you in a nutshell. I’ll give it to you in basic modern American: I’m not interested in the hardware without the software. Look, let’s just let this fall apart, okay? Don’t hang around for the sake of neatness. I’ll get the check. It was worth that much to me to have my say.

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The Importance of Being Earnest – Lady Bracknell

Monologue Length 2 Mins

LADY BRACKNELL: Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd. Nor do I in any way approve of the modern sympathy with invalids. I consider it morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others. Health is the primary duty of life. I am always telling that to your poor uncle, but he never seems to take much notice . . . as far as any improvement in his ailment goes. Well, Algernon, of course if you are obliged to be beside the bedside of Mr. Bunbury, I have nothing more to say. But I would be much obliged if you would ask Mr. Bunbury, from me, to be kind enough not to have a relapse on Saturday, for I rely on you to arrange my music for me. It is my last reception, and one wants something that will encourage conversation, particularly at the end of the season when every one has practically said whatever they had to say, which, in most cases, was probably not much.

A Matter of Husbands: The Famous Actress’ Monologue

Monologue Length 4 Minutes

FAMOUS ACTRESS: It happens to every actress who is moderately pretty and successful. It’s one of the oldest expedients in the world, and we actresses are such conspicuous targets for it! There is scarcely a man connected with the theater who doesn’t make use of us in that way some time or another–authors, composers, scene designers, lawyers, orchestra leaders, even the managers themselves. To regain a wife or sweetheart’s affections all they need to do is invent a love affair with one of us. The wife is always so ready to believe it. Usually we don’t know a thing about it. But even when it is brought to our notice we don’t mind so much. At least we have the consolation of knowing that we are the means of making many a marriage happy which might otherwise have ended in the divorce court. [With a gracious little laugh] There, dear, you mustn’t apologize. You couldn’t know, of course. It seems so plausible. You fancy your husband in an atmosphere of perpetual temptation, in a backstage world full of beautiful sirens without scruples or morals. One actress, you suppose, is more dangerous than a hundred ordinary women. You hate us and fear us. None understands that better than your husband, who is evidently a very cunning lawyer. And so he plays on your fear and jealousy to regain the love you deny him. He writes a letter and leaves it behind him on the desk. Trust a lawyer never to do that unintentionally. He orders flowers for me by telephone in the morning and probably cancels the order the moment he reaches his office. By the way, hasn’t he a lock of my hair? They bribe my hair-dresser to steal from me. It’s a wonder I have any hair left at all. And hasn’t he left any of my love letters lying around? Don’t be alarmed. I haven’t written him any. I might have if he had come to me frankly and said: “I say, Sara, will you do something for me? My wife and I aren’t getting on so well. Would you write me a passionate love letter that I can leave lying around at home where she may find it?” I should certainly have done it for him. I’d have written a letter that would have made you weep into your pillow for a fortnight. I wrote ten like that for a very eminent playwright once. But he had no luck with them. His wife was such a proper person she returned them all to him unread.

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Brilliant Traces by Cindy Lou Johnson

Rosanna Monologue ‘Why didn’t you answer the door?!’

Loud Knocking on the Door

Rosannaapproaches the cabin door wearing a tattered wedding dress

(from outside): ‘Hello! Is anyone there?? Let me in! Im in very serious trouble!’

Bursts through the door, notices Henry Harry standing inside his cabin, shocked.

Rosanna: ‘Why didn’t you answer the door?! I could’ve frozen to death! My death would have been on your hands had that been the case! It’s something like 200 degrees below out there with wind chill and I’ve been walking for over an hour. My car died, dead. I left it out there, its probably totally buried somewhere in the snow. Somewhere – do you mind if I have a drink?

Sighs, takes a drink.

‘Im nearly frozen and I also may be suffering from frostbite of the extremities like my toes and fingers but I was able to keep my fingers from falling off by sticking them in my armpits. I saw that on a TV Movie once. There was this guy and he was in a skiing accident, immobilized and they were taking forever to get him a stretcher or something and so he asks this beautiful nurse who conveniently happened to be there I mean she couldn’t do something because he was freezing to death but she stuck his fingers in his armpits. That’s how she saved him! He fell in love with her then and there and they married later in the show. You know this is always the story of my life. I have to play all the roles, I have to be the one in trouble and the nurse too, sticking my own fingers in my own armpits, saving myself. But the problem is you can’t stick your feet anywhere you know not if you want to keep walking.

Im sorry, do you mind if I just –

Takes another drink.

Sighs* Ohh, so – this is Alaska! Oh my lord, It is harder to believe than I can even say that I am so much as alive. When my car died I could just hear the wind, I could just hear it and the snow was falling so fast and it was covering the windshield instantly, instantly ! And it was getting colder in there by the second and I just thought, ‘Rosanna, this is it for you,’ you know I knew that if I stayed in the car I would fall asleep and I might freeze and die and I knew if I got out of the car with the wind and all that, then I would fall down and freeze and die. Freezing and dying was up there at the forefront of my brain of things to consider but I thought getting out, you know, walking, there’s a chance. I mean a slim chance anyway but a chance so I got out.

Interesting thing about being on the verge of death – you don’t think about the good points or the bad points of life, you just think live! And let there be someone, a light, some warmth that’s all I thought. And then I saw your light, and now, here I am.

*Pause, takes another drink, finishes the bottle.

I’ll pay for this. (small chuckle) You know Ive been on the road for days, and days and days. I don’t even know when I got in my car or where Ive been all I know is that every five hours, gas, that’s been my system. Gas, pee, eat a candy bar, drink a coke, like the engine’s inside me and the car, and (notices a bag of pretzels, starts eating them). Is it okay if I have some of these pretzels? Because it’s just about candy bar time for me and I do not see any candy bars plus its probably best I lay off the sugar. Ive had nothing to eat but sugar for quite some number of days its cheap energy but sooner or later you gotta pay the piper in case of sugar, which I’m doing now. See my hand tremble, that is a Mars bar tremble. Plus I haven’t slept in several days not that I didn’t try mind you, I was awake, with a capital W. Like lying awake was what it was like. The hours passed and the road kind of bleared behind me. So I’m tired, and I’m hungry and the fact of the matter is, Im very dirty. Let’s call is spade to spade, I am filthy and I’ve sweat too much and this dress is a very close fit even in the best of circumstances and the truth is Im in pain, just like terrible pain.

That’s the only reason why I would drink this so hard and fast and it’s not like my muscles but like inside my muscles, my dna, my genes. Ya, I think that must be it or my rna? Im not sure. I just…

Ohhh, (Lets out a sigh,) Im sorry, its this terrible pain in my dna. Im dreadfully sorry Im more sorry than I can say.

Takes a step forward, grabs the chair, faints to the ground.

Fade to black.

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Picking the Best Comedic Monologues

Try to go with a monologue that matches your personality, to an extent. Yes, you’re supposed to be acting, but to nail your audition, choose something you can really identify with. Any of these comedic monologues will slay in the audition room, no matter which you choose. Good luck!

MONOLOGUES FOR ACTORS

Comedic Monologues For Men

The post Comedic Monologues For Women appeared first on We Are Actors.

Looking for free dramatic monologues to captivate your audience? Whether you’re an actor preparing for an audition or a drama enthusiast exploring the depths of theatrical expression, our curated list of “22 Dramatic Monologues from Theater and Film” offers a diverse collection of performances that highlight the complexity of human emotions. From classic plays to contemporary films, these free monologues provide a rich tapestry of characters and narratives that will inspire, challenge, and move you.

Dramatic Monologues for Women

1. “Steel Magnolias” by Robert Harling

Character: M’Lynn
Summary: M’Lynn talks about the last moments with her daughter Shelby, expressing her deep sorrow and the strength she found in that painful experience.
Monologue: “No. I couldn’t leave my Shelby. I just sat there and kept pushin’ the way I always have where Shelby was concerned…hoping she’d sit up and argue with me. Finally, we all realized there was no hope. At that point, I panicked. I was afraid that I wouldn’t survive the next few minutes while they turned off the machines. Drum couldn’t take it. He left. Jackson couldn’t take it. He left. But I couldn’t leave. I just sat there, holding Shelby’s hand while the sounds got softer and the beeps got farther apart until all was quiet. There was no noise, no tremble, just peace. I realized as a woman how lucky I was. I was there when this wonderful person drifted into my life and I was there when she drifted out.”
For the full monologue, visit Scribd and WhySanity.

2. “V for Vendetta” by the Wachowskis

Character: Valerie
Summary: Valerie’s monologue is a poignant recount of her life and love before and during the oppressive regime, emphasizing the importance of preserving one’s integrity.
Monologue: “I know there’s no way I can convince you this is not one of their tricks. But I don’t care. I am me. My name is Valerie. I don’t think I’ll live much longer, and I wanted to tell someone about my life. This is the only autobiography that I will ever write, and God, I’m writing it on toilet paper. I was born in Nottingham in 1985. I don’t remember much of those early years, but I do remember the rain. My grandmother owned a farm in Tottlebrook, and she used to tell me that God was in the rain. I passed my eleven-plus and went to girl’s grammar. It was at school that I met my first girlfriend. Her name was Sarah. It was her wrists; they were beautiful. I thought we would love each other forever. I remember our teacher telling us that it was an adolescent phase that people outgrew. Sarah did. I didn’t. In 2002, I fell in love with a girl named Christina. That year I came out to my parents. I couldn’t have done it without Chris holding my hand. My father wouldn’t look at me; he told me to go and never come back. My mother said nothing. I’d only told them the truth. Was that so selfish? Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us, but within that inch we are free. An inch, it is small and it is fragile, and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us. I hope that, whoever you are, you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you, I love you. With all my heart, I love you.”
For the full monologue, visit WhySanity and HubPages.

3. “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” by John Patrick Shanley

Character: Roberta
Summary: Roberta reveals her traumatic past and emotional struggles, making it a powerful exploration of a deeply troubled character.
Monologue: “And I dreamed about the ocean. It was real blue. And there was the sun, and it was real yellow. And I was out there, right in the middle of the ocean, all by myself, and I could hear the water, just the way it sounds in a conch shell. And I thought, maybe this is what it’s like to be dead. But I was still myself, you know? And then I looked down, and I couldn’t see the bottom of the ocean. It was like a mile down. And I got really scared because I knew I couldn’t swim a mile. So I tried to get back to shore. But it was so far away. And the water got into my nose and my mouth, and it was so cold. And I thought, this is it. This is the end of everything. And then, suddenly, I felt this hand on my back. And I turned around, and there was this man standing on the water, smiling at me. And I knew he was gonna save me.”
For the full monologue, visit WeAreActors.

4. “ONE” by Terrence Mosley

Character: Mother
Summary: A single mother tells her adult son about his absent father and their heritage.
Monologue Snippet: “Your father was a complicated man, but he loved you in his own way. He left us, yes, but not because he didn’t care. He was running from his own demons, ones that were too strong for him to fight. I see so much of him in you. The good parts. The strength, the passion. But you need to know where you come from, our heritage, our struggles. It’s what makes us who we are. It’s what makes you who you are.”

For the full monologue, you can check out Backstage.

5. “And Turning, Stay” by Kellie Powell

Character: Amy
Summary: Amy, a high schooler, talks about being led on by boys and her broken heart.
Monologue Snippet: “I thought he loved me. I really did. But it was all a game to him, a cruel joke. I let myself believe in his words, his promises. And now here I am, broken, with nothing but memories of his lies. It hurts so much, more than I thought possible. How could someone be so heartless? How could I be so naive? I don’t know if I’ll ever trust again.”

For the full monologue, refer to dramatic literature anthologies or online script libraries.

6. “Bargaining” by Kellie Powell

Character: Hannah
Summary: Hannah tells her boyfriend that she is immortal, revealing a deep personal secret.
Monologue Snippet: “There’s something I need to tell you. Something I’ve never told anyone. I’m immortal. I’ve lived for centuries, seen the rise and fall of empires, watched loved ones come and go. It’s a lonely existence, one that’s hard to explain. I thought I could be normal with you, but I can’t hide it anymore. You deserve to know the truth about who I am, about what I am. I love you, but this is my burden to bear, not yours.”

For the full monologue, refer to dramatic literature anthologies or online script libraries.

7. “The Promise of You” by Daniel Martine

Character: Carolyn
Summary: Carolyn reflects on her life when Bobby returns.
Monologue Snippet:
“Bobby, you know, when you left, I thought it was the end for me. I couldn’t see beyond the heartbreak. But then I found strength in places I never knew existed. I built a life, a home, something stable. And now you’re back, stirring all these old feelings, making me question everything again. But I’m not that same girl you left behind. I’ve grown, I’ve changed. I promised myself I’d never go back to that place of dependency and fear. You have to understand that the woman standing before you now is not the same one you walked away from.”

For the full monologue, please refer to online libraries

8. “Richard Fisher’s Funeral” by Kellie Powell

Character: Drew
Summary: Drew explains why she won’t forgive her father at his funeral.
Monologue Snippet:
“Why should I forgive him? He was never there. Not when I needed him. Not when Mom needed him. His promises were as empty as his seat at my graduation, as hollow as his words when he said he loved us. And now, you want me to stand here and pretend that he was some kind of hero? No, I won’t do it. He doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve my forgiveness, and he doesn’t deserve my tears. He was nothing but a stranger to me, a ghost haunting the corners of my life.”

For the full monologue, visit Not My Shoes and Stage Plays.

9. “Snow White Gets Her Say” by Chris Wind

Character: Catherine
Summary: Catherine plots her revenge on all the men who have wronged her.
Monologue Snippet:
“You think you know my story, don’t you? The pretty little princess waiting to be saved. But let me tell you something, that tale is a lie. They twisted my life into some kind of fairy tale, but there was nothing magical about it. I was used, betrayed, and left to fend for myself. But I’m not the naive girl they thought I was. I’ve learned, I’ve grown stronger. And now, it’s my turn to rewrite the story. To take control. To make them pay for every lie, every deceit. They won’t see me coming, but they’ll remember my name. Catherine, the one who took her revenge.”

For the full monologue, visit Stage Plays and Scribd.

10. “The Seagull” By Anton Chekov

Character: Nina
Summary: Nina returns to Sorin’s estate, having been abandoned by Trigorin once her allure and innocence faded. Upon encountering her former lover, Treplev, she succumbs to emotional breakdown.

Monologue: Why do you say that you have kissed the ground I walked on? You should kill me rather. I am so tired. If I could only rest—rest. I am a sea-gull—no—no, I am an actress. He is there too. Ah, well—no matter. He does not believe in the theatre; he used to laugh at my dreams, so that little by little I became down-hearted and ceased to believe in it too. Then came all the cares of love, the continual anxiety about my little one, so that I soon grew trivial and spiritless, and played my parts without meaning. I never knew what to do with my hands, and I could not walk properly or control my voice. You cannot imagine the state of mind of one who knows as he goes through a play how terribly badly he is acting. I am a sea-gull—no—no, that is not what I meant to say. Do you remember how you shot a seagull once? A man chanced to pass that way and destroyed it out of idleness. That is an idea for a short story, but it is not what I meant to say.

(She passes her hand across her forehead)

What was I saying? Oh, yes, the stage. I have changed now. Now I am a real actress. I act with joy, with exaltation, I am intoxicated by it, and feel that I am superb. I have been walking and walking, and thinking and thinking, ever since I have been here, and I feel the strength of my spirit growing in me every day. I know now, I understand at last, Constantine, that for us, whether we write or act, it is not the honour and glory of which I have dreamt that is important, it is the strength to endure. One must know how to bear one’s cross, and one must have faith. I believe, and so do not suffer so much, and when I think of my calling I do not fear life.

Download This Monologue Here

Dramatic Monologues for men

11. Biff Monologue from “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller

Monologue: “Pop! I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you! … I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you. You were never anything but a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash can like all the rest of them! I’m one dollar an hour, Willy! I tried seven states and couldn’t raise it. A buck an hour! Do you gather my meaning? I’m not bringing home any prizes anymore, and you’re going to stop waiting for me to bring them home! … I’m nothing! I’m nothing, Pop. Can’t you understand that? There’s no spite in it anymore. I’m just what I am, that’s all.”

For the full monologue, you can refer to the following page:

• We Are Actors – Biff Monologue Death of a Salesman

12. “Ben Is Back” by Peter Hedges

Character: Ben
Summary: Ben admits his role in a friend’s death due to an overdose, showcasing his guilt and the strain in his relationship with his mother.
Monologue Snippet: “Mom, I can’t live with this guilt anymore. Every time I close my eyes, I see his face. I was the one who gave him the drugs. I thought it was just for fun, but it turned out to be lethal. I’m so sorry, Mom. I need you to understand that I’m not the same person anymore. I can’t keep pretending that everything is okay when it’s not. Please, forgive me.”

For the full monologue, refer to Peter Hedges Delivers Ben is Back .

13. “Lobby Hero” by Kenneth Lonergan

Character: William
Summary: William’s monologue explores his moral dilemma of protecting his brother versus telling the truth to the police.
Monologue Snippet: “Jeff, you don’t understand. If I tell the truth, my brother goes to jail. But if I lie, I become a part of this corrupt system. How do I choose between my family and my integrity? It’s tearing me apart inside. Every night I lie awake, wondering if I’m doing the right thing. How can you protect someone you love without losing yourself in the process?”

For the full monologue, refer to Lobby Hero by Kenneth Lonergan .

14. “Brooklyn Boy” by Donald Margulies

Character: Eric
Summary: Eric reflects on his father’s dedication to his work, which he never understood, revealing a complicated father-son relationship.
Monologue Snippet: “My father sold shoes. In a Buster Brown store on Sheepshead Bay Road. He wasn’t a partner, he was an employee. For thirty-nine years. He gave his life to that store. It wasn’t even his to profit from, yet he still gave everything to that goddamn store. I could never understand what was so attractive about that place, why he chose to spend so much of his days there and not at home. I remember watching him closely in the morning, trying to uncover the mystery of manhood, the rituals of work.”

For the full monologue, refer to Brooklyn Boy by Donald Margulies .

15. “Of The Fields, Lately” by David French

Character: Ben
Summary: Ben recalls the shame and embarrassment he felt towards his father during a baseball game in his youth.
Monologue Snippet: “He rushed out the door and down to the school-yard, the first game he had ever come to, and my mother put his supper in the oven, for later … I hadn’t reminded my father of the game. I was afraid he’d show up and embarrass me. Twelve years old and ashamed of my old man. Ashamed of his dialect, his dirty overalls, his bruised fingers with the fingernails lined with dirt, his teeth yellow as old ivory. Most of all, his lunch pail, that symbol of the working man.”

For the full monologue, additional context can be found in dramatic literature anthologies or libraries.

16. “Basilica” by Mando Alvarado

Character: Joe
Summary: Joe expresses his deep sense of failure and seeks understanding from his loved one.
Monologue Snippet: “Ah babe, I’m not doing so good. I just feel so … I wish I could tell you that I got the strength. But, you know I would be bullshitting. You always had a way of seeing through me. I know. Like that time, I came home. You put me on that stupid Weight Watcher’s Diet. Small portions, no fast food. I was still the same waist size since high school. So I came home. You knew I had a Whataburger. But I said, ‘No babe, I had a salad and one of those meals.’”

For the full monologue, refer to dramatic literature anthologies or online script libraries.

17. “The Rookie Cop” by Adam J. Wahlberg

Character: Veteran Cop
Summary: A seasoned cop educates his rookie partner, leading to a significant revelation.
Monologue Snippet: “I’m John. A veteran cop who doesn’t believe in being soft on rookies. I’ve seen it all. The crimes, the victims, the broken system. You, kid, you think you know what you’re getting into, but you don’t. There’s a darkness in this job that you won’t find in the academy textbooks. Every call we take, every arrest we make, it changes you. You start questioning your morals, your sense of justice. But here’s the thing, kid, if you can hold onto that small part of yourself that believes in doing right, you’ll survive. Barely, but you’ll survive.”

For the full monologue, you can refer to Reddit.

18. “Spoon River Anthology” by Edgar Lee Masters

Character: Tom Merritt
Summary: Tom recounts the events leading to his murder from beyond the grave.
Monologue Snippet: “I was the happiest soul that ever lived, until one day, my wife’s lover took my life. I stood there, unaware, and then I felt the cold steel. It was quick, but in that moment, I thought of everything I loved and lost. From the grave, I now see how my death was just another story in the long line of tales that make up Spoon River. My end, a sad song amidst the chorus of the town’s stories, forever echoing in the silence of the cemetery.”

For the full monologue, refer to Project Gutenberg and Full Text Archive.

19. “Good Will Hunting” by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck

Character: Sean
Monologue: “Thought about what you said to me the other day, about my painting. Stayed up half the night thinking about it. Then something occurred to me and I fell into a deep, peaceful sleep and haven’t thought about you since. You know what occurred to me? You’re just a kid. You don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about. You’ve never been out of Boston.”

Sean :So if I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I’ll bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that. If I ask you about women, you’d probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You’re a tough kid. And I’d ask you about war, you’d probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, “once more unto the breach dear friends.” But you’ve never been near one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I’d ask you about love, you’d probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell. And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn’t know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms “visiting hours” don’t apply to you. You don’t know about real loss, ’cause it only occurs when you’ve loved something more than you love yourself. And I doubt you’ve ever dared to love anybody that much. And look at you… I don’t see an intelligent, confident man… I see a cocky, scared shitless kid. But you’re a genius Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my fucking life apart. You’re an orphan right?

[Will nods] 

Sean : You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally… I don’t give a shit about all that, because you know what, I can’t learn anything from you, I can’t read in some fuckin’ book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. Then I’m fascinated. I’m in. But you don’t want to do that do you sport? You’re terrified of what you might say. Your move, chief.

Download This Monologue Here

20. “Scent Of A Woman”

Character:  Lt. Col. Frank Slade
Summary: Slade has Charlie accompany him to New York City, intending to savor one last weekend before ending his own life. Throughout their time together, Charlie forms a bond with Slade and ultimately prevents him from committing suicide. Slade then decides to return to the prep school with Charlie to attend the disciplinary committee meeting. George has made a deal to name the three students involved in the prank but plans to claim he didn’t see them clearly due to not wearing his contact lenses, implying only Charlie truly saw the culprits. Charlie refuses to reveal their identities, prompting the headmaster to prepare to recommend Charlie’s expulsion. At this moment, an outraged Slade delivers the following speech:

Monologue Snippet:
“I have seen boys like these, younger than these, their arms torn out, their legs ripped off. But there is nothing like the sight of an amputated spirit. There is no prosthetic for that. You think you’re merely sending this splendid foot soldier back home to Oregon with his tail between his legs, but I say you are executing his soul! And why? Because he’s not a Baird man. Baird men. You hurt this boy, you’re going to be Baird bums, the lot of you. And Harry, Jimmy, Trent, wherever you are out there, FUCK YOU TOO!”

For the full monologue, you can refer to the sources below:

• American Rhetoric – Movie Speech from Scent of a Woman

21. “The Seagull” By Anton Chekov

Character: Treplev
Summary: Treplev’s relationship with his mother, a renowned actress, is intricate; they meet sporadically each year since he reached adulthood. Aspiring to be a playwright, Treplev strongly criticizes contemporary theatrical norms. The monologue in question is directed at his uncle, Sorin, beginning with him methodically plucking petals off a flower.

Monologue: She loves me, she loves me not; she loves me, she loves me not; she loves me, she loves me not. You see? My mother doesn’t love me. Of course not! She wants to live, to love, to wear bright dresses, and here I am, twenty-five years old, a constant reminder that she is no longer young. When I’m not there, she’s only thirty-two, but when I am, she’s forty-three – and for that, she hates me. Besides, she knows I don’t accept the theatre. She loves the theatre, she thinks she is serving humanity and the sacred cause of art, while in my opinion, the theatre of today is hidebound and conventional. When the curtain goes up, and, in a room with three walls and artificial light, those great geniuses, those priests of holy art, show me how people eat, drink, love, walk about, and wear their jackets; when from those banal scenes and phrases they try to fish out a moral – some little moral that is easily grasped and suitable for domestic use; when, in a thousand variations, I am served the same thing over and over and over again – then I flee, as Maupassant fled from the Eiffel Tower, which made his brain reel with vulgarity.

Download This Monologue Here

22. “Jesus Hopped The A Train” By Stephen Adly Guirgis

Character: Angel
Summary: Angel, a young Puerto Rican man, is incarcerated at Riker’s Island prison awaiting trial for the murder of a cult religious leader. In this scene, he converses with his court-appointed attorney.

Monologue:

ANGEL: . . . We usta, me and Joey, we usta sneak out our house on Sun-
day nights, jump the turnstiles. And we would hop down onto the
subway tracks, walk through the tunnels, lookin’ for shit, makin’ ad-
ventures, playin’ like we was G.I. Joes . . . Pick up a empty can a
Hawaiian Punch or some ol’ beer bottle for fake walkie-talkies . . .
and we’d have our snow-boots on so we could be astronauts. And we
would pretend we were the last two survivors on earth and that we
came from the future . . . stupid . . . the future . . . like in that Planet
of the Apes movie with the two guys? Only we had no weapons, juss
chocolate milk . . . And we’d get so lost in our games and our dis-
coveries and our made-up stories . . . so many stories: lookin’ for ghosts,
lookin’ for apes, lookin’ for fortunes, runnin’ from rats, talkin’ bout
girls, talkin’ bout Thelma from “Good Times,” talkin’ bout daydreams,
talkin’ ’bout Bruce Lee versus Evil Knievel, talkin’ in words that was-
n’t even words, . . . and . . . and it would always surprise us when we
saw the Lights . . . even though we could feel the train coming, but
it was the Lights . . . The closer those Lights came, rumble of the tracks,
sound a the conductor’s horn blarin’ at us. We’d get so excited we’d
freeze — two seconds of freezin’ cold . . . hypnotized . . . holdin’ hands,
waitin’, waitin’, then: Bang . . . We’d jump off the rails, hug the wall,
climb back up the platform, start runnin’, runnin’, tearin’ ass clear
across town back to Riverside or Cherry Park . . . One time . . . one
particular time, when we was holdin’ hands right before we jumped
off the rails, somethin’ happened, and we couldn’t let go, couldn’t un-
tangle ourself from each other, and we were inside that Light, and we
both saw skeletons and radiation, and we was paralyzed in a way that
I juss can’t explain, till somethin’ blew us apart, juss blew us, and we
landed safe . . . We didn’t move for a long time . . . We was cryin’
and Joey ripped his brother’s coat . . . We wasn’t speakin’ till we got
to our block and Joey said that it was The Light that ripped us apart
and saved our lives . . . Joey said, “Jesus hopped the A train to see us
safe to bed” . . .

Download This Monologue Here

Dramatic Monologue FAQs

1. What are dramatic monologues?

Monologues are solo performances given by a character in a play or a film, where they express their thoughts, emotions, and experiences. A dramatic monologue specifically involves a character revealing intense feelings or deep revelations, usually in a serious or emotional manner.

2. How can I use free dramatic monologues for auditions?

Using free dramatic monologues for auditions can showcase your acting skills and ability to convey emotions effectively. Choose a monologue that resonates with you and fits the character you are auditioning for. Practice delivering the monologue with authenticity and emotion to make a strong impression on the casting team.

3. Where can I find free monologues for women and dramatic monologues for men?

You can find a variety of free monologues online, including monologues for women and dramatic monologues for men. Websites dedicated to theater resources, script databases, and acting forums often offer a selection of monologues categorized by gender and genre.

4. What are some tips for performing a dramatic monologue effectively?

To perform a dramatic monologue effectively, immerse yourself in the character’s emotions and motivations. Understand the context of the monologue and the character’s journey. Practice vocal variations, body language, and emotional depth to engage the audience and make the monologue impactful.

5. Are there specific phrases or lines commonly used in dramatic monologues?

Yes, there are certain phrases or lines that are often found in dramatic monologues, such as: “I’m still young,” “You’re older,” “Don’t make,” “Know what it’s like,” “I’m ready to talk,” and “I’m not trying.” These lines convey intense emotions and help build the dramatic tension in the performance.

6. How can I effectively connect with the audience during a dramatic monologue?

To connect with the audience during a dramatic monologue, focus on sincere and authentic delivery. Maintain eye contact, vary your tone to reflect emotions, and use pauses to emphasize key moments. Allow yourself to be vulnerable and let the audience empathize with the character’s experience.

Dive into these dramatic monologues for men and women and discover the essence of storytelling that transcends the stage and screen. Each piece not only showcases the actor’s talent but also brings to life the intricate layers of the characters they portray. Explore, practice, and perfect these monologues to enhance your performance skills and leave a lasting impression on your audience.

The post 22 Free Dramatic Monologues from From Theater and Film appeared first on We Are Actors.

Welcome to the world of powerful self-expression, where we delve into some hand picked and diverse Monologues For Teen Girls. This is your ultimate guide, providing insightful, emotionally compelling, and age-appropriate monologues for teenage girls that will help them take their first confident steps in acting or public speaking. These Teen Girl Monologues are designed to inspire, challenge, and empower young women, helping them develop their craft whether be it In class or for an audition.

The monologues for girls featured in this article are thoughtfully curated to cater to diverse interests, whether you prefer dramatic, comedic, or classical pieces. So, gear up to traverse the path of theatrical self-expression, where your voice echoes the stories and emotions that need to be heard. Remember, your introduction to the world of monologues starts here, and it’s going to be one unforgettable journey.

Teen Girl Monologues

“Tar Beach” by Tammy Ryan

REENIE: Pretend this is a dream. This is a dream you’re having about me. About a girl you don’t know. It’s okay—you don’t have to understand everything right now. This is only the beginning. It’s the only way I can tell this story.

(Beat)

It is July 12, 1977. It’s hot and I’m sitting in my mother’s closet where she stores all of her things. Winter clothes are jam packed in here. And boxes and boxes of stuff. Memories. Photographs, drawings and homemade cards, like the little soap fish my sister made in Brownies. My parents’ wedding pictures, all of our baby pictures, every school picture since kindergarten, the red construction paper Valentine’s Day hearts on white doilies. Stuff like that you save forever. There is a ladder in here, too, if, we want to get out. 

(She stands suddenly.)

Like if there was a fire, we could escape onto the roof. We could jump roof to roof to roof until we got to safety—or Atlantic Avenue—whichever came first. Except—there’s not always enough warning, before things catch on fire.

(She pushes her way through the closet.)

Reaching through her scratchy coats and polyester pants suits I find the ladder. Yank it open, then climb hand over hand pulling myself up out of quicksand to get to the top, then both hands flat against the ceiling PUSH as HARD as I CAN to OPEN it—

(SOUND of a trap door lifting as THE LIGHT from the closet shines straight up into the night sky. She walks to the edge and takes a deep breath.)

Down there, it’s like you’re trapped on the A train, in the tunnel, under the river, packed with people and it’s a hundred and fifty degrees with no air. My Father doesn’t believe in air conditioning. Okay, he believes in air conditioner. And it’s in their bedroom, where it’s so loud you can hear it, but they’re the only ones who can feel it.

(WE HEAR the sound of the elevated TRAIN rumble past, distant SIRENS, a couple SHOUTING at each other, and then distant WAVES crashing softly onshore.)

Up here, I can breathe even though it’s like a hundred degrees out and so humid we might as well be under water…. Sometimes if I concentrate, I can smell salt from the ocean… if there’s a breeze.

(She looks up as the SOUND of an AIRPLANE flying overhead.)

There were never any stars in the sky. Okay: Star. Sometimes there’s one. But no,
that’s an airplane…

(She follows the plane, looking out over the neighborhood.)

…if I could fly… I’d be gone.

Age: Teens
Gender: Female
Type: Drama
Download This Monologue Here

St Jane’s School for Ice Cream (by Patrick Cullen)

Jane stands up on a chair in front of assembly: 

Jane: Attention everyone! I have an announcement! After months of meetings and talks between us the students, the cafeteria and the parents association I am pleased to announce as your class president that starting today, we will have ice cream and jelly after every meal! When I ran on an icecream platform for the job of class president a lot of people thought I was crazy. They said ‘Ice cream? For Lunch? At our school? No way!’ or ‘I’m lactose intolerant, I can’t eat ice cream!’ and even ‘How is ice cream going to help my grades?’ But we showed them! You believed in me and I believed in you! And now we have finally achieved our dreams! No more will we head back to class after lunch feeling tired and sad – because this is no longer St Margaret’s School for girls but St Janes School for Ice Cream! So please form an orderly cue over here and remember a vote for Jane is a vote for freedom!

Age: Teens
Gender: Female
Type: Comedy
Download This Monologue Here

Stop Playing The Victim

By Joseph Arnone

In this teen monologue, Sally visits her best friend and is yet again met with her friend’s negative attitude that she is sick of dealing with for so long.

Sally:  I’m trying to understand something.  Why is it that when I talk to you about things that make me happy you always get down?  Whenever I talk to you about things that upset me, you always get so involved.

Do you want me to be miserable in my life?  I feel as though the only way for us to have any relationship is when things are bad.  I don’t want things to be bad.  I want to talk about good things.  I want to hear you tell me good things.  Why is that so hard for you?  Do you realize that every time I come over here you have nothing nice to say.  You are always complaining and moaning about your work, your boyfriend, your family, your apartment…you never have anything happy going on it seems.

It’s like the only way you can exist and communicate is by raging against something.  Doesn’t that exhaust you?  It takes more energy to be miserable than be happy.  Try being happy and stop playing the victim all the time.

Age: Teens
Gender: Female
Type: Drama
Download This Monologue Here

‘The Dining Room’ by A. R. Gurney

Summary: Sarah searches for drinks while she tells her friend Helen what it’s like to eat in the dining room with her family.

SARAH: Which do you want? Gin or Vodka? (Looking at bottles) Well, there’s more gin, so it’s less chance they’ll notice. But the reason there’s more gin is that I put water in it last week. Tell you what. We’ll mix in a little of both. Whenever they’re home, my father insists that we all eat in the dining room at seven o’clock. (Hands Helen her drink) Here. Gin and vodka and Fresca. The boys are bringing the pot.

We have to lug things out, and lug things back, and nobody can begin till everything’s cold, and we’re supposed to carry on a decent conversation, and everyone has to finish before anyone can get up, and it sucks, if you want to know. It sucks out loud.  My parents said they tried eating in the kitchen when I went to boarding school. But when I got kicked out, they moved back in here. It’s supposed to give me some sense of stability. It just makes me nervous. They take the telephone off the hook so no one can call, and my brother gets itchy about his homework, and when my sister had anorexia, she still had to sit here and watch, for God’s sake, and my parents spend most of the meal bitching, and the whole thing bites, Helen. It really bites. It bites the big one. Want another?

Teen Female Dramatic Monologues

Pretty Theft

By: Adam Szymkowicz

ALLEGRA: I know you’re probably mad at me for leaving before the funeral, but I just can’t do it. My whole body itches and it won’t stop until I get in a car and can’t see this house or this town or this state from the rearview window.

This way is better. This way I’ll come back from my trip and go straight to school and you won’t have to look at me or think about me. You can tell people you have a daughter but you won’t have to talk to me on the phone or see me on the couch. I’ll be a no-maintenance daughter just like you always wanted.

I’m going to go now. I know someday you’ll want to talk to me again. Maybe after I graduate and get a job and get married and buy a house and have my own daughter. Then you can talk to her and be her favorite and then we can pretend you were a really great mother. She won’t know and I don’t have to tell her.

But now I’m going to get on the road and push you out of my mind and I probably won’t think of you until I get to the grand canyon or some other fairly good canyon and maybe I’ll cry in front of the mammoth orange hole in the ground or maybe I’ll smile because it’s so beautiful and I’m free and windswept.

But first I’m going to get into Suzy’s mom’s car and we’ll drive till there’s just drops left in the tank and as we cross the border into Massachusetts, we’ll roll into the first gas station where I’ll get some Ding Dongs and some orange soda and I’ll bite into the first one sitting on the hood, watching the car slurp up gas. Then I’ll get in the driver’s seat and put my foot on the accelerator until I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. So I pull over and we both close our eyes and sleep until we’re awoken at three am by separate but equally terrible nightmares.

Dogface by Kellie Powell

Dogface: This is how it happens: One minute, you’re just another awkward second-grader. And then your mom takes you and your brother to her friend’s house, out in the country. You get out of the car, and there’s a big yellow dog wagging his tail at you. And your mom and your brother go to ring the doorbell, and you get down on your knees in front of this friendly dog, and you’re petting him… And then, suddenly, the dog snaps his jaws. And your life as you know it… ends. It happens so fast… You’re not even sure what happened. It feels like a very sharp pinch, and then it’s spreading, fast through your whole face. There’s blood. There’s a lot of blood. You yell for your mom, you run towards her. She turns, and when she sees you, she gasps in horror and she covers your brother’s eyes, and she screams to him, “Don’t look!” That’s how these things happen, I guess. Anyway, that’s how it happened to me. The dog never barked, never growled. He followed after me, still friendly and playful. Blood pouring from the holes in my face… and he’s looking at me, wagging his tail. My mother grabbed my jacket from the car, and told me to hold it tight against my face. I was crying. I was so panicked I felt like I was choking. At the hospital, nurses were coming in, mopping up blood and asking questions and trying to establish how much of my face was still there, whether the nerve endings were alive. My face felt puffy and I was light-headed. The nurses were friendly, they wanted me to trust them. And I did. I believed them when they said that doctors would be able to fix me. My father didn’t – he couldn’t – look directly at me. He kept staring at a space on the wall above me. He kept saying, “You’re being very brave.” I didn’t feel brave. I was still crying, but quietly. I was pressing cotton against my face, just wanting it to be over. I just wanted to go home. And then, I was lying on a table, squinting into a bright light above me. I can’t feel the stitches, but if I look out of the corner of my right eye, I can see it, the silver needle, moving up and down. So I don’t look. They keep talking to me. Half the time I don’t know what they’re saying, the other half of the time, they’re telling me how brave I am, but that’s only because they don’t know how afraid I feel. You’re not allowed to cry or they might mess up your stitches. You can’t move at all. They keep saying, “It will all be over soon.” They lied. I was conscious the entire time. I was awake while they sewed my face back together. What I remember most is the bright light, and the strangely disembodied voices of my parents and the doctors, trying to keep the patient calm. When they finally let me see myself, when they gave me a mirror, I had prepared myself for a Halloween mask, for a horror movie, for a nightmare. But the blood had been cleaned away. It was just neat rows of stitches. I was actually relieved. But then I went back to school. And then the real trauma began.

A RAISIN IN THE SUN

A monologue from the play by Lorraine Hansberry

Beneatha: When I was small… we used to take our sleds out in the wintertime and the only hills we had were the ice-covered stone steps of some houses down the street.

And we used to fill them in with snow and make them smooth and slide down them all day… and it was very dangerous, you know… far too steep…and sure enough one day a kid named Rufus came down too fast and hit the sidewalk and we saw his face just split open right there in front of us…

And I remember standing there looking at his bloody open face thinking that was the end of Rufus. But the ambulance came and they took him to the hospital and they fixed the broken bones and sewed it all up… and the next time I saw Rufus he just had a little line down the middle of his face…. I never got over that… What one person could do for another, fix him up – sew up the problem, make him all right again.

That was the most marvelous thing in the world… I wanted to do that. I always thought it was the one concrete thing in the world a human being could do. Fix up the sick, you know – and make them whole again. This was truly being God… It used to be so important to me. It used to matter. I used to care.

Yes – I think [I stopped]. Because it doesn’t seem deep enough, close enough to what ails mankind! It was a child’s way of seeing things – or an idealist’s. You are still where I left off. You with all of your talk and dreams about Africa! You still think you can patch up the world. Cure the Great Sore of Colonialism – (loftily, mocking it) with the Penicillin of Independence – !

Independence and then what? What about the crooks and thieves and just plain idiots who will come into power and steal and plunder the same as before – only now they will be black and do it in the name of the new independence – WHAT ABOUT THEM?

Age: Teens
Gender: Female
Type: Drama
Download This Monologue Here

BOY ON BLACK TOP ROAD

By Dale Wasserman

Donna (eighteen): All my life I’ve been a coward. There’s reason, I guess . . . plenty reason to be scared. What’s bad is that it makes you cruel.

You turn cruel when somebody probes that little nest of fear you hide inside. You lash out with your claws, and you wound and you hurt whoever sees inside you.

You can’t bear that anyone should see that you’re not cocky, you’re afraid. But you are — of so many things. Of being hated . . . or loved.

Of failure . . . and maybe of success. Of growing old. We’re afraid of the dark before the lights come on. Then we’re afraid of the light, what it might show.

Afraid to die. Maybe more afraid of living. But of all the stuff there is to fear, I guess the worst is loneliness. (A pause.) . . . Sure as hell, company doesn’t help.

If you want to find real Grade-A blue ribbon loneliness, try a crowd. Even a crowd of one. I have . . . oh, God, so many times.

I’d be alone for a while, until the ache was right up in my throat and I’d be hollering without a sound, saying, “Know me. Discover me.

I’m here, inside — somebody, please.” But they couldn’t hear my silent voice, so after a while I’d be saying, “Make love to me.”

They didn’t ask much. They didn’t get much. (She giggles.) You wouldn’t know about that. The big bad sex-express. “Love me, love me — well, if you can’t love me, OK, f*** me.”

It’s like a dance . . . all the moves have been rehearsed, you just follow the music. (Singing, raucously.) “Circle round and dosey do, All change partners, off we go!” (Quietly again.)

And that’s how it goes. Time after time after time. Reach out for love and find you’ve been stuck with sex. Booby-trapped by your own hormones!

Female Classical Teen Monologues

Hamlet

OPHELIA: O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The courtier’s, scholar’s, soldier’s, eye, tongue, sword,
Th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
Th’ observ’d of all observers- quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck’d the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me
T’ have seen what I have seen, see what I see!

Age: 20s 30s Teens
Gender: Female
Type: Classical
Download This Monologue Here

There’s No Place Like Oz 

by Gabriel Davis

Dorothy: Oh Toto, what were we thinking coming back here to Kansas?

Sure, the first few days back were great.  Auntie Em and Uncle Henry by my side, bringing me soup, all hugs and kisses and warmth.  They were just so glad I was ok.

But now that I’m fine … everything’s gone back to the way it was.  Auntie Em just acts like I’m in the way again.  She’s busy making sure Uncle Henry tends to the farm properly, and his farm hands don’t sleep on the job.  Plus she’s taking care of everything in the house and I’m … I’m just that annoying girl talking about scarecrows and tin men and Emerald cities.

Yesterday she told me to stop talking such nonsense or she’d call for the men in white coats.  I’m sure she was just trying to scare me … right, Toto?  She would never … why that’d be more wicked than the witch of the West, wouldn’t it?

No Auntie Em loves me, she would never do that.  What was that noise?  If she hears me talking to you … she’d say you’re just a dog and you don’t understand me … but you do understand me don’t you Toto?

It’s just you and I together in this world Toto and I know you feel like I do … you long for the Emerald City don’t you?  You wonder how scarecrow is getting on with his diploma?  Has he gone on to graduate studies?  Or the Tin Man with his heart.  Has he fallen in love?  The Lion with his badge of courage. Has he fought any great battle?

If only we could write them?  But we can’t, can we?  No, the only way to see them again is to travel far off, over the rainbow, way up high once again.  To the land that everyone says we dreamed of!  But it was more than a dream, wasn’t it Toto?  Bark twice for “Yes.”

Oh Toto!  You do understand me!  That’s why we have to get back to Oz. Where everything is in color and even the flying monkeys have a song in their hearts. I tried to click my heals together yesterday, but my slippers here are too drab … So … There’s a jewelry shop in town … and they have Rubies!  So what we need to do is steal uncle Henry’s truck, he keeps a shotgun in the shed, we’ll need that too …

Oh it’s not a crime, Toto if no-one gets hurt.  We need those rubies and I’ve got glue to attach them to my slippers.  Before the police come, we’ll have glued them all onto my slippers and clicked our heels together and we’ll be well on our way back to Oz.

It’s the perfect plan, right?  Bark twice for “Yes.”

Age: Teens
Gender: Female
Type: Comedy / Drama
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One Sunday Afternoon by James Hagan 

[This lovely, if somewhat sentimental play, written in 1930, is about young love in a small Midwestern town. Amy, a romantic young girl, has a crush on the town bully and she’s describing it to her friend Virginia.]

AMY: I don’t know. Maybe it was love, I don’t know, but— Well, when I was very young— of course, that’s a long time ago, you understand. It was in school. There was this boy. I don’t know‐‐he never looked at me and I never…Virginia, did you ever have a feeling in your heart‐‐Something that you feel is going to happen and it doesn’t— that’s the way my heart was— (she touches her heart) It wasn’t love, I know that—   (pause) He never even noticed me. I could have been a stick in the mud as far as he was concerned. Virginia, this boy always seemed lonely somehow. Everybody had it in for him, even the teachers—they called him bully—but I know he wasn’t. I saw him do a lot of good things—when the big boys picked on the smaller ones, he helped the little fellows out. I know he had a lot of good in him—good, that nobody else could see—that’s why my heart longs for him.

Age: Teens
Gender: Female
Type: Drama
Download This Monologue Here

Dentity Crisis by Christopher Durang 

JANE: When I was eight years old, someone brought me to a theatre with lots of other children. We had come to see a production of Peter Pan. And I remember something seemed wrong with whole production, odd things kept happening. Like when the children would fly, the ropes breaking and the actors would come thumping to ground an they’d have to be carried off by the stagehands. There seemed to be an unlimited supply of understudies to take the children’s places, and then they’d fall to the ground. And then the crocodile that chases Captain Hook seemed to be a real crocodile, It wasn’t an actor, and at one point it fell off the stage, crushing several children in the front row. Several understudies came and took their places in the audience. And from scene to scene Wendy seemed to get fatter and fatter until finally by the second act she was immobile and had to be moved with a cart. The voice belonged to the actress playing peter pan. You remember how in the second act Tinkerbell drinks some poison that Peter’s about to drink, in order to save him? And then Peter turns to the audience and he says that Tinkerbell’s going to die because not enough people believe in fairies, but that if everybody in the audience claps real hard to show that they do believe in fairies, then maybe Tinkerbell won’t die. and so then all the children started to clap. we clapped very hard and very long. my palms hurt and even started to bleed I clapped so hard. then suddenly the actress playing Peter Pan turned to the audience and she said, ” that wasn’t enough. You didn’t clap hard enough. Tinkerbell’s dead. ” uh..well, and..and then everyone started to cry. The actress stalked offstage and refused to continue with the play, and they finally had to bring down the curtain. No one could see anything through all the tears, and the ushers had to come help the children up the aisles and out into the street. I don’t think any of us were ever the same after that experience.

Age: Teens
Gender: Female
Type: Drama
Download This Monologue Here

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We hope you enjoyed this curated list of Monologues For Teen Girls. We hope this comprehensive guide to monologues for girls has provided you with some significant insights and choices to kickstart your acting journey.

The post Monologues For Teen Girls appeared first on We Are Actors.

Dubbed as one of history’s most illustrious playwrights, Oscar Wilde’s vivacious wit and distinct stylistic approach to drama has left an indelible mark on the world of theatre. Born on October 16, 1854, in Dublin, Ireland, Wilde was a man of many talents – a poet, an essayist, a critic, but it’s his fame as a playwright that truly defines his enduring legacy. Authoring timeless classics such as ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ and ‘An Ideal Husband’, Wilde’s name is synonymous with the golden age of theatre

In this article, we delve deeper into the heart of Wilde’s theatrical genius – his monologues. These captivating speeches delivered by characters within his plays reveal Wilde’s profound understanding of human nature, his penchant for social commentary, and his unmatched prowess in creating compelling dramatic moments. We have selected ten powerful monologues from different plays penned by Wilde, each offering a unique insight into the writer’s craft, the character’s psyche, and the overarching themes of the plays. Our journey will take us through famous works like ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ to lesser-known gems like ‘The Duchess of Padua’.

Join us as we immerse ourselves in the timeless wit and wisdom of Oscar Wilde’s monologues, exploring their profound depth, enduring charm, and their immense relevance in contemporary theatre.

“Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.”

— Oscar Wilde

An Ideal Husband

– In this play, the character Lord Goring delivers a moving monologue about truth, honor, and love. This powerful speech highlights Wilde’s ability to weave profound thoughts into his dialogues. It captures the complexity of Lord Goring’s character while underlining the play’s themes of morality and forgiveness

Lord Goring:

Lady Chiltern, allow me. You wrote me a letter last night in which you said you trusted me and wanted my help. Now is the moment when you really want my help, now is the time when you have got to trust me, to trust in my counsel and judgment. You love Robert. Do you want to kill his love for you? What sort of existence will he have if you rob him of the fruits of his ambition, if you take him from the splendour of a great political career, if you close the doors of public life against him, if you condemn him to sterile failure, he who was made for triumph and success? Women are not meant to judge us, but to forgive us when we need forgiveness. Pardon, not punishment, is their mission. Why should you scourge him with rods for a sin done in his youth, before he knew you, before he knew himself? A man’s life is of more value than a woman’s. It has larger issues, wider scope, greater ambitions. A woman’s life revolves in curves of emotions. It is upon lines of intellect that a man’s life progresses. Don’t make any terrible mistake, Lady Chiltern. A woman who can keep a man’s love, and love him in return, has done all the world wants of women, or should want of them.

Age: 30s 40s
Gender: Male
From: Monologues From Plays
Type: Drama
One minute monologue: No

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Lady Windermere’s Fan

– The monologue delivered by Lady Windermere is a perfect example of Wilde’s wit and wisdom. The character’s reflections on good and bad people are both humorous and thought-provoking, offering a deep exploration of the play’s themes of appearances and societal judgments.

LADY WINDERMERE. How horrible! I understand now what Lord Darlington meant by the imaginary instance of the couple not two years married. Oh! it can’t be true–she spoke of enormous sums of money paid to this woman. I know where Arthur keeps his bank book- -in one of the drawers of that desk. I might find out by that. I WILL find out. [Opens drawer.] No, it is some hideous mistake. [Rises and goes C.] Some silly scandal! He loves ME! He loves ME! But why should I not look? I am his wife, I have a right to look! [Returns to bureau, takes out book and examines it page by page, smiles and gives a sigh of relief.] I knew it! there is not a word of truth in this stupid story. [Puts book back in dranver. As the does so, starts and takes out another book.] A second book- -private–locked! [Tries to open it, but fails. Sees paper knife on bureau, and with it cuts cover from book. Begins to start at the first page.] ‘Mrs. Erlynne–600 pounds–Mrs. Erlynne–700 pounds–Mrs. Erlynne–400 pounds.’ Oh! it is true! It is true! How horrible! [Throws book on floor.] [Enter LORD WINDERMERE C.]

Age: 20s 30s
Gender: Female
From: Monologues From Plays
Type: Comedy
One minute monologue: No

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A Woman Of No Importance

The character Mrs. Arbuthnot’s monologue is a raw, emotional plea to her son. It portrays Wilde’s ability to create dramatic, heart-wrenching scenes while tackling themes of motherhood, sacrifice, and societal expectations

MRS. ARBUTHNOT: I will never stand before God’s altar and ask God’s blessing on so hideous a mockery as a marriage between me and George Harford. I will not say the words the Church bids us to say. I will not say them. How could I swear to love the man I loathe, to honour him who wrought you dishonor, to obey him who, in his mastery, made me to sin? No; marriage is a sacrament for those who love each other. It is not for such as him, or such as me. Gerald, to save you from the world’s sneers and taunts I have lied to the world. For twenty years I have lied to the world. I could not tell the truth. No, Gerald, no ceremony, Church-hallowed or State-made, shall ever bind me to George Harford. [Pause.] Men don’t understand what mothers are. I am no different from other women except in the wrong done me and the wrong I did, and my very heavy punishments and great disgrace. And yet, to bear you I had to look on death. To nurture you I had to wrestle with it. Death fought with me for you. All women have to fight with death to keep their children. Death, being childless, wants our children from us. Gerald, when you were naked I clothed you, when you were hungry I gave you food. Night and day all that long winter I tended you. No office is too mean, no care too lowly for the thing we women love–and oh! how I loved you! And you needed love, for you were weakly, and only love could have kept you alive. Only love can keep any one alive. And boys are careless often, and without thinking give pain, and we always fancy that when they come to man’s estate and know us better they will repay us. But it is not so. The world draws them from our side, and they make friends with whom they are happier than they are with us, and have amusements from which we are barred, and interests that are not ours; and they are unjust to us often, for when they find life bitter they blame us for it, and when they find it sweet we do not taste its sweetness with them. . . . You made many friends and went into their houses and were glad with them, and I, knowing my secret, did not dare to follow, but stayed at home and closed the door, shut out the sun and sat in darkness. My past was ever with me. . . . And you thought I didn’t care for the pleasant things of life. I tell you I longed for them, but did not dare to touch them, feeling I had no right. You thought I was happier working amongst the poor. That was my mission, you imagined. It was not, but where else was I to go? The sick do not ask if the hand that smooths their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin. It was you I thought of all the time; I gave to them the love you did not need; lavished on them a love that was not theirs. . . . And you thought I spent too much of my time in going to Church, and in Church duties. But where else could I turn? God’s house is the only house where sinners are made welcome, and you were always in my heart, Gerald, too much in my heart. For though day after day, at morn or evensong, I have knelt in God’s house, I never repented of my sin. How could I repent of my sin when you, my love, were its fruit. Even now that you are bitter to me I cannot repent. I do not. You are more to me than innocence. I would rather be your mother–oh! much rather!–than have been always pure. . . . Oh, don’t you see? don’t you understand! It is my dishonour that has made you so dear to me. It is my disgrace that has bound you so closely to me. It is the price I paid for you–the price of soul and body–that makes me love you as I do. Oh, don’t ask me to do this horrible thing. Child of my shame, be still!

Age: 40s 50s 60s
Gender: Female
From: Monologues From Plays
Type: Comedy
One minute monologue: No

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Vera; or, The Nihilists 

CZAR: Then I banish you for your bad jokes. Bon voyage Messieurs. If you value your lives you will catch the first train for Paris. [Exeunt Ministers.] Russia is well rid of such men as these. They are the jackals that follow in the lion’s track. They have no courage themselves except to pillage and rob. But for these men and for Prince Paul my father would have been a good king, would not have died so horribly as he did die. How strange it is, the most real parts of one’s life always seem to be a dream! The council, the fearful law which was to kill the people, the arrest, the cry in the court-yard, the pistol-shot, my father’s bloody hands, and then the crown! One can live for years sometimes without living at all, and then all life comes crowding into one single hour. I had no time to think. Before my father’s hideous shriek of death had died in my ears I found this crown on my head, the purple robe around me, and heard myself called a king. I would have given it up all then; it seemed nothing to me then; but now, can I give it up now? Well, Colonel, well?

Age: 40s 50s 60s
Gender: Male
From: Monologues From Plays
Type: Comedy
One minute monologue: No

Download This Monologue Here

VERA: Asleep! God, thou art good! Who shall deliver him from my hands now? This is he! The democrat who would make himself a king, the republican who hath worn a crown, the traitor who hath lied to us. Michael was right. He loved not the people. He loved me not. [Bends over him.] Oh, why should such deadly poison lie in such sweet lips? Was there not gold enough in his hair before, but he should tarnish it with this crown? But my day has come now; the day of the people, of liberty, has come! Your day, my brother, has come! Though I have strangled whatever nature is in me, I did not think it had been so easy to kill. One blow and it is over, and I can wash my hands in water afterwards, I can wash my hands afterwards. Come, I shall save Russia. I have sworn it. [Raises the dagger to strike.]

Age: 20s 30s 40s
Gender: Female
From: Monologues From Plays
Type: Comedy
One minute monologue: No

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THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

DORIAN: This play was good enough for us, Harry. It was Romeo and Juliet. I must admit that I was rather annoyed at the idea of seeing Shakespeare done in such a wretched hole of a place. Still, I felt interested, in a sort of way. At any rate, I determined to wait for the first act. There was a dreadful orchestra, presided over by a young Hebrew who sat at a cracked piano, that nearly drove me away, but at last the drop-scene was drawn up, and the play began. Romeo was a stout elderly gentleman, with corked eyebrows, a husky tragedy voice, and a figure like a beer-barrel. Mercutio was almost as bad. He was played by the low-comedian, who had introduced gags of his own and was on most friendly terms with the pit. They were both as grotesque as the scenery, and that looked as if it had come out of a country booth. But Juliet! Harry, imagine a girl, hardly seventeen years of age, with a little flower-like face, a small Greek head with plaited coils of dark-brown hair, eyes that were violet wells of passion, lips that were like the petals of a rose. She was the loveliest thing I had ever seen in my life. You said to me once that pathos left you unmoved, but that beauty, mere beauty, could fill your eyes with tears. I tell you, Harry, I could hardly see this girl for the mist of tears that came across me. And her voice–I never heard such a voice. It was very low at first, with deep, mellow notes, that seemed to fall singly upon one’s ear. Then it became a little louder, and sounded like a flute or a distant hautbois. In the garden scene it had all the tremulous ecstasy that one hears just before dawn when nightingales are singing. There were moments, later on, when it had the wild passion of violets. You know how a voice can stir one. Your voice and the voice of Sibyl Vane are two things that I shall never forget. When I close my eyes, I hear them, and each of them says something different. I don’t know which to follow. Why should I not love her? Harry, I do love her. She is everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play. One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her die in the gloom of an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from her lover’s lips. I have watched her wandering through the forest of Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reed-like throat. I have seen her in every age and in every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one’s imagination. They are limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in any of them. They ride in the Park in the morning, and chatter at tea-parties in the afternoon. They have their stereotyped smile, and their fashionable manner. They are quite obvious. But an actress! How different an actress is! Harry! why didn’t you tell me that the only thing worth loving is an actress?”

Age: 20s 30s
Gender: Male
From: Monologues From Plays
Type: Drama
One minute monologue: No

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The Canterville Ghost

Scene 8: The Haunting Resumes – Sir Simon Monoologue

Receipt and yellow pad of rent terms are pinned on wall of hall. Twins pin up fake ghost on wall and run around the edge of set to hide. Sir Simon enters and grabs rent terms off wall.

Sir Simon: [Reading mockingly from paper] Dear Sir, As you know, we have recently purchased this

place from Lord Canterville. If you wish to remain here, we will be forced to collect rent. Please remit

payment before the end of this week. Thank you!

Sir Simon: What?! Who are these people? Charge me rent to live in my own home? It is I who ought to

be charging them rent! [rips paper in half and throws it to the floor]

Starts walking to library and then sees ghost scarecrow

Sir Simon: Ahh! A ghost! It’s a ghastly ghost!

Runs to his room

Sir Simon: Oh, what a terrible, horrible ghost! I swear, it was going to kill me!

Sir Simon: Wait, I have an idea. Maybe this ghost, this terrifying new phantom, can help me get rid of

the Otises. I’ll go talk to him.

Sir Simon: [Talking to himself] Talk to him? Are you mad? That thing would soon rip me up as listen to

me gab.

Sir Simon: How much damage could it really do? I mean, I’m already dead. I shall go forth and talk

business!

Enters stage gingerly.

Sir Simon: Uh, Lord Ghost? Morning, Sir. [pokes with finger] I’m Sir Simon de Canterville, and I’ve

haunted this place for over 300 years, but I don’t think I’ve ever had the pleasure of making your

acquaintance. How do you do? [shakes hand, which comes off]

Sir Simon: Ahh! [Staggers backwards]

Sir Simon: Uhh, Sir, I’m sure you know what a danger this Otis family is.

Sir Simon: Hey, wake up, you there! Come on, I don’t have all night! [Grabs arm and the whole ghost

comes down]

Sir Simon: Sorry Sir, I guess I can be a little rough sometimes. Are all right?

Sir Simon: Gah! What’s this!? [Holds up sign and reads] “Ye Otis Ghoste. Ye Onlie True and Origionale

Spook. Beware of Ye Imitationes. All others are Counterfeite.”

Sir Simon: I have been outwitted? Never! That Otis family will pay for this.

Twins enter and attack with pea-shooters.

Lewis: Boo!

Clark: Boo!

Lewis and Clark: Ghost Noises

Sir Simon: You rascals! [Holds up ghost] Was this your idea!? I’ll get you yet!

Twins chase Sir Simon off stage

Age: 30s 40s 50s
Gender: Male
From: Monologues From Plays
Type: Comedy
One minute monologue: No

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THE HAPPY PRINCE

From the Oscar Wilde fairy tale about a statue of a former prince

Boy, Age 8 to 14

PRINCE: Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow, far away across the city I see a young man in a garret. He is leaning over a desk covered with papers, and in a tumbler by his side there is a bunch of withered violets. He has large and dreamy eyes. He is trying to finish a play for the Director of the Theatre, but he is too cold to write any more. There is no fire in the grate, and hunger has made him faint. Alas! I no longer have rubies to give him. My eyes are all that I have now. They are made of rare sapphires, which were brought out of India a thousand years ago. Pluck out one of them and take it to him. He will sell it to the jeweler, and buy firewood, and finish his play. Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow, do not weep so. Do as I command you and pluck out my eye.

Age: Teens
Gender: Male
From: Monologues From Plays
Type: Comedy
One minute monologue: No

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THE DUCHESS OF PADUA

DUCHESS: Better for me I had not seen your face.
O think it was for you I killed this man.

[GUIDO recoils: she seizes his hands as she kneels.]

Nay, Guido, listen for a while:
Until you came to Padua I lived
Wretched indeed, but with no murderous thought,
Very submissive to a cruel Lord,
Very obedient to unjust commands,
As pure I think as any gentle girl
Who now would turn in horror from my hands–
You came: ah! Guido, the first kindly words
I ever heard since I had come from France
Were from your lips: well, well, that is no matter.
You came, and in the passion of your eyes
I read love’s meaning, everything you said
Touched my dumb soul to music, and you seemed
Fair as that young Saint Michael on the wall
In Santa Croce, where we go and pray.
I wonder will I ever pray again?
Well, you were fair, and in your boyish face
The morning light seemed to lighten, so I loved you.
And yet I did not tell you of my love.
‘Twas you who sought me out, knelt at my feet
As I kneel now at yours, and with sweet vows,
Whose music seems to linger in my ears,
Swore that you loved me, and I trusted you.
I think there are many women in the world
Who had they been unti this vile Duke mated,
Chained to his side, as the poor galley slave
Is to a leper chained,–ay! many women
Who would have tempted you to kill the man.
I did not. Yet I know that had I done so,
I had not been thus humbled in the dust.

[Stands up.]

But you have loved me very faithfully.

[After a pause approaches him timidly.]

I do not think you understand me, Guido:
It was for your sake that I wrought this deed
Whose horror now chills my young blood to ice,
For your sake only.

[Stretching out her arm.]

Will you not speak to me?
Love me a little: in my girlish life
I have been starved for love, and kindliness
Has passed me by.

Age: 20s 30s
Gender: Female
From: Monologues From Plays
Type: Drama
One minute monologue: No

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The Importance Of Being Ernest

In his state of annoyance at Algernon’s seeming fondness for Cecily, Jack seeks Lady Bracknell’s intervention with her nephew.

Jack:

It pains me very much to have to speak frankly to you, Lady Bracknell, about your nephew, but the fact is that I do not approve at all of his moral character. I suspect him of being untruthful. I fear there can be no possible doubt about the matter. This afternoon during my temporary absence in London on an important question of romance, he obtained admission to my house by means of the false pretence of being my brother. Under an assumed name he drank, I’ve just been informed by my butler, an entire pint bottle of my Perrier-Jouet, Brut, ’89; wine I was specially reserving for myself. Continuing his disgraceful deception, he succeeded in the course of the afternoon in alienating the affections of my only ward. He subsequently stayed to tea, and devoured every single muffin. And what makes his conduct all the more heartless is, that he was perfectly well aware from the first that I have no brother, that I never had a brother, and that I don’t intend to have a brother, not even of any kind. I distinctly told him so myself yesterday afternoon.

Cecily encounters Algernon, who she is under the impression is Ernest. During their meeting, Algernon professes his affection towards her, to which Cecily responds by divulging that her love for him has been blossoming during his time away.

Cecily:

You silly boy! Why, we have been engaged for the last three months. It will be exactly three months on Thursday. Ever since dear Uncle Jack first confessed to us that he had a younger brother who was very wicked and bad, you of course have formed the chief topic of conversation between myself and Miss Prism. And of course a man who is much talked about is always very attractive. One feels there must be something in him, after all. I daresay it was foolish of me, but I fell in love with you, Ernest. The engagement was actually settled on the 14th of February last. Worn out by your entire ignorance of my existence, I determined to end the matter one way or the other, and after a long struggle with myself I accepted you under this dear old tree here.

Oscar Wilde Monologues FAQ’s

What are some key themes present in Oscar Wilde monologues?

Oscar Wilde often dealt with themes of love, self-realization, redemption, and societal norms in his works. His monologues often reflect these themes, presenting characters who grapple with their emotions, struggle with their identities, or wrestle with moral dilemmas. The themes are often presented with irony and wit, characteristic of Wilde’s writing style

Which literary devices does Oscar Wilde frequently use in his monologues?

Wilde frequently used literary devices such as metaphors, irony, and wit in his works. In his monologues, he often used these devices to enhance the dramatic effect, reveal character personalities, and highlight his themes

Are there any controversial elements in Oscar Wilde’s monologues?

Oscar Wilde was known for his controversial ideas, often challenging societal norms of his time. His monologues sometimes mirrored this controversy, reflecting Wilde’s own views on subjects like love, morality, and societal constraints

What can we learn from Oscar Wilde monologues?

Wilde’s monologues often explore the complexities of human nature and society. They provide insights into his views on love, self-realization, and societal norms. They also showcase his distinct style, characterized by wit, irony, and clever use of language

Where can I find examples of Oscar Wilde monologues?

Monologues from Oscar Wilde can be found in his plays, such as “The Importance of Being Earnest,” “An Ideal Husband,” and “Lady Windermere’s Fan.” These works are widely available in libraries and online.

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Monologues From Movies

If you are a fan of classic films then you will love this list of old school monologues from movies we have put together for you. Many of you might not have even heard of these films but there are some gems of monologues in them that many of you can work on. These movies star the likes of Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn and more. Some of these are lengthy monologues that you can really sink your teeth into.

“Acting is experience with something sweet behind it.” – Humphrey Bogart

Meet John Doe (1941)

Screenwriter: Robert Riskin
The fictional John Doe (Gary Cooper) (aka Long John Willoughby) delivered a radio address – an idealistic appeal to the common man – all the John Does (“the little punks”) in the world – to get up on their feet and pull together as a team:

Monologue: Ladies and Gentlemen, I am the man you all know as John Doe. I took that name because it seems to describe, because it seems to describe the average man – and that’s me. (He cleared his throat) And that’s me. Well, it was me before I said I was gonna jump off the City Hall roof at midnight on Christmas Eve. Now I guess I’m not average anymore. Now I’m getting all sorts of attention, from big shots too, the mayor and the governor, for instance. They don’t like those articles I’ve been writing…

Well, people like the governor, people like the governor and that fellow there can stop worrying. I’m not going to talk about them. I’m gonna talk about us – the average guys, the John Does. If anybody should ask you what the average John Doe is like, you couldn’t tell him because he’s a million and one things. He’s Mr. Big and Mr. Small, he’s simple and he’s wise, he’s inherently honest but he’s got a streak of larceny in his heart. He seldom walks up to a public telephone without shovin’ his finger into the slot to see if somebody left a nickel there. (Laughter) He’s the man the ads are written for. He’s the fella everybody sells things to. He’s Joe Doakes, the world’s greatest stooge and the world’s greatest strength.

Yes sir, yes sir, we’re a great family, the John Does. We are the meek who are, who are supposed to inherit the earth. You’ll find us everywhere. We raise the crops, we dig the mines, work the factories, keep the books, fly the planes and drive the buses, and when a cop yells, ‘Stand back there you,’ he means us – the John Does… We’ve existed since time began. We built the pyramids. We saw Christ crucified, pulled the oars for Roman emperors, sailed the boats for Columbus, retreated from Moscow with Napoleon, and froze with Washington at Valley Forge. Yes sir, we’ve been in there dodgin’ left hooks since before History began to walk. In our struggle for freedom, we’ve hit the canvas many a time, but we always bounced back because we’re the people – and we’re tough. (Applause)

They’ve started a lot of talk about free people goin’ soft, that we can’t take it. That’s a lot of hooey! A free people can beat the world at anything, from war to tiddly-winks if we all pull in the same direction (Applause) I know a lot of you are saying, ‘What can I do? I’m just a little punk. I don’t count.’ Well, you’re dead wrong. The little punks have always counted because in the long run, the character of a country is the sum total of the character of its little punks. (Applause)

But we’ve all got to get in there and pitch. We can’t win the old ball game unless we have teamwork. And that’s where every John Doe comes in. It’s up to him to get together with his teammate. And your teammate, my friends, is the guy next door to ya. Your neighbor – he’s a terribly important guy, that guy next door. You’re gonna need him and he’s gonna need you, so look him up. If he’s sick, call on him. If he’s hungry, feed him. If he’s out of a job, find him one. To most of you, your neighbor is a stranger, a guy with a barkin’ dog and a high fence around him. Now you can’t be a stranger to any guy that’s on your own team. So tear down the fence that separates you. Tear down the fence and you’ll tear down a lot of hates and prejudices. Tear down all the fences in the country and you’ll really have teamwork. (Applause)

I know a lot of you are saying to yourselves: ‘He’s askin’ for a miracle to happen. He’s expecting people to change all of a sudden.’ Well, you’re wrong. It’s no miracle. It’s no miracle because I see it happen once every year and so do you – at Christmas time. There’s something swell about the spirit of Christmas, to see what it does to people, all kinds of people. Now why can’t that spirit, that same warm Christmas spirit, last the whole year round? Gosh, if it ever did, if each and every John Doe would make that spirit last 365 days out of the year – we’d develop such a strength, we’d create such a tidal wave of good will that no human force could stand against it. Yes sir, my friends, the meek can only inherit the earth when the John Does start loving their neighbors. You’d better start right now. Don’t wait till the game is called on account of darkness. Wake up, John Doe, you’re the hope of the world!

Age: 30s 40s 50s
Gender: Monologues For Men
Genre: Drama

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To Have and Have Not (1944)

Screenwriter(s): Jules Furthman, William Faulkner
The incredibly sensuous scene between Steve / Harry Morgan (Humphrey Bogart) and Slim / Marie
Browning (Lauren Bacall), who was trying to seduce him:

Monologue: Who was the girl, Steve?… The one that left you with such a high opinion of women? She must have been quite a gal. You think I lied to you about this, don’t you? Well, it just happens there’s thirty-odd dollars here. Not enough for boat fare, or any other kind of fare. Just enough for me to say ‘no’ if I feel like it, and you can have it if you want it… You wouldn’t take anything from anybody would you?… You know Steve, you’re not very hard to figure. Only at times. Sometimes I know exactly what you’re going to say. Most of the time. The other times, the other times you’re just a stinker.

After kissing him a second time after he had become more receptive, she cooed as she left his room:

It’s even better when you help…. Uh, sure you won’t change your mind about this?… This belongs to me, and so do my lips, I don’t see any difference… Okay, you know you don’t have act with me, Steve. You don’t have to say anything, and you don’t have to do anything. Not with me. Oh, maybe just whistle. You remember how to whistle, don’t you? Just put your lips together… and blow.

Age: 20s 30s
Gender: Movie Monologues For Women
Genre: Drama

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The Lost Weekend (1945)

Screenwriter(s): Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder

Later, in a flashback, drunkard Don Birnam (Ray Milland) confessed his drinking problem to girlfriend Helen St. James (Jane Wyman). He related how his authoring brilliance as a Hemingway-like writer during his college years was soon blocked and tarnished, declining after age nineteen with a recourse to the bottle. He was helplessly schizophrenic, divided between Don the Drunk and Don the Writer. As an aspiring writer, he described the soaring, creative juices that flowed with just a few drinks, and how he spiraled down into despair and agony when the booze wore off. He began his recollections after Helen asked: “What is it you wanna be so much that you’re not?”

Monologue: A writer. Silly, isn’t it? You know, in college, I passed for a genius. They couldn’t get out the college magazine without one of my stories. Boy, was I hot! Hemingway stuff. I reached my peak when I was nineteen. Sold a piece to The Atlantic Monthly, reprinted in the Reader’s Digest. Who wants to stay in college when he’s Hemingway? My mother bought me a brand-new typewriter. And I moved right in on New York. Well, the first thing I wrote, that didn’t quite come off. And the second, I dropped. The public wasn’t ready for that one. I started a third and a fourth. Only by then, somebody began to look over my shoulder and whisper in a thin, clear voice like the E string on a violin. ‘Don Birnam,’ he’d whisper, ‘It’s not good enough, not that way. How about a couple of drinks just to set it on its feet, huh?’ So I had a couple. Oh, what a great idea that was! That made all the difference. Suddenly, I could see the whole thing. The tragic sweep of the great novel beautifully proportioned. But before I could really grab it and throw it down on paper, the drinks would wear off and everything would be gone like a mirage. Then there was despair, and I’d drink to counter-balance despair. And then one to counter-balance the counter-balance. And I’d sit in front of that typewriter trying to squeeze out one page that was half-way decent. And that guy would pop up again…

The other Don Birnam. There are two of us, you know. Don the Drunk and Don the Writer. And the drunk would say to the writer, ‘Come on, you idiot. Let’s get some good out of that portable. Let’s hock it. Let’s take it to that pawn shop over on Third Avenue. It’s always good for ten dollars. Another drink, another binge, another bender, another spree.’ Such humorous words. I’ve tried to break away from that guy a lot of times, but no good. You know, once I even got myself a gun and some bullets. I was gonna do it on my thirtieth birthday. Here are the bullets. The gun went for three quarts of whiskey. That other Don wanted us to have a drink first. He always wants us to have a drink first. The flop suicide of a flop writer.

Age: 30s 40s
Gender: Movie Monologues For Men
Genre: Drama

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Adam’s Rib (1949)

Screenwriter(s): Ruth Gordon, Garson Kanin

Amanda Bonner’s (Katharine Hepburn) closing argument in court to defend the actions of her client Doris Attinger (Judy Holliday), using the principle of equality before the law. In a “revealing experiment” to reverse the couple’s sex-stereotyped roles, she asked the jury to imagine the defendant Mrs. Attinger as a home-protecting man, to picture “slick home-wrecker” Miss Caighn as a predatory wolfish man (with short dark hair and a mustache), and to fantasize that Mr. Attinger was a woman (with blonde hair). The camera showed the action through the eyes of the jurors – each of the three characters were momentarily transformed. Amanda defended the “unwritten law” – the passionate-lover defense that allowed a man to break the law to save his home by killing his wife when caught in bed with a lover. And she argued that the wife Doris [and by extension all women] was entitled to the same defense and justice in the courts that a man received, whatever that justice may be:

Monologue: And so the question here is equality before the law, regardless of religion, color, wealth, or, as in this instance, sex…Law, like man, is composed of two parts: Just as man is body and soul, so is the law, letter and spirit. The law says, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ yet men have killed, and proved a reason, and been set free. Self-defense, defense of others, of wife, of children, and home. If a thief breaks into your house, and you shoot him, the law will not deal harshly with you, nor indeed should it. So here, you are asked to judge not whether or not these acts were committed, but to what extent they were justified. Now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I request that you join me in a revealing experiment. I ask you all to direct your attention to the defendant, Mrs. Attinger. Now keep looking at her, keep watching. Listen carefully and look at her. Look at her hard. Now imagine her a man. Go on now, use your imaginations. Think of her as a man sitting there accused of a like crime — a husband, who is only trying to protect his home.

Now hold it. Hold that impression and look at Beryl Caighn. Look at her. Look at her hard, a man, a slick home wrecker, a third party, a wolf! You know the type. Alright, hold that impression and look at Mr. Attinger, and suppose him a woman. Try, try hard. Ah, yes, there she is. The guilty wife! Look at her! Does she arouse your sympathy?! Alright! Now you have it! Judge it so! An unwritten law stands back of a man who fights to defend his home. Apply this same law to this maltreated wife, and neglected woman. We ask you no more: equality. Deep in the heart of South America, there thrives today a civilization far older than ours: a people known as the Loquiňanos, descended from the Amazons. In this vast tribe, members of the female sex rule and govern, and systematically deny equal rights to the men, made weak and puny by years of subservience, too weak to revolt. And yet, how long have we lived in the shadow of a like injustice?

Consider this unfortunate woman’s act as though you yourselves had each committed it. Every living being is capable of attack, if sufficiently provoked. Assault lies dormant within us all. It requires only circumstance to set it in violent motion. I ask you for a verdict of not guilty. There was no murder attempt here, only a pathetic attempt to save a home.

Age: 30s 40s 50s
Gender: Monologues For Women
Genre: Drama

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All the King’s Men (1949)

Screenwriter(s): Robert Rossen
Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford) gave a no-notes rousing, half-drunken campaign speech at a
fairgrounds barbecue, during his campaign for Louisiana governor, when he threw away his prepared
speech:

Monologue: My friends, my friends, I have a speech here. It’s a speech about what this state needs. There’s no need in my telling you what this state needs. You are the state and you know what you need. You over there, look at your pants. Have they got holes in the knees? Listen to your stomach. Did you ever hear it rumble for hunger? And you, what about your crops? Did they ever rot in the field because the road was so bad you couldn’t get ’em to market? And you, what about your kids? Are they growin’ up ignorant as dirt, ignorant as you ’cause there’s no school for ’em?

Naw, I’m not gonna read you any speech. But I am gonna tell ya a story. It’s a funny story so get ready to laugh….Get ready to bust your sides laughin’, ’cause it’s sure a funny story. It’s about a hick, a hick like you, if ya please. Yeah, like you. He grew up on the dirt roads and the gully washes of a farm. He knew what it was to get up before dawn and get feed and slop and milk before breakfast, and then set out before sunup and walk six miles to a one-room, slab-sided schoolhouse.

Aw, this hick knew what it was to be a hick, all right. He figured if he was gonna get anything done, well, he had to do it himself. So he sat up nights and studied books. He studied law, because he thought he might be able to change things some – for himself and for folks like him. Now I’m not gonna lie to ya. He didn’t start off thinkin’ about the hicks and all the wonderful things he was gonna do for ’em. Naw, naw, he started off thinkin’ of number one.

But somethin’ came to him on the way. How he could do nothin’ for himself without the help of the people. That’s what came to him. And it also came to him with the powerful force of God’s own lightning back in his home county when the school building collapsed ’cause it was built of politics’ rotten brick. It killed and mangled a dozen kids. But you know that story. The people were his friends because he’d fought that rotten brick. And some of the politicians down in the city, they knew that, so they rode up to his house in a big, fine, shiny car and said as how they wanted him to run for Governor….And he swallowed it. He looked in his heart and he thought in all humility, how he’d like to try and change things. He was just a country boy who thought that even the plainest, poorest man can be Governor if his fellow citizens find he’s got the stuff for the job. All those fellas in the striped pants, they saw that hick and they took him in…

There he is! There’s your Judas Iscariot! Look at him! …Look at him….! (Chaos) Now, shut up! Shut up, all of ya! Now listen to me, ya hicks. Yeah, you’re hicks too, and they fooled you a thousand times just like they fooled me. But this time, I’m gonna fool somebody. I’m gonna stay in this race. I’m on my own and I’m out for blood. Now listen to me, you hicks! Listen to me, and lift up your eyes and look at God’s blessed and unfly-blown truth.

And this is the truth! You’re a hick, and nobody ever helped a hick but a hick himself! Alright, listen to me! Listen to me! I’m the hick they were gonna use to split the hick vote. Well, I’m standin’ right here now on my hind legs. Even a dog can learn to do that. Are you standin’ on your hind legs? Have you learned to do that much yet? Here it is! Here it is, ya hicks! Nail up anybody who stands in your way! Nail up Joe Harrison! Nail up McMurphy! And if they don’t deliver, give me the hammer and I’ll do it myself!

Age: 40s 50s 60s
Gender: Monologues For Men
Genre: Comedy/Drama

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The Fountainhead (1949)

Screenwriter(s): Ayn Rand

Architect Howard Roark (Gary Cooper) made a closing summation (of author-screenwriter Ayn Rand’s
treatise on Objectivism) to a jury, defending his destruction of housing project buildings that had perverted his original design plans – his words were so powerful that the jury found him not-guilty:

Monologue: Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light, but he left them a gift they had not conceived and he lifted darkness off the earth. Throughout the centuries, there were men who took first steps down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision. The great creators, the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors, stood alone against the men of their time. Every new thought was opposed. Every new invention was denounced. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid, but they won. No creator was prompted by a desire to please his brothers. His brothers hated the gift he offered. His truth was his only motive. His work was his only goal. His work, not those who used it. His creation, not the benefits others derived from it. The creation which gave form to his truth. He held his truth above all things and against all men. He went ahead whether others agreed with him or not, with his integrity as his only banner. He served nothing and no one. He lived for himself. And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement.

Man cannot survive except through his mind. He comes on earth unarmed. His brain is his only weapon. But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. The man who thinks must think and act on his own. The reasoning mind cannot work under any form of compulsion. It cannot be subordinated to the needs, opinions, or wishes of others. It is not an object of sacrifice. The creator stands on his own judgment – the parasite follows the opinions of others. The creator thinks – the parasite copies. The creator produces – the parasite loots. The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature the parasite’s concern is the conquest of men. The creator requires independence. He neither serves nor rules. He deals with men by free exchange and voluntary choice. The parasite seeks power. He wants to bind all men together in common action and common slavery. He claims that man is only a tool for the use of others, that he must think as they think, act as they act, and live in selfless, joyless servitude to any need but his own.

Look at history. Everything we have, every great achievement has come from the independent work of some independent mind. Every horror and destruction came from attempts to force men into a herd of brainless, soulless robots, without personal rights, without person ambition, without will, hope, or dignity. It is an ancient conflict. It has another name – ‘The individual against the collective.’ Our country, the noblest country in the history of men, was based on the principle of individualism, the principle of man’s ‘inalienable rights.’ It was a country where a man was free to seek his own happiness, to gain and produce, not to give up and renounce. To prosper, not to starve. To achieve, not to plunder. To hold as his highest possession a sense of his personal value, and as his highest virtue his self-respect. Look at the results. That is what the collectivists are now asking you to destroy, as much of the earth has been destroyed.

I am an architect. I know what is to come by the principle on which it is built. We are approaching a world in which I cannot permit myself to live. My ideas are my property. They were taken from me by force, by breach of contract. No appeal was left to me. It was believed that my work belonged to others, to do with as they pleased. They had a claim upon me without my consent, that it was my duty to serve them without choice or reward. Now you know why I dynamited Courtland. I designed Courtland. I made it possible. I destroyed it. I agreed to design it for the purpose of seeing it built as I wished. That was the price I set for my work. I was not paid. My building was disfigured at the whim of others who took all the benefits of my work and gave me nothing in return.

I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life, nor to any part of my energy, nor to any achievement of mine, no matter who makes the claim! It had to be said – The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing. I came here to be heard in the name of every man of independence still left in the world. I wanted to state my terms. I do not care to work or live on any others. My terms are – A man’s right to exist for his own sake.

Age: 30s 40s 50s
Gender: Movie Monologues For Men
Genre: Drama

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From Here to Eternity (1953)

Screenwriter(s): Daniel Taradash
Private Robert “Prew” Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) explained his decision to never box again:

Monologue: Some of the guys are puttin’ me over the jumps ’cause I don’t want to fight…yeah, on the boxing team. Idon’t want to box. I don’t even want to think about it…see, I used to fight, middleweight. And I was pretty good and they know it…I used to work out with this guy Dixie Wells. He’s a real good friend of mine.Loved to box. People on the outside had their eye on him. He was gonna come out of the Army and go right up to the top. Well, one afternoon, he and I were sparrin’ around in the gym, you know, kind of friendly-like. And, he must have been set pretty flat on his feet ’cause I caught him with a, no more’n ordinary right cross, and uh, he didn’t get up. He didn’t move. He was in a coma for a week, and uh, finally, he did pull out of it. Only the thing was that he was blind. Well, I went to see him at the hospital a couple of times and finally I just couldn’t go back. The last time he and I started talking about fighting, and uh, he started to cry. And seein’ tears comin’ out of those eyes that couldn’t see anything.

Age: 20s 30s
Gender: Monologue For Men
Genre: Drama

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East of Eden (1955)

Screenwriter(s): Paul Osborn
Abra’s (Julie Harris) “It’s awful not to be loved” speech to bedridden Mr. Adam Trask (Raymond Massey)
regarding his relationship with son Cal (James Dean):

Monologue: Excuse me, Mr. Trask, for daring to speak to you this way, but it’s awful not to be loved. It’s the worst thing in the world. Don’t ask me how I know that. I just know it. It makes you, it makes you mean and violent and cruel. And that’s the way Cal has always felt, all his life. I know you didn’t mean it to be that way, but it’s true. You never gave him your love. You never asked him for his. You never asked him for one thing. Cal is going away, Mr. Trask. But before he goes, well, he did something very bad, and I’m not asking you to forgive him. You have to give him some sign that you love him, or else he’ll never be a man. He’ll just keep on feeling guilty and alone, unless you release him. Please help him. I love Cal, Mr. Trask, and I want him to be whole and strong and you’re the only one who can do it. So try, please try. If you could, if you could ask him for something. Let him help you so that he knows that you love him. Let him do for you. Excuse me, Mr. Trask, for daring to speak to you this way, but I just had to.

Age: 20s 30s
Gender: Monologues For Women
Genre: Drama

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Gypsy (1962)

Screenwriter(s): Leonard Spigelgass
Louise Hovick/Gypsy Rose Lee’s (Natalie Wood) confrontational telling off of her overbearing
stage mother Mama Rose Hovick (Rosalind Russell):

Monologue: Nobody laughs at me! Because I laugh first — at ME! ME, from Seattle! ME, with no education! ME, with no talent, as you kept reminding me my whole life! Well, Mama, look at me now! I’m a STAR! Look! Look how I live! Look at my friends! Look where I’m going! I’m not staying in burlesque! I’m moving! Maybe up, maybe down! But wherever it is, I’m enjoying it! I’m having the time of my life, because for the first time, it IS my life! And I LOVE it! I love every second of it, and I’ll be DAMNED if you’re gonna take it away from me! I AM GYPSY ROSE LEE, and I love her! And if you don’t, you can just clear out now!

Age: 20s 30s
Gender: Monologues For Women
Genre: Drama
One minute monologue: Yes

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Persona (1966, Swe.)

Screenwriter(s): Ingmar Bergman

Director Ingmar Bergman’s intense psychological, dramatic thriller involved two women in a patient/nurse relationship during one summer at a seaside cottage or vacation home.

Sister Alma (Bibi Andersson), a young 25 year-old nurse

Mrs. Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann), a well-known stage actress who had been mute and semi- catatonic for three months, and became Alma’s patient

During a vivid confessional monologue (one of the most explicit verbal descriptions of sex ever heard on screen), Alma (who was engaged to fiancee Karl-Henrik at the time) described a private and secret sexual experience to Elisabet that she had had at the beach with a friend named Katarina when they were sunbathing in the nude, completely naked. Two boys came up to them and Katrina encouraged one of the boys to have sex with her. Feeling left out, Alma also asked for sex too. Ultimately a second boy named Peter was also invited to participate:

Monologue: I went to the beach on my own. It was a warm and lovely day. There was another girl there. She’d paddled over from another island because our beach was sunnier and more secluded. We lay there sunbathing beside one another, completely naked, dozing now and then, putting suntan lotion on. We had those cheap straw hats on, you know? I had a blue ribbon around mine. I lay there peeping out from under my hat at the landscape and the sea and the sun. It was kind of funny.

Suddenly, I saw two figures leaping about on the rocks above us. They would hide and then peek out. ‘There’s a couple boys looking at us,’ I told the girl. Her name was Katarina. ‘Let them look,’ she said, and turned over on her back. It was a strange feeling. I wanted to jump up and put on my robe, but I just lay there on my stomach with my bottom in the air, not at all embarrassed, completely calm. Katarina lay there next to me the whole time, with her breasts and thick thighs. She just lay there sort of giggling to herself. I noticed that the boys had come closer. They just stood there looking at us. I noticed they were terribly young. Then one of them, the more daring of the two, came up and squatted down next to Katarina. He pretended to be busy picking at his toes. I felt so strange.

Suddenly, I heard Katarina say, ‘Hey, why don’t you come over here?’ She took him by the hand and helped him off with his jeans and shirt. Then suddenly, he was on top of her. She guided him in with her hands on his behind. The other boy just sat on the slope and watched. I heard Katarina whisper in the boy’s ear and laugh. His face was right next to mine. It was red and swollen. Suddenly, I turned over and said, ‘Aren’t you coming over to me, too?’ And Katarina said, ‘Go to her now.’ He pulled out of her and fell on top of me, completely hard. He grabbed my breast. It hurt so bad. I was ready somehow, and came almost at once.

Can you believe it? I was about to say, ‘Careful you don’t get me pregnant’ – when he suddenly came. I felt it like never before in my life, the way he sprayed his seed into me. He gripped my shoulders and arched backwards. I came over and over. Katarina lay on her side and watched, and held him from behind. After he came, she took him in her arms and used his hand to make herself come. When she came, she screamed like a banshee. Then all three of us started laughing. We called to the other boy who was sitting on the slope. His name was Peter. He came down, looking all confused and shivering despite the sunshine. Katarina unbuttoned his pants and started to play with him. And when he came, she took him in her mouth. He bent down and kissed her back.

She turned around, took his head in both hands and gave him her breast. The other boy got so excited, that he and I started all over again. It was just as good as before. Then we went for a swim and parted ways. When I got home, Karl-Henrik was already back from town. We ate dinner and drank some red wine he’d brought. Then we had sex. It’s never been as good, before or since. Can you understand that?

Age: 20s 30s
Gender: Movie Monologues For Women
Genre: Drama

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Best Movie Monologues Of All Time

Here is a list we have compiled of some of the greatest movie monologue performances of all time. The list is in no particular order we hope you enjoy!

Famous Movie Monologues List

Pulp Fiction (1994) – Samuel L. Jackson’s speech as Jules Winnfield

Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” is known for its unique narrative style and unforgettable dialogue, with the monologue delivered by Samuel L. Jackson’s character being a standout. It perfectly captures the essence of the movie, making it one of the most iconic monologues of all time.

Gone Girl – Cool Girl

Scent of a Woman (1992) – Al Pacino’s speech as Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade

Malice (1993) – Alec Baldwin’s speech as Dr. Jed Hill

JFK (1991) – Kevin Costner’s speech as Jim Garrison

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) – Alec Baldwin’s speech as Blake

Denzel Washington’s ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’ monologue in Macbeth (2021)

A Few Good Men (1992) – Jack Nicholson’s speech as Colonel Nathan R. Jessup

Hidden Figures – Taraji P. Henson

The Dark Knight (2008) – Heath Ledger’s Speech As The Joker

Good Will Hunting (1997) – Robin Williams’ speech as Sean Maguire (terrified of what you might find out)

The Godfather (1972) – Marlon Brando’s speech as Vito Corleone

Braveheart (1995) – Mel Gibson’s speech as William Wallace

Meryl Streep – The Devil Wears Prada

Kill Bill – Uma Thurman

Roy Batty – Blade Runner “Tears In Rain”

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. [laughs] Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like [coughs] tears in rain. Time to die.”

We hope you enjoyed this list of classic monologues from movies. If you would like to browse more monologue please go to our monologue database by clicking below.

Monologue Database

The post Old School Monologues From Movies appeared first on We Are Actors.

Ever been overlooked for a promotion? Been made to feel jealous of a potentially cheating spouse? Plotted revenge on your boss? Yes? Then you’ll love this compilation of Othello monologues from one of Shakespeare’s most action packed tragedies. Weather you’re a villainous aspiring Iago, a philosophizing Emilia, a bewildered and earnestly loving wife like Desdemona or a blinded by jealous rage, Othello, you’ll surly find a speech to suit your word to the action and action to the word!

Have fun looking through these 12 Othello Monologues we have picked for you to work on. Have a great rehearsal!

1. Iago – Act 1, Scene 1

Three great ones of the city,
In personal suit to make me his lieutenant,
Off-capp’d to him: and, by the faith of man,
I know my price, I am worth no worse a place:
But he; as loving his own pride and purposes,
Evades them, with a bombast circumstance
Horribly stuff’d with epithets of war;
And, in conclusion, Nonsuits my mediators;
for, ‘Certes,’ says he, ‘I have already chose my officer.’
And what was he? Forsooth, a great arithmetician,
One Michael Cassio, a Florentine,
A fellow almost damn’d in a fair wife;
That never set a squadron in the field,
Nor the division of a battle knows
More than a spinster; unless the bookish theoric,
Wherein the toged consuls can propose
As masterly as he: mere prattle, without practise,
Is all his soldiership. But he, sir, had the election:
And I, of whom his eyes had seen the proof
At Rhodes, at Cyprus and on other grounds
Christian and heathen, must be be-lee’d and calm’d
By debitor and creditor: this counter-caster,
He, in good time, must his lieutenant be,
And I—God bless the mark!—his Moorship’s ancient.

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2. Iago Act 1, Scene 1

O, sir, content you;I follow him to serve my turn upon him:
We cannot all be masters, nor all masters
Cannot be truly follow’d. You shall mark
Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave,
That, doting on his own obsequious bondage,
Wears out his time, much like his master’s ass,
For nought but provender, and when he’s old, cashier’d:
Whip me such honest knaves. Others there are
Who, trimm’d in forms and visages of duty,
Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves,
And, throwing but shows of service on their lords,
Do well thrive by them and when they have lined their coats
Do themselves homage: these fellows have some soul;
And such a one do I profess myself. For, sir,
It is as sure as you are Roderigo,
Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago:
In following him, I follow but myself;
Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so, for my peculiar end:
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment extern, ’tis not long after
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at: I am not what I am.

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3. Roderigo Act 1, Scene 1

Sir, I will answer any thing. But, I beseech you,
If’t be your pleasure and most wise consent,
As partly I find it is, that your fair daughter,
At this odd-even and dull watch o’ the night,
Transported, with no worse nor better guard
But with a knave of common hire, a gondolier,
To the gross clasps of a lascivious Moor—
If this be known to you and your allowance,
We then have done you bold and saucy wrongs;
But if you know not this, my manners tell me
We have your wrong rebuke. Do not believe
That, from the sense of all civility,
I thus would play and trifle with your reverence:
Your daughter, if you have not given her leave,
I say again, hath made a gross revolt;
Tying her duty, beauty, wit and fortunes
In an extravagant and wheeling stranger
Of here and every where. Straight satisfy yourself:
If she be in her chamber or your house,
Let loose on me the justice of the state
For thus deluding you.

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4. Othello Act 1, Scene 3

Her father loved me; oft invited me;
Still question’d me the story of my life,
From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,
That I have passed.
I ran it through, even from my boyish days,
To the very moment that he bade me tell it;
Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field
Of hair-breadth scapes i’ the imminent deadly breach,
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
And portance in my travels’ history:
Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven
It was my hint to speak,—such was the process;
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear
Would Desdemona seriously incline:
But still the house-affairs would draw her thence:
Which ever as she could with haste dispatch,
She’ld come again, and with a greedy ear
Devour up my discourse: which I observing,
Took once a pliant hour, and found good means
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart
That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,
Whereof by parcels she had something heard,
But not intentively: I did consent,
And often did beguile her of her tears,
When I did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth suffer’d. My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs:
She swore, in faith, twas strange, ’twas passing strange,
‘Twas pitiful, ’twas wondrous pitiful:
She wish’d she had not heard it, yet she wish’d
That heaven had made her such a man: she thank’d me,
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story.
And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:
She loved me for the dangers I had pass’d,
And I loved her that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have used:
Here comes the lady; let her witness it.

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5. Iago Act 1, Scene 3

Thus do I ever make my fool my purse:
For I mine own gain’d knowledge should profane,
If I would time expend with such a snipe.
But for my sport and profit. I hate the Moor:
And it is thought abroad, that ‘twixt my sheets
He has done my office: I know not if’t be true;
But I, for mere suspicion in that kind,
Will do as if for surety. He holds me well;
The better shall my purpose work on him.
Cassio’s a proper man: let me see now:
To get his place and to plume up my will
In double knavery—How, how? Let’s see:—
After some time, to abuse Othello’s ear
That he is too familiar with his wife.
He hath a person and a smooth dispose
To be suspected, framed to make women false.
The Moor is of a free and open nature,
That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,
And will as tenderly be led by the nose As asses are.
I have’t. It is engender’d. Hell and night
Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.

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6. Desdemona Act 3, Scene 3

Why, then, to-morrow night; or Tuesday morn;
On Tuesday noon, or night; on Wednesday morn:
I prithee, name the time, but let it not
Exceed three days: in faith, he’s penitent;
And yet his trespass, in our common reason—
Save that, they say, the wars must make examples
Out of their best—is not almost a fault
To incur a private cheque. When shall he come?
Tell me, Othello: I wonder in my soul,
What you would ask me, that I should deny,
Or stand so mammering on. What! Michael Cassio,
That came a-wooing with you, and so many a time,
When I have spoke of you dispraisingly,
Hath ta’en your part; to have so much to do
To bring him in! Trust me, I could do much,—

 Why, this is not a boon;
‘Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves,
Or feed on nourishing dishes, or keep you warm,
Or sue to you to do a peculiar profit
To your own person: nay, when I have a suit
Wherein I mean to touch your love indeed,
It shall be full of poise and difficult weight
And fearful to be granted.

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7. Desdemona Act 4, Scene 2

O good Iago, What shall I do to win my lord again?
Good friend, go to him; for, by this light of heaven,
I know not how I lost him. Here I kneel:
If e’er my will did trespass ‘gainst his love,
Either in discourse of thought or actual deed,
Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense,
Delighted them in any other form;
Or that I do not yet, and ever did.
And ever will—though he do shake me off
To beggarly divorcement—love him dearly,
Comfort forswear me! Unkindness may do much;
And his unkindness may defeat my life,
But never taint my love. I cannot say ‘whore:’
It does abhor me now I speak the word;
To do the act that might the addition earn
Not the world’s mass of vanity could make me.

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8. Emilia Act 4, Scene 3

But I do think it is their husbands’ faults
If wives do fall: say that they slack their duties,
And pour our treasures into foreign laps,
Or else break out in peevish jealousies,
Throwing restraint upon us; or say they strike us,
Or scant our former having in despite;
Why, we have galls, and though we have some grace,
Yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know
Their wives have sense like them: they see and smell
And have their palates both for sweet and sour,
As husbands have. What is it that they do
When they change us for others? Is it sport?
I think it is: and doth affection breed it?
I think it doth: is’t frailty that thus errs?
It is so too: and have not we affections,
Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?
Then let them use us well: else let them know,
The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.

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9. Iago Act 2, Scene 1

That Cassio loves her, I do well believe it;
That she loves him, ’tis apt and of great credit:
The Moor, howbeit that I endure him not,
Is of a constant, loving, noble nature,
And I dare think he’ll prove to Desdemona
A most dear husband. Now, I do love her too;
Not out of absolute lust, though peradventure
I stand accountant for as great a sin,
But partly led to diet my revenge,
For that I do suspect the lusty Moor
Hath leap’d into my seat; the thought whereof
Doth, like a poisonous mineral, gnaw my inwards;
And nothing can or shall content my soul
Till I am even’d with him, wife for wife,
Or failing so, yet that I put the Moor
At least into a jealousy so strong
That judgment cannot cure. Which thing to do,
If this poor trash of Venice, whom I trash
For his quick hunting, stand the putting on,
I’ll have our Michael Cassio on the hip,
Abuse him to the Moor in the rank garb—
For I fear Cassio with my night-cap too—
Make the Moor thank me, love me and reward me.
For making him egregiously an ass
And practising upon his peace and quiet
Even to madness. ‘Tis here, but yet confused:
Knavery’s plain face is never seen tin used.

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Iago Act 2, Scene 1

Touch me not so near:I had rather have this tongue cut from my mouth
Than it should do offence to Michael Cassio;
Yet, I persuade myself, to speak the truth
Shall nothing wrong him. Thus it is, general.
Montano and myself being in speech,
There comes a fellow crying out for help:
And Cassio following him with determined sword,
To execute upon him. Sir, this gentleman
Steps in to Cassio, and entreats his pause:
Myself the crying fellow did pursue,
Lest by his clamour—as it so fell out—
The town might fall in fright: he, swift of foot,
Outran my purpose; and I return’d the rather
For that I heard the clink and fall of swords,
And Cassio high in oath; which till to-night
I ne’er might say before. When I came back—
For this was brief—I found them close together,
At blow and thrust; even as again they were
When you yourself did part them.
More of this matter cannot I report:
But men are men; the best sometimes forget:
Though Cassio did some little wrong to him,
As men in rage strike those that wish them best,
Yet surely Cassio, I believe, received
From him that fled some strange indignity,
Which patience could not pass.

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10. Iago Act 2, Scene 3

And what’s he then that says I play the villain?
When this advice is free I give and honest,
Probal to thinking and indeed the course
To win the Moor again? For ’tis most easy
The inclining Desdemona to subdue
In any honest suit: she’s framed as fruitful
As the free elements. And then for her
To win the Moor—were’t to renounce his baptism,
All seals and symbols of redeemed sin,
His soul is so enfetter’d to her love,
That she may make, unmake, do what she list,
Even as her appetite shall play the god
With his weak function. How am I then a villain
To counsel Cassio to this parallel course,
Directly to his good? Divinity of hell!
When devils will the blackest sins put on,
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,
As I do now: for whiles this honest fool
Plies Desdemona to repair his fortunes
And she for him pleads strongly to the Moor,
I’ll pour this pestilence into his ear,
That she repeals him for her body’s lust;
And by how much she strives to do him good,
She shall undo her credit with the Moor.
So will I turn her virtue into pitch,
And out of her own goodness make the net
That shall enmesh them all.

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11. Othello Act 4, Scene 2

Had it pleased heaven

To try me with affliction; had they rain’d
All kinds of sores and shames on my bare head.
Steep’d me in poverty to the very lips,
Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes,
I should have found in some place of my soul
A drop of patience: but, alas, to make me
A fixed figure for the time of scorn
To point his slow unmoving finger at!
Yet could I bear that too; well, very well:
But there, where I have garner’d up my heart,
Where either I must live, or bear no life;
The fountain from the which my current runs,
Or else dries up; to be discarded thence!
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads
To knot and gender in! Turn thy complexion there,
Patience, thou young and rose-lipp’d cherubin,—
Ay, there, look grim as hell!

O, ay; as summer flies are in the shambles,
That quicken even with blowing. O thou weed,
Who art so lovely fair and smell’st so sweet
That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst
ne’er been born!
Was this fair paper, this most goodly book,
Made to write ‘whore’ upon? What committed!
Committed! O thou public commoner!
I should make very forges of my cheeks,
That would to cinders burn up modesty,
Did I but speak thy deeds. What committed!
Heaven stops the nose at it and the moon winks,
The bawdy wind that kisses all it meets
Is hush’d within the hollow mine of earth,
And will not hear it. What committed!
Impudent strumpet!

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12. Othello Act 5, Scene 2

Behold, I have a weapon;

A better never did itself sustain
Upon a soldier’s thigh: I have seen the day,
That, with this little arm and this good sword,
I have made my way through more impediments
Than twenty times your stop: but, O vain boast!
Who can control his fate? ’tis not so now.
Be not afraid, though you do see me weapon’d;
Here is my journey’s end, here is my butt,
And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.
Do you go back dismay’d? ’tis a lost fear;
Man but a rush against Othello’s breast,
And he retires. Where should Othello go?
Now, how dost thou look now? O ill-starr’d wench!
Pale as thy smock! when we shall meet at compt,
This look of thine will hurl my soul from heaven,
And fiends will snatch at it. Cold, cold, my girl!
Even like thy chastity. O cursed slave!
Whip me, ye devils,
From the possession of this heavenly sight!
Blow me about in winds! roast me in sulphur!
Wash me in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire!
O Desdemona! Desdemona! dead!
Oh! Oh! Oh!

Download This Monologue Here

The post Othello Monologues appeared first on We Are Actors.

As more workshops/auditions ask for actors to perform monologues, the stress of performing well without a lot of time can be almost unbearable. We want to encourage actors and actresses not to avoid auditions that request a one minute monologue because they can be a blessing in disguise, as long as they choose the right one.

Picking the Perfect Female Monologue

One minute monologues for women are plentiful, but actresses must pick something that showcases their talent according to the audition genre they’re presenting. For example, if the audition is for a romantic comedy, we might want to leave out the tragic monologues, no matter how well it shows our range or ability to cry on demand. When it comes to auditions, we have to stay in the practice of giving ourselves plenty of time to prepare. Narrowing down monologues that pique our interest and fit the audition’s niche, rehearsing our favorites, and then choosing the one that makes us shine is a fantastic way.

Ten Fantastic One-Minute-Monologues for Women

For those that may have trouble selecting one minute monologues we have narrowed it down. We’ve put together a list of some of the best monologues for women. In the right context, they’ll display on-point emotion and capture the attention of those in the room.

Mean Girls: The Musical “I Died for 15 Seconds”

There is no better character to portray in comedy than Regina George. In this short monologue, she tries to apologize to Cady for being so mean, but it doesn’t go over as intended in true Regina form. This monologue for actors is perfect for those in their late teens to early twenties.

Monologue: I’m going to forgive you. Because I’m on a lot of pain medication right now. You know I died for fifteen seconds, right? Spoiler alert: heaven looks like a really nice hotel in Miami. When I woke up in the street, all I could see was my mom’s face and Gretchen’s big face looking down at me. And they looked so surprised. Not even sad, just like, surprised that I could be bleeding. Like they forgot I was a human person. I’ve actually been a human person this whole time. I know I was harsh. And people say I’m a b—. But you know what they would call me if I was a boy? “Reginald”. That’s what my mom was gonna name me if I was a boy, so honestly I’d rather be “b—”.

*DOWLOAD MONOLOGUE HERE*

The Fault in Our Stars “Hazel’s Support Group”

This fantastic monologue has the potential to hit home in the drama genre, especially when executed correctly. It will work well for females in their late teens or twenties, depending on the audition role. ‘

Monologue: I just wanna say… there will come a time when, you know, all of us are dead. It might be tomorrow. Might be a million years from now but… it’s gonna happen. And when it does, enough generations will come and go, there’ll be no one left to remember Cleopatra. Or Mozart. Or Muhammad Ali, let alone any of us. Oblivion’s inevitable, dude. And if that scares you, well, I suggest you ignore it. God knows it’s what everyone else does.

*DOWLOAD MONOLOGUE HERE*

Silver Linings Playbook “How Tommy Died”

Tiffany is a complex character, and this monologue from Silver Linings is an excellent testament to that and great for a dramatic audition. In this monologue, she tells Pat how her husband died. It’s emotional and exceptional when performed correctly.

Monologue: Yes. Do you feel that? That’s emotion. Has anybody ever told you how Tommy died? We were married for three years and five days, and I loved him. But for the last couple months, I just wasn’t into sex at all. It just felt like we were so different and I was depressed. Some of that is just me, some of it was he wanted me to have kids and I have a hard enough time taking care of myself. I don’t think that makes me a criminal. Anyway one night after dinner, he drove to Victoria’s Secret at King of Prussia Mall and got some lingerie to get something going. And on the way back, he stopped on 76 to help a guy with a flat tire and he got hit by a car and killed. And the Victoria’s Secret box was still in the front seat. (pause) That’s a feeling.

*DOWLOAD MONOLOGUE HERE*

The Shape of Water “I Found a Turtle”

Zelda recounts finding a turtle in the road during her childhood in this thought-provoking monologue that questions how the actions of humans affect everything around us. This is a beautiful monologue for a female audition in the age range of the thirties, forties, and fifties.

Monologue: When I was a little girl- I found a turtle sitting out in the middle of the road. Crossing it slowly. Car could run it over any minute. So, I picked it up, took it to a pond way back behind my house… and I laid it down under a big camphor tree, and I thought… “Mmmh- It’s gonna be so happy here”. And I left it there. (beat) But that night I figured out I had no idea where it was going… Far as I know it was bringing food to its nest or- looking to procreate- or escaping an owl. And maybe the worst place to keep it- maybe the place it was running from was that pond under that camphor tree. (looks at the fish) I didn’t care. I just did what I wanted with it…

*DOWLOAD MONOLOGUE HERE*

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown “Peppermint Patty”

This monologue ranges in age from kid to twenties and is a perfect thought piece in which Peppermint Patty asks Charlie Brown to explain love. It’s heartfelt and honest.

Monologue: You know what I don’t understand, Chuck? I don’t understand love. Explain love to me Chuck. You can’t explain love, Chuck what do you mean “if you happen to see this cute little girl walk by”? Why does she have to be cute? Can’t someone fall in love with a girl who isn’t cute, and has freckles and a big nose? Explain that, Chuck. I didn’t say a great big nose. So, Chuck, do you think you’ll ever get married? Well, what kind of girl do you think you’ll marry? What do you mean she’d be the kind of girl who would call you, “Poor Sweet Baby?” You’re very strange.

*DOWLOAD MONOLOGUE HERE*

Stranger Things “Max on the Bus”

In this scene from Stranger Things, Max explains a bit about her past to love-interest Lucas. This is her chance to open about herself a bit, and the first time the audience hears personal details about her life. This is a kid monologue through-and-through.

Monologue: It’s kind of awesome, the fog I mean, it looks like the ocean. The waves, California, I miss it but, no, that’s not it, my Dad’s still there. You see, there’s this legal term called divorce when two married people don’t love each other anymore, yeah. My mom and my stepdad, they wanted a fresh start away from him. As if, as if he was the problem, which is total bull, and things are just worse now. My stepbrother’s always been a jerk, but now he’s just, angry all the time and he can’t take it out on my mom so he takes it out on me. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.

*DOWLOAD MONOLOGUE HERE*

Easy A “Rosemary”

A funny and endearing monologue from Olive’s mother, Rosemary, on how much she loves her children no matter what and accepts them however they are. Perfect for parent auditions as well as comedy.

Monologue: That boy from the other night just dropped this off for you. He seems like a nice kid. He seemed a little… incredibly gay. I dated a homosexual in high school. I just wanted to tell you that if you want to date a gay boy, your father and I are totally supportive. We love you no matter what the sexual orientation of your opposite-sex sex partner. And don’t feel bad that you won’t make us grandparents. We still have Ginger, and from the signs I’m picking up, she’ll be preggo before the PSATs. Which is actually great ’cause then we can get another shot at raising kids. Really do it right this time.

*DOWLOAD MONOLOGUE HERE*

Hairspray “Tracy Asks Why”

This monologue centers on Tracy, asking why she’s never good enough and does well in comedic and dramatic settings. It’s perfect for teens and those in their early twenties.

Monologue: Why do they have to be so mean? “You’re short, you’re stout, you’re not Council material.” I wear the latest fashions, I keep up with all the styles. I’m teasing my hair as high as I can! (She sprays her hair with hairspray) Will they give me a chance? Encouragement? Appreciation? No, all I ever hear is… Detention! Is there no pity for a teen just trying to fit in.

*DOWLOAD MONOLOGUE HERE*

Stranger Things Joyce Monologue “Will’s Phone Call”

With her son missing, Joyce Byers is terrified of what may have happened to him. When she receives a phone call from him, it’s not what she expects. This monologue is both dramatic and super scary!

Joyce grabs up the phone. Her voice tense, strained. JOYCE Yes — hel-hello?

There is no answer. But she can HEAR the SOUND of LOW BREATHING on the other end.

Monologue: JOYCE (CONT’D) Lonnie…? Hopper…? Still no answer. JOYCE (CONT’D) Who is this?

The SOUND OF BREATHING grows louder. It sounds… like the breathing of a child. Joyce pales. Tears rush to her eyes.

JOYCE (CONT’D) Will?!! Will?!! Jonathan races over to his mom. JOYCE (CONT’D) Where are you, baby?! Talk to me! WILL?! WILL?!

But Will’s breathing is now gone. In its place… ANOTHER SOUND. GUTTURAL. INHUMAN. Shifting in pitch.

JOYCE (CONT’D) WHO IS THIS? WHAT HAVE DONE WITH MY BABY?! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!!

*DOWLOAD MONOLOGUE HERE*

The Notebook “This Isn’t a Summer Thing”

Allie explains to Noah that he isn’t just a summer fling for her, and while this monologue starts of dramatic, Allie gets to show her funny side as well.

Monologue: (Allie puts two fingers together) We’re like this, remember? Right? This isn’t a summer thing. Not for me, anyway. Oh, hell. Why wait until summer ends? Why not do it right now? Go ahead. No, I’ll do it. It’s over between us. You hear me, Noah Calhoun? Over. Don’t touch me. I hate you, you know that? I hate you! Just leave. Get out. Go.

Noah walks away from the house, disappearing into the moonlight. Allie calls out after him.

Wait a minute, Noah. We’re not really breaking up forever, right? This is just a thing we’re having, a difference of opinion, and tomorrow it’ll be like it never happened, right? Because it still was kind of a special night for me…

*DOWLOAD MONOLOGUE HERE*

Making the Right Choice

Choosing a one minute monologue can be rather detailed, but it doesn’t have to be. We should focus on what we most want to convey about our talents and select a monologue that best expresses them. Remember, you’ll always have competition, but there is only one you.

One Minute Monologues For Men

Monologue Database

The post One Minute Monologues For Women appeared first on We Are Actors.

Having a difficult time finding good monologues for teens? As a teen actor, it’s important to have a few monologues in your back pocket for “just In case” situations. Whether you are auditioning for school plays or more prestigious projects such as commercials, television, and film, you might be required to perform monologues as part of the process.

Learning how to find, prepare, and perform acting monologues will help teen actors perfect their craft and get comfortable memorizing lines.

When it comes to monologues for teenagers in particular, it can be a bit of a challenge to find appropriate materials, as many of the free monologues available online are more geared toward adults or kids. So for your convenience, we’ve compiled a list of teenage monologues that are great options to work on and add to your repertoire.

Monologues For Teens

Dramatic Female Monologue For Teens

One of the shorter one minute monologues on this list, is a great option if you’re looking for something that shows a wide range of emotion in a short period of time. In this scene from The Notebook, Allie shows indecision toward Noah.

“ALLIE: (Allie puts two fingers together) We’re like this, remember? Right? This isn’t a summer thing. Not for me, anyway. Oh, hell. Why wait until summer ends? Why not do it right now? Go ahead. No, I’ll do it. It’s over between us. You hear me, Noah Calhoun? Over. Don’t touch me. I hate you, you know that? I hate you! Just leave. Get out. Go.

Noah walks away from the house, disappearing into the moonlight.

Allie calls out after him. ALLIE: Wait a minute, Noah. We’re not really breaking up forever, right? This is just a thing we’re having, a difference of opinion, and tomorrow it’ll be like it never happened, right? Because it still was kind of a special night for me. . .”

Download This Monologue Here

The Fault In Our Stars

Synopsis: Augustus asks Hazel to give his eulogy while he is still alive so that he can enjoy it.

HAZEL: Augustus Waters was the great starcrossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. (beat) Like all real love stories – ours will die with us, as it should. I’d hoped that he’d be eulogizing me, because there’s no one I’d rather have…” (beat, composing herself) “I can’t talk about our love story so instead I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: there are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 And .12 And .112 And an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. I want more numbers than I’m likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and for that I am eternally grateful. I love you.

Download This Monologue Here

Comedic Female Monologue For Teens

In this scene from Election, uptight high school junior Tracy prays to win a school election.

TRACY: Dear Lord Jesus, I do not often speak with You and ask for things, but now I really must insist that You help me win the election tomorrow, because I deserve it and Paul Metzier doesn’t, as You well know. l realize that it was Your divine hand that disqualified Tammy, and now I’m asking that You go that one last mile and make sure to put me in office where I belong, so that I may carry out Your will on Earth as it is in Heaven. If elected I promise that I will pray more often. Okay? Amen.

Download This Monologue Here

Mean Girls: The Musical “I Died for 15 Seconds”

There is no better character to portray in comedy than Regina George. In this short monologue, she tries to apologize to Cady for being so mean, but it doesn’t go over as intended in true Regina form. This monologue for actors is perfect for those in their late teens to early twenties.

Monologue: I’m going to forgive you. Because I’m on a lot of pain medication right now. You know I died for fifteen seconds, right? Spoiler alert: heaven looks like a really nice hotel in Miami. When I woke up in the street, all I could see was my mom’s face and Gretchen’s big face looking down at me. And they looked so surprised. Not even sad, just like, surprised that I could be bleeding. Like they forgot I was a human person. I’ve actually been a human person this whole time. I know I was harsh. And people say I’m a b—. But you know what they would call me if I was a boy? “Reginald”. That’s what my mom was gonna name me if I was a boy, so honestly I’d rather be “b—”.Age: Teens

Download This Monologue Here

Dramatic Male Monologue For Teens

In this dramatic monologue from Footloose, Ren tries to convince the Reverend Shaw that dancing isn’t harmful.

REN: I just wanted to say a few words, cuz I think this idea scares a lot of people. It shouldn’t. (Unfolds a piece of paper, clears his throat, reads:) “From the oldest times, people danced for many reasons. They danced so their crops would be plentiful or so that their hunt would be good. They danced to show their community spirit, and they danced to celebrate. And that’s the dancing we’re talking about.”

And aren’t we told – excuse me, Reverend – aren’t we told in Psalm 149 to “praise ye the Lord. Sing unto the Lord a new song. Let them praise his Name in the dance?” (He looks to Shaw who, stunned, slowly sits.) And it was King David… King David who we read about in Samuel. And what did David do? What did David do? (Stalls, trying to find the passage:) What did David do? (He finds it.) Ah! “David danced before the Lord with all his might. Leaping and dancing before the Lord.” (Shows the Bible to the Council Members.) Leaping and dancing. And Ecclesiastes assures us that, “There is a time to every purpose under heaven – a time to laugh and a time to weep. There is a time to mourn and there is a time to dance.” There was a time for this law, but not anymore. And this is our time. Our time to celebrate life. That’s the way it was in the beginning, the way it’s always been and that’s the way it should be now. Thank you.

Download This Monologue Here

Comedic Male Monologue For Teens

Clueless The Movie

In another one-minute monologue, slacker high school student Travis shows his heart when he learns he has achieved a record for number of tardies in a row.

TRAVIS: Thank you, thank-you. This is so unexpected. I didn’t even have a speech prepared… But I would like to say this… tardiness is not something you can do all on your own. Many, many people had to contribute. I’d like to thank my parents for never driving me to school and the L.A. bus drivers for taking a chance on an unknown kid and last, but not least, the wonderful crew at McDonald’s for the long hours they spend making Egg McMuffins, without which I might never be tardy. Thank you.

Download This Monologue Here

Play Monologues For Teenagers

Taken from the highly successful play Brighton Beach Memoirs, this dramatic monologue shows a teen processing her feelings toward her family.

NORA: I can’t believe it. You mean it’s alright for you to leave us but it wasn’t alright for me to leave you?

It was my future. Why couldn’t I have something to say about it? I need to be independent.

So I have to give up the one chance I may never get again, is that it? I’m the one who has to pay for what you couldn’t do with your own life. I’m not judging you. I can’t even talk to you. I don’t exist to you. I have tried so hard to get close to you, but there was never any room. Whatever you had to give went to Daddy, and when he died, whatever was left you gave to Laurie…

….I have been jealous my whole life of Laurie because she was lucky enough to be born sick. I could never turn a light on in my room at night or read in bed because Laurie always needed her precious sleep. I could never have a friend over on the weekends because Laurie was always resting. I used to pray I’d get some terrible disease or get hit by a car so I’d have a leg all twisted and crippled and then once, maybe just once, I’d get to crawl into bed next to you on a cold rainy night and talk to you and hold you until I fell asleep in your arms…just once…

Download This Monologue Here

A View From The Bridge

Catherine is a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl. Having rarely left Brooklyn, she’s incredibly naïve. She finds it hard to stand up to her father figure, Eddie, because he’s done so much for her over the course of her life. He’s all that she knows. 

CATHERINE: Don’t, don’t laugh at me! I’ve been here all my life. Every day I saw him when he left in the morning and when he came home at night. You think it’s so easy to turn around and say to a man he’s nothing to you no more? You don’t know – nobody knows! I’m not a baby, I know a lot more than people think I know. Beatrice says to be a woman but – then, why don’t she be a woman! If I was a wife I would make a man happy instead of going at him all the time! I can tell from a block away when he’s blue in the mind and just needs to talk to somebody quiet and nice. I can tell when he’s hungry or wants a beer before he even says anything. I know when his feet hurt him – I mean, I know him, and now I’m supposed to turn around and make a stranger out of him? I don’t know why I have to do that, I mean

Download This Monologue Here

The Crucible

ABIGAIL WILLIAMS (17, trying to coax the man she had an affair with to stop rejecting her)
Why, you taught me goodness, therefore you are good. It were a fire you walked me through, and all my ignorance was burned away. It were a fire, John, we lay in fire. And from that night no woman dare call me wicked any more but I knew my answer. I used to weep for my sins when the wind lifted up my skirts; and blushed for shame because some old Rebecca called me loose. And then you burned my ignorance away. As bare as some December tree I saw them all—walking like saints to church, running to feed the sick, and hypocrites in their hearts! And God gave me strength to call them liars, and God made men to listen to me, and by God I will scrub the world clean for the love of God. Oh John, I will make you such a wife when the world is white again! You will be amazed to see me every day, a light of heaven in your house, a…..Why are you cold?!

Download This Monologue Here

Wink By Phoebe Eclair-Powell

MARK: When dad died he had this shit blog he was really proud of – before Tumblr was even a thing and you would’ve thought he had just invented space travel cos he was beaming for days, going upstairs to put another post on – “gotta keep my views up, son,” and he would look at me like “see, we understand each other” but I told him that no fucker in their right mind wanted to know about middle-aged running clubs and he said “that’s where you’re wrong, son, that’s where you are so very wrong.” He would say that a lot, and try not to let me get to him, because for some reason I used to like to undermine him even though I loved him.

When he signed up for the London Marathon he linked it to his JustGiving page and it was like he had landed on the moon.

Mum said it was unfair that a man that fit should just drop down dead and her friend said – “it’s always the ones you least suspect.” And I told her to go fuck herself in my head but not out loud because everyone looks at you really hard when it’s your father’s funeral.

Shannon did a lot of fainting which was annoying, and Mum kept holding my hand saying “thank you for keeping it together – we need you to keep us all together” and so I decided that I wasn’t going to be what they needed.

Online there are people who create Facebook pages for dead people, loved ones, relatives, pets. My mum wanted me to make a page on his blog to tell people what had happened – “they need to know” she said, “they’re not pen pals, Mum, that’s not how it works, they’ll just think he gave up blogging for a bit” and I rolled my eyes at her for a full stop. Sometimes I did check it, just to see if he’d had any more views, but then I realised I was the one making the counter go up.

Download This Monologue Here

One Minute Monologues For Teens

The Breakfast Club

BRIAN: “Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it is we did wrong, but we think you’re crazy for making us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions, but what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basketcase, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, The Breakfast Club.

Download This Monologue Here

Much Ado About Nothing

BEATRICE: What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?
Stand I condemn’d for pride and scorn so much?
Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu!
No glory lives behind the back of such.
And, Benedick, love on; I will requite thee,
Taming my wild heart to thy loving hand:
If thou dost love, my kindness shall incite thee
To bind our loves up in a holy band;
For others say thou dost deserve, and I
Believe it better than reportingly.

Download This Monologue Here

As You Like It

PHEBE: I would not be thy executioner:
I fly thee, for I would not injure thee.
Thou tell’st me there is murder in mine eye:
‘Tis pretty, sure, and very probable,
That eyes, that are the frail.st and softest things,
Who shut their coward gates on atomies,
Should be call’d tyrants, butchers, murderers!
Now I do frown on thee with all my heart;
And, if mine eyes can wound, now let them kill thee;
Now counterfeit to swound; why now fall down;
Or, if thou canst not, O! for shame, for shame,
Lie not, to say mine eyes are murderers.
Now show the wound mine eye hath made in thee;
Scratch thee but with a pin, and there remains
Some scar of it; lean but upon a rush,
The cicatrice and capable impressure
Thy palm some moment keeps; but now mine eyes,
Which I have darted at thee, hurt thee not,
Nor, I am sure, there is no force in eyes
That can do hurt.

Download This Monologue Here

Hairspray

This monologue centers on Tracy, asking why she’s never good enough and does well in comedic and dramatic settings. It’s perfect for teens and those in their early twenties.

Monologue: Why do they have to be so mean? “You’re short, you’re stout, you’re not Council material.” I wear the latest fashions, I keep up with all the styles. I’m teasing my hair as high as I can! (She sprays her hair with hairspray) Will they give me a chance? Encouragement? Appreciation? No, all I ever hear is… Detention! Is there no pity for a teen just trying to fit in.

Download This Monologue Here

We hope you enjoy this list of monologues for teens. Please check out our entire monologue database by clicking the link below!

Monologue Database

The post Monologues for Teens appeared first on We Are Actors.

50 Great Monologues For Auditions

Are you an actor searching for the perfect audition monologue? Look no further! In this article, we’ll explore the essential qualities of a good audition monologue and how to choose the one that’s right for you. Here we break down the key elements that will make your monologue stand out in any audition.

1. Emotional Arc: A compelling monologue tells a story and takes the audience on an emotional journey. Look for monologues that showcase a character’s emotional arc, which will allow you to demonstrate your ability to convey a range of emotions and connect with the audience.
2. Demonstrates Your Range: Choose a monologue that highlights your versatility as an actor. The piece should showcase your strengths and allow you to display a wide range of acting skills, from subtle moments to dramatic intensity.
3. Suits the Project and Character: A great audition monologue should be tailored to the project and character you’re auditioning for. Consider the tone, style, and genre of the production, and select a monologue that aligns with the specific role.
4. Appropriate Length: Keep your monologue brief and concise. Audition monologues should generally be no longer than two minutes, allowing you to showcase your acting skills without overwhelming the casting director.
5. Originality: Stand out from the crowd by choosing a unique, lesser-known monologue. Avoid overused, clichéd pieces, and opt for a monologue that will leave a lasting impression on the casting director.

If you’re preparing for a college audition, you found the right page.

A good audition monologue should demonstrate your emotional range, versatility, and connection to the character. By choosing a piece that is tailored to the project and role, you’ll increase your chances of making a lasting impression on the casting director or college you are seeking admission into.

The right monologue can make or break your college audition, and depending on the program, you may need to memorize up to four monologues. Finding the right monologue can be tricky, but if you’re looking for inspiration, below are fifty great monologues for auditions.

How To Find A Good Monologue That Works

Before you explore the audition monologues below please watch this video from John Windsor-Cunningham for tips on finding monologues that work.

John Windsor-Cunningham trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and with Sanford Meisner in New York, where he now lives, acts and works as a Skype acting coach for Films, TV, Theatre and some drama school auditions.

When you are doing a monologue for an audition there are other people auditioning, quite a few of them usually. Someone has to sit through and watch them all. It can be incredibly boring sitting through watching lots of people doing a monologue. One time I watched 35 monologues and every single one was exactly the same. Imagine it, thirty five people doing a monologue and its exactly the damn same, of course I was bored. THEN one person came on and he did his monologue and it seemed to be about him. You’ve got to make the monologue about you. You’ve got to know how to make the lines about you. 

John Windsor-Cunningham

Female Comedic Monologues For Auditions

All from published plays, here are some of our favorite comedic monologues for females:

Alcott By Adam Szymkowicz

Erin was writing a play for Prague to direct. During this time, an uneasy love triangle emerged between Erin, her roommate Jessie, and Prague. Meanwhile, Jessie and Erin, who now live together, are discussing the possibility of having a baby. However, the plot becomes more complex as it is unclear whether everything seen in the first act of the play is actually the play Erin wrote. There is a sword fight, and a character named Violet insists on being called Elizabeth.

VIOLET: My name’s not Violet. My name has never been Violet. I always introduce myself as Elizabeth. It’s my name. It’s always been my name. Meredith called me Shrinking Violet once during my freshman year and ever since then, everyone thinks my name is Violet. My name is not Violet. It’s been fourteen years. Stop fucking calling me Violet!

(PRAGUE: Relax, Honey.)

I will not relax. You know, I’ve expended so much energy over the years trying to get you to notice me. All of you. Why do I care what you think? How is it I think about you when you aren’t there? Still. All the time. All of you? You’re not that special. You never were. No one cares about you. No one knows who you are. You’ve built this wind tunnel around you that celebrates your cult. It’s not a real thing. Theater isn’t even a real thing. My mother thinks I open curtains during Lion King. And you! All the things you do are insignificant. You are selfish and you are oblivious and you are all terrible people.

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Good People By David Lindsay-Abaire

In this scene, Margaret takes a cigarette break during work and converses with her younger supervisor, who happens to be the child of her deceased friend, Suzie. She is characterized by her outgoing and sharp-witted nature, frequently employing humor to deal with her difficult life circumstances. In this adapted passage, Margaret shares an amusing anecdote to sidestep a serious discussion with her boss about arriving late for her shift. In the source material, Margaret skillfully navigates or evades her boss’s interruptions, which is a crucial element to emphasize in this portrayal

MARGARET: Did I ever tell you the turkey story? Up at Flanagan’s? When I worked up there and she came in? She never told you that turkey story? Huh. She was pregnant with you. No, Jimmy actually – she was pregnant with Jimmy – because it was near Christmas, and your father was locked up in Walpole again, so she didn’t have any money for anything. She had nothing. So your mother comes into Flanagan’s, and she’s out to here. (Indicates belly.) When’s Jimmy’s birthday? January. Right, so she’s out to here, and in this big coat. Remember that blue coat she always wore? And she’s walking up and down the aisles, slipping things in the pockets – potatoes, and cans of cranberry sauce, cookies, because you guys gotta eat, right? So she comes waddling up to my register. And I’m like, “Hey Suzie, how are the kids?” And she doesn’t wanna talk obviously, she’s just trying to push through the line, “Oh they’re good, I was just looking for something, but you don’t have it, so I’m gonna try someplace else.” And then there turkey falls out of her coat. It hits the floor right between her legs. A turkey. Boom. And I swear to god, she didn’t miss a beat. She looks up, real mad, and yells, “Who threw that bird at me?!” (Really laughing now). Oh we died. Everybody there. Ya had to laugh. “Who threw that bird at me?!” She was a funny sonofabitch. Pardon my French. God she was funny. I think about her all the time. Your mother was a good lady. It’s a lesson though. You’re lucky you don’t smoke. Too young, your mother.

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My Fair Lady By George Bernard Shaw

This monologue is from the book by Alan Jay Lerner (Based on the play Pygmalion, by George Bernard Shaw

ELIZA DOLITTLE: “My aunt died of influenza, so they said. But it’s my belief they done the old woman in. Yes Lord love you! Why should she die of influenza when she come through diphtheria right enough the year before? Fairly blue with it she was. They all thought she was dead. But my father, he kept ladling gin down her throat. Then she come to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon. Now, what would you call a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza, and what become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it, and what I say is, them that pinched it, done her in. Them she lived with would have killed her for a hatpin, let al one a hat. And as for father ladling the gin down her throat, it wouldn’t have killed her. Not her. Gin was as mother’s milk to her. Besides, he’s poured so much down his own throat that he knew the good of it.”

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The Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams

One of Amanda Winfield’s monologues from The Glass Menagerie

AMANDA: “Possess your soul in patience – you will see! Something I’ve resurrected from that old trunk! Styles haven’t changed so terribly much after all. [She parts the portières.] Now just look at your mother ! [She wears a girlish frock of yellowed voile with a blue silk sash. She carries a bunch of jonquils – the legend of her youth is nearly revived.] [Feverishly]: This is the dress in which I led the cotillion, won the cakewalk twice at Sunset Hill, wore one spring to the Governor’s ball in Jackson ! See how I sashayed around the ballroom, Laura? [She raises her skirt and does a mincing step around the room.] I wore it on Sundays for my gentlemen callers ! I had it on the day I met your father. I had malaria fever all that spring. The change of climate from East Tennessee to the Delta – weakened resistance I had a little temperature all the time – not enough to be serious – just enough to make me restless and giddy. Invitations poured in – parties all over the Delta! – ‘Stay in bed,’ said mother, ‘you have fever!’ – but I just wouldn’t. – I took quinine but kept on going, going ! Evenings, dances ! – Afternoons, long, long rides! Picnics. – lovely! – So lovely, that country in May. – All lacy with dogwood, literally flooded with jonquils! – That was the spring I had the craze for jonquils. Jonquils became an absolute obsession. Mother said, ‘Honey, there’s no more room for jonquils.’ And still I kept on bringing in more jonquils. Whenever, wherever I saw them, I’d say, “Stop ! Stop! I see jonquils ! I made the young men help me gather the jonquils ! It was a joke, Amanda and her jonquils ! Finally there were no more vases to hold them, every available space was filled with jonquils. No vases to hold them? All right, I’ll hold them myself – And then I – [She stops in front of the picture.] met your father ! Malaria fever and jonquils and then – this – boy…. [She switches on the rose-coloured lamp.] I hope they get here before it starts to rain.”

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Noises Off By Michael Frayn

DOTTY OTLEY: “It’s no good you going on. I can’t open sardines and answer the phone. I’ve only got one pair of feet. Hello…. Yes, but there’s no one here, love…. No, Mr. Brent’s not here…He lives here, yes, but he don’t live here now because he lives in Spain… Mr. Philip Brent, that’s right…. The one who writes the plays, that’s him, only now he writes them in Spain… No, she’s in Spain, too, they’re all in Spain, there’s no one here… Am I in Spain? No, I’m not in Spain, dear. I look after the house for him, but I go home at one o’clock on Wednesday, only I’ve got a nice plate of sardines to put my feet up with, because it’s the royal what’s-it’s called on the telly — the royal you know — where’s the paper, then? And if it’s to do with letting the house then you’ll have to ring the house-agents, because they’re the agents for the house…. Squire Squire, Hackham and who’s the other one…? No, they’re not in Spain, they’re next to the phone in the study. Squire, Squire, Hackham, and hold on, I’ll go and look. Always the same, isn’t it. Soon as you take the weight off your feet, down it all comes on your head.”

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The Importance of Being Earnest

LADY BRACKNELL: Mr. Worthing, I confess I feel somewhat bewildered by what you have just told me. To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution. And I presume you know what that unfortunate movement led to? As for the particular locality in which the hand-bag was found, a cloak-room at a railway station might serve to conceal a social indiscretion- has probably, indeed, been used for that purpose before now- but it could hardly be regarded as an assured basis for a recognised position in good society. I would strongly advise you, Mr. Worthing, to try and acquire some relations as soon as possible, and to make a definite effort to produce at any rate one parent, of either sex, before the season is quite over. You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter- a girl brought up with the utmost care- to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel? Good morning, Mr. Worthing!

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The Cherry Orchard By Anton Chekov

LUBOV: What truth? You see where truth is, and where untruth is, but I seem to have lost my sight and see nothing. You boldly settle all important questions, but tell me, dear, isn’t it because you’re young, because you haven’t had time to suffer till you settled a single one of your questions? You boldly look forward, isn’t it because you cannot foresee or expect anything terrible, because so far life has been hidden from your young eyes? You are bolder, more honest, deeper than we are, but think only, be just a little magnanimous, and have mercy on me. I was born here, my father and mother lived here, my grandfather too, I love this house. I couldn’t understand my life without that cherry orchard, and if it really must be sold, sell me with it! My son was drowned here…. Have pity on me, good, kind man.

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Original Monologue by Joseph Arnone

“Don’t look at me. (points) You. Eh, eh, eh…when I address you, do not look at me. No eye contact. Is that understood? Look away. (beat) Okay, look at me now. (snaps her fingers) I told you not to look at me. Even if I tell you to look at me, do not look at me. Understood? Good, good darling. (she removes her gloves and hands them to her assistant) Oh! I have something in my eye, can you help me? (pointing) Looking, looking, looking! NO looking under all circumstances. You must raise up that attention span of yours. A fish could retain more darling. That is true. I have read it. Less attention span than a fish. Do not let that be you darling.”

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The Admirable Crichton

LADY MARY: “I sighted a herd near Penguin’s Creek, but had to creep round Silver Lake to get to windward of them. However, they spotted me and then the fun began. There was nothing for it but to try and run them down, so I singled out a fat buck and away we went down the shore of the lake, up the valley of rolling stones; he doubled into Brawling River and took to the water, but I swam after him; the river is only half a mile broad there, but it runs strong. He went spinning down the rapids, down I went in pursuit; he clambered ashore, I clambered ashore; away we tore helter-skelter up the hill and down again. I lost him in the marshes, got on his track again near Bread Fruit Wood, and brought him down with an arrow in Firefly Grove.”

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You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown

SALLY BROWN: “A ‘C’? A ‘C’? I got a ‘C’ on my coathanger sculpture? How could anyone get a ‘C’ in coathanger sculpture? May I ask a question? Was I judged on the piece of sculpture itself? If so, is it not true that time alone can judge a work of art? Or was I judged on my talent? If so, is it fair that I be judged on a part of my life over which I have no control? If I was judged on my effort, then I was judged unfairly, for I tried as hard as I could! Was I judged on what I had learned about this project? If so, then were not you, my teacher, also being judged on your ability to transmit your knowledge to me? Are you willing to share my ‘C’? Perhaps I was being judged on the quality of coathanger itself out of which my creation was made…now is this not also unfair? Am I to be judged by the quality of coat hangers that are used by the drycleaning establishment that returns our garments? Is that not the responsibility of my parents? Should they not share my ‘C’?”

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A Midsummer Night Dream

HELENA: “O, I am out of breath in this fond chase!The more my prayer, the lesser is my grace.Happy is Hermia, wheresoe’er she lies;For she hath blessed and attractive eyes. How came her eyes so bright? Not with salt tears:If so, my eyes are oftener wash’d than hers.No, no, I am as ugly as a bear;For beasts that meet me run away for fear:Therefore no marvel though Demetrius Do, as a monster fly my presence thus.What wicked and dissembling glass of mineMade me compare with Hermia’s sphery eyne?But who is here? Lysander! on the ground!Dead? or asleep? I see no blood, no wound.Lysander if you live, good sir, awake”

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Female Dramatic Monologues For Auditions

Here are some more contemporary monologues for women that are more dramatic:

Anna Christie By Eugene O’Neill

ANNA: I s’pose if I tried to tell you I wasn’t- that- no more you’d believe me, wouldn’t you? Yes, you would! And if I told you that yust getting out in this barge, and being on the sea had changed me and made me feel different about things,’s if all I’d been through wasn’t me and didn’t count and was yust like it never happened- you’d laugh, wouldn’t you? And you’d die laughing sure if I said that meeting you that funny way that night in the fog, and afterwards seeing that you was straight goods stuck on me, had got me to thinking for the first time, and I sized you up as a different kind of man- a sea man as different from the ones on land as water is from mud- and that was why I got stuck on you, too. I wanted to marry you and fool you, but I couldn’t. Don’t you see how I’d changed? I couldn’t marry you with you believing a lie- and I was shamed to tell you the truth- till the both of you forced my hand, and I seen you was the same as all the rest. And now, give me a bawling out and beat it, like I can tell you’re going to. Will you believe it if I tell you that loving you has made me- clean? It’s the straight goods, honest! Like hell you will! You’re like all the rest!

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A Dolls House By Henrik Ibsen

NORA: You have never loved me. You have only thought it pleasant to be in love with me. It is perfectly true, Torvald. When I was at home with papa, he told me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not have liked it. He called me his doll-child, and he played with me just as I used to play with my dolls. And when I came to live with you–I mean that I was simply transferred from papa’s hands into yours. You arranged everything according to your own taste, and so I got the same tastes as your else I pretended to, I am really not quite sure which–I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other. When I look back on it, it seems to me as if I had been living here like a poor woman–just from hand to mouth. I have existed merely to perform tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have it so. You and papa have committed a great sin against me. It is your fault that I have made nothing of my life.

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Ivanov By Anton Chekov

SASHA: What can you possibly have to tell me? That you are a man of honour? The whole world knows it. You had better tell me on your honour whether you understand what you have done or not. You have come in here as a man of honour and have insulted him so terribly that you have nearly killed me. When you used to follow him like a shadow and almost keep him from living, you were convinced that you were doing your duty and that you were acting like a man of honour. When you interfered in his private affairs, maligned him and criticised him; when you sent me and whomever else you could, anonymous letters, you imagined yourself to be an honourable man! And, thinking that that too was honourable, you, a doctor, did not even spare his dying wife or give her a moment’s peace from your suspicions. And no matter what violence, what cruel wrong you committed, you still imagined yourself to be an unusually honourable and clear-sighted man.

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Lungs By Duncan MacMillan

WOMAN: Look. Alright. Listen, you have to understand, alright, I’m thinking out loud here so please just let me talk, just let me think it through out loud. Please, alright, don’t just jump in if I say something wrong or stupid, just let me think, okay. Because I’ve always wanted – alright – and I’m talking in the abstract, I’ve always wanted, I’ve always had a sense or an idea of myself, always defined myself, okay, as a person who would. That my purpose in life, that my function on this planet would be to. And not that I ever thought about it like that. It’s only now because you’re asking – or not asking but mentioning. Starting the conversation. Only because of that, that I’m now even thinking about it. But it’s always been sort of a given for me, an assumption ever since I was a little girl playing with dolls. I mean long, long before I met you. It’s never been what I guess it should be which is a a a a a a an extension of an expression of, you know, fucking love or whatever. A coming together of two people. It’s always been this, alright – and this will sound stupid and naive. But it’s always been an image, I guess, of myself with a bump and glowing in that motherly – or pushing a pram or a cot, or a mobile above it or singing to it. Reading Beatrix Potter or Dr Seuss. I don’t care, never cared about it being a boy or a girl. Just small and soft and adorable and with that milky head smell and the tiny socks and giggles and, yes, vomit even. It’s all part of it. Looking after it. Caring for it. That’s, I think, the impulse. And there’s always been a father in the picture but sort of a blurring background generic man. I’m sorry, it’s just this picture of my life I’ve always had since I was able to think and I’ve never questioned it. Never.

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In The Boom Boom Room By David Rabe

CHRISSY: Shut up! I think I said for you to shut up! Did I not say I am not in the mood? I am not in the mood! I got stuff to do I want it to be alone I do it. I gotta be makin’ some resolutions about my stupid life. I can’t not bite my fingernails. I can’t not do it. I can’t keep ‘em long and red, because I’m a person and I’m a nervous person, and I diet and diet I might as well eat a barrel a marshmallows. My voice is not sexy or appealing. I try to raise it. I try to lower it. I got a list a good things to say to a man in bed, I say stupid stuff made up out outa my head. My hands are too big. My stockings bag all the time. Nothin’ keeps me a man I want anyway. I mean, how’m I gonna look like that? (Seizing a glamour magazine and thrusting the cover in Guy’s face.) I can’t do it. Not ever. And then maybe I finally get it right and my nails are long and red, I got on a new pretty dress, and I go out–I got earrings and perfume, new shiny shoes and rings all aglittery on my fingers, and they bring me back here and strip me down and a hunk of meat is all I am. Goddamn that rotten stinking Al and let him run off the end a the earth with that weird Ralphie!

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Proof By David Auburn

CATHERINE: I lived with him. I spent my life with him. I fed him. Talked to him. Tried to listen when he talked. Talked to people who weren’t there … Watched him shuffling around like a ghost. A very smelly ghost. He was filthy. I had to make sure he bathed. My own father. After my mother died it was just me here. I tried to keep him happy no matter what idiotic project he was doing. He used to read all day. He kept demanding more and more books. I took them out of the library by the carload. We had hundreds upstairs. Then I realized he wasn’t reading: he believed aliens were sending him messages through the Dewey decimal numbers on the library books. He was trying to work out the code. Beautiful mathematics. The most elegant proofs, perfect proofs, proofs like music … Plus fashion tips, knock-knock jokes – I mean it was nuts, OK? Later the writing phase: scribbling nineteen, twenty hours a day … I ordered him a case of notebooks and he used every one. I dropped out of school … I’m glad he’s dead.

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Chapter Two By Neil Simon

JENNIE: You know what you want better than me, George… I don’t know what you expect to find out there, except a larger audience for your two shows a day of suffering… I know I’m not as smart as you. Maybe I can’t analyse and theorise and speculate on why we behave as we do and react as we do and suffer guilt and love and hate. You read all those books, not me… But there’s one thing I do know. I know how I feel. I know I can stand here watching you try to destroy everything I’ve ever wanted in my life, wanting to smash your face with my fists because you won’t even make the slightest effort to opt for happiness- and still know that I love you. That’s always so clear to me. It’s the one place I get all my strength from… You mean so much to me that I am willing to take all your abuse and insults and insensitivity- because that’s what you need to do to prove I’m not going to leave you. I can’t promise I’m not going to die, George. That’s asking too much. But if you want to test me, go ahead and test me. You want to leave, leave! But I’m not the one who’s going to walk away. I don’t know if I can take it forever, but I can take it for tonight and I can take it next week. Next month I may be a little shaky… But I’ll tell you something, George. No matter what you say about me, I feel so good about myself- better than I felt when I ran from Cleveland and was frightened to death of New York. Better than I felt when Gus was coming home at two o’ clock in the morning just to change his clothes. Better than I felt when I thought there was no one in the world out there for me, and better than I felt the night before we got married and I thought that I wasn’t good enough for you. Well, I am! I’m wonderful! I’m nuts about me! And if you’re stupid enough to throw someone sensational like me aside, then you don’t deserve as good as you’ve got! I am sick and tired of running from places and people and relationships… And don’t tell me what I want because I’ll tell you want I want. I want a home and I want a family- and I want a career, too. And I want a dog and I want a cat and I want three goldfish. I want everything! There’s no harm in wanting it, George, because there’s not a chance in hell we’re going to get it all anyway. But if you don’t want it you’ve got even less chance than that… Everyone’s out there looking for easy answers. And if you don’t find it at home, hop into another bed and maybe you’ll come up lucky. Maybe! You’d be just as surprised as me at some of the “maybe’s” I’ve seen out there lately. Well, none of that for me, George. You want me, then fight for me, because I’m fighting like hell for you. I think we’re both worth it.

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Cat On A Hot Tin Roof By Tennessee Williams

MAGGIE: Brick, y’know I’ve been so God damn disgustingly poor all my life!- That’s the truth, Brick! Always had to suck up to people I couldn’t stand because they had money and I was poor as Job’s turkey. You don’t know what it’s like. Well, I’ll tell you, it’s like you would feel a thousand miles away from Echo Spring!- And had to get back to it on that broken ankle… without a crutch! That’s how it feels to be as poor as Job’s turkey and have to suck up to relatives that you hated because they had money and all you had was a bunch of hand-me-down clothes and a few old moldy three per cent government bonds. My daddy loved his liquor, he fell in love with his liquor the same way you’ve fallen in love with Echo Spring!- And my poor Mama, having to maintain some semblance of social position, to keep appearances up, on an income of one hundred and fifty dollars a month on those old government bonds! When I came out, the year I made my debut, I had just two evening dresses! One Mother made me from a pattern in Vogue, the other a hand-me-down from a snotty rich cousin I hated! -The dress that I married you in was my grandmother’s weddin’ gown… So that’s why I’m like a cat on a hot tin roof! You can be young without money but you can’t be old without it. You’ve got to be old with money because to be old without it is just too awful, you’ve got to be one or the other, either young or with money, you can’t be old and without it.- That’s the truth, Brick…

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Bull By Mike Bartlett

ISOBEL: When she hears you’re out of work, her low estimation of you will drop even further. It will. I promise. She won’t be surprised. She won’t be like “oh my god he lost his job!” – she’ll be like “of course he lost his job, the fucking retard. Good job I got out when I could. Wouldn’t want Harry to see too much of him though. Better not let Harry to grow up into this distorted, disabled, fucking image of his fucking drip of a father.” I expect that’s what she’ll think. It’s tough isn’t it? Life. Is it a lot more difficult than what you’d thought it would be? I mean, I’m sure you thought it was going to be difficult but that through sheer hard work and practice and training and inspiration – and in your case perspiration – that you would come through and in the end succeed. Because you thought, y’know, in this country at least, it was, at the end of the day, a meritocracy. And that fair play and honest, transparent work behaviour would be rewarded in the end. That bad people like me would fall by the wayside. And good people like you would triumph. Is that what you thought? Oops.

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Male Dramatic Monologues For Auditions

Here are some male dramatic monologues that are sure to wow the school of your choice:

The Seagull By Anton Chekhov

TREPLEV: She loves me – she loves me not…She loves me – she loves me not… Loves me, loves me not. (laughs) There you are – she doesn’t love me. Well, of course she doesn’t. She wants to live and love and dress in light colours, and there am I, twenty-five years old, perpetually reminding her that she’s stopped being young. When I’m not there she’s thirty-two – when I am she’s forty-three; and that’s why she hates me. Then again I don’t acknowledge the theatre. She loves the theatre – she thinks she’s serving humanity and the sacred cause of art, whereas in my view the modern theatre is an anthology of stereotypes and received ideas. When the curtain goes up, and there, in a room with three walls lit by artificial lighting because it’s always evening, these great artists, these high priests in the temple of art, demonstrate how people eat and drink, how they love and walk about and wear their suits; when out of these banal scenes and trite words they attempt to extract a moral – some small and simple moral with a hundred household uses; when under a thousand different disguises they keep serving me up the same old thing, the same old thing, the same old thing – then I run and don’t stop running, just as Maupassant ran from the sight of the Eiffel Tower, that weighed on his brain with its sheer vulgarity. What we need are new artistic forms. And if we don’t get new forms it would be better if we had nothing at all.

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Mercy By Adam Szymkowicz

IAN: I feel like such a fucking idiot. You come over looking for a friend and I’m . . . I guess I thought . . . I’ve always had this problem. It’s not just you. Sometimes you see the signals you want to see instead of the signals that are actually there. I used to ask. I used to say, ‚Äúcan I kiss you now‚Äù but it’s so unromantic. So unspontaneous. I just thought . . . But yeah. Sorry about that. I guess I needed you to want that whether or not you did. I guess I just really need something right now. This whole thing has been really fucked up. Not just being sober, but . . . I was a whole different person. I never thought I’d be the kind of person who — It’s been really hard to get through the day. I stopped drinking because I had to. I couldn’t keep going that way but now I’m trying to figure out how to keep living, you know? I’m running out of reasons to stay alive. Not that — I’m sorry. This isn’t your problem. You don’t want to hear this. Right? Ted? Are you still there?

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Wink By Phoebe Eclair-Powell

MARK: When dad died he had this shit blog he was really proud of – before Tumblr was even a thing and you would’ve thought he had just invented space travel cos he was beaming for days, going upstairs to put another post on – “gotta keep my views up, son,” and he would look at me like “see, we understand each other” but I told him that no fucker in their right mind wanted to know about middle-aged running clubs and he said “that’s where you’re wrong, son, that’s where you are so very wrong.” He would say that a lot, and try not to let me get to him, because for some reason I used to like to undermine him even though I loved him. When he signed up for the London Marathon he linked it to his JustGiving page and it was like he had landed on the moon. Mum said it was unfair that a man that fit should just drop down dead and her friend said – “it’s always the ones you least suspect.” And I told her to go fuck herself in my head but not out loud because everyone looks at you really hard when it’s your father’s funeral. Shannon did a lot of fainting which was annoying, and Mum kept holding my hand saying “thank you for keeping it together – we need you to keep us all together” and so I decided that I wasn’t going to be what they needed. Online there are people who create Facebook pages for dead people, loved ones, relatives, pets. My mum wanted me to make a page on his blog to tell people what had happened – “they need to know” she said, “they’re not pen pals, Mum, that’s not how it works, they’ll just think he gave up blogging for a bit” and I rolled my eyes at her for a full stop. Sometimes I did check it, just to see if he’d had any more views, but then I realised I was the one making the counter go up.

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Cock By Mike Bartlett

JOHN: I’m sorry I’m not speaking, I’m sorry, I know it’s weird but I’m trying to work out how to handle this who to be because I’m two different people with the two of you when you’re separate and now I’m in the middle and no one. I have absolutely no idea who I am. Everyone else seems to have a personality, a character but I’ve never, I’ve never – I used to do voices, I remember this, and I don’t think anyone can really understand it when I say it but I remember one moment when I couldn’t think what was my own voice, I’d been doing high voices and northern voices and men’s voices and impressions of the teachers and my dad, and people on the telly and everyone was laughing and I tried to go back to my own voice but I couldn’t remember what it is. And I always stand in front of the mirror for ages, every day I never know what to wear, when I go shopping for clothes I bring him and he says it’s up to you, what do you like, and I think I don’t know I don’t have a fucking clue just choose something that isn’t too strange, that means I don’t look like a fucking idiot.

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The Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams

TOM: I didn’t go to the moon. I went much further–for time is the longest distance between two places. Not long after that I was fired for writing a poem on the lid of a shoebox. I left St. Louis. I descended the steps of the fire escape for a last time and followed, from then on, in my father’s footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space. I traveled around a great deal. The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly coloured but torn away from their branches. I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something. It always came upon me unawares, taking me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass. Perhaps I am walking along a street at night, in some strange city, before I have found companions. I pass the lighted window of a shop where perfume is sold. The window is filled with pieces of coloured glass, tiny transparent bottles in delicate colours, like bits of a shattered rainbow. Then all at once my sister touches my shoulder. I turn around and look into her eyes. Oh Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger–anything that can blow your candles out! For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura – and so goodbye…

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Orpheus Descending By Tennessee Williams

VAL: You know they’s a kind of bird that don’t have legs so it can’t light on nothing but has to stay all its life on its wing in the sky? That’s true. I seen one once, it had died and fallen to earth and it was light blue colored and its body was tiny as your little finger, that’s the truth, it had a body as tiny as your little finger and so light on the palm of your hand it didn’t weigh more than a feather, but its wings spread out this wide but they was transparent, the color of the sky and you could see through them. That’s what they call protection coloring. You can’t tell those birds from the sky and that’s why the hawks don’t catch them, don’t see them up there in the high blue sky near the sun! But those little birds they don’t have no legs at all and they live their whole lives on the wing, and they sleep on the wind, that’s how they sleep at night, they just spread their wings and go to sleep on the wind like other birds fold their wings and go to sleep on a tree…. They sleep on the wind and… (His eyes grow soft and vague.) Never light on this earth but one time when they die!

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A View From The Bridge By Arthur Miller

ALFIERI: You wouldn’t have known it, but something amusing has just happened. You see how uneasily they nod to me? That’s because I am a lawyer. In this neighborhood to meet a lawyer or a priest on the street is unlucky. We’re only thought of in connection with disasters, and they’d rather not get too close. I often think that behind that suspicious little nod of theirs lie three thousand years of distrust. A lawyer means the law, and in Sicily, from where their fathers came, the law has not been a friendly idea since the Greeks were beaten. I am inclined to notice the ruins in things, perhaps because I was born in Italy . . . I only came here when I was twenty-five. In those days, Al Capone, the greatest Carthaginian of all, was learning his trade on these pavements, and Frankie Yale himself was cut precisely in half by a machine gun on the corner of Union Street, two blocks away. Oh, there were many here who were justly shot by unjust men. Justice is very important here. But this is Red Hook, not Sicily. This is the slum that faces the bay on the seaward side of Brooklyn Bridge. This is the gullet of New York swallowing the tonnage of the world. And now we are quite civilized, quite American. Now we settle for half, and I like it better. I no longer keep a pistol in my filing cabinet. And my practice is entirely unromantic. My wife has warned me, so have my friends; they tell me the people in this neighborhood lack elegance, glamour. After all, who have I dealt with in my life? Longshoremen and their wives, and fathers and grandfathers, compensation cases, evictions, family squabbles – the petty troubles of the poor – and yet . . . every few years there is still a case, and as the parties tell me what the trouble is, the flat air in my office suddenly washes in with the green scent of the sea, the dust in this air is blown away and the thought comes that in some Caesar’s year, in Calabria perhaps or on the cliff at Syracuse, another lawyer, quite differently dressed, heard the same complaint and sat there as powerless as I, and watched it run its bloody course.

Burn This By Lanford Wilson

PALE: Well, see, fine, you got these little social phrases and politenesses–all they show me is this–like–giganticness of unconcern with your “I’m sorrys,” man. The fuckin’ world is going down the fuckin’ toilet on “I’m sorrys.” I’m sorry is this roll of toilet paper–they’re growing whole forests, for people to wipe their asses on with their “I’m sorrys.” Be a tree. For one day. And know that that tree over there is gonna be maybe music paper, the Boss is gonna make forty million writin’ some poor-slob-can’t-get-work song on. This tree is gonna be ten-dollar bills, get passed around, buy things, mean something, hear stories; we got sketch pads and fuckin’ “I don’t love you anymore” letters pinned to some creep’s pillow–something of import. Headlines, box scores, some great book or movie script–Jack Nicholson’s gonna mark you all up, say whatever he wishes to, anyway, out in some fuckin’ desert, you’re supposed to be his text, he’s gonna lay out this line of coke on you-Tree over there is gonna be in some four-star restaurant, they’re gonna call him parchment, bake pompano in him. And you’re stuck in the ground, you can’t go nowhere, all you know is some fuckin’ junkie’s gonna wipe his ass and flush you down the East River. Go floating out past the Statue of Liberty all limp and covered with shit, get tangled up in some Saudi Arabian oil tanker’s fuckin’ propellers–you got maybe three hundred years before you drift down to Brazil somewhere and get a chance to maybe be a coffee bush. “I’m sorrys” are fuck, man.

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Sankebit By David Marshall Grant

JONATHAN: I can’t believe you never told me you slept with my wife three months before I was married. Don’t say anything. I don’t want you to say anything. I just think there’s been too many secrets at the table, that’s all. I don’t want any more secrets, okay. I’m out in the hallway, you’re in the kitchen. God, I miss you Michael. I want us to be closer. I need you, really. Please. I’m going to a shrink, okay? I’m going to cure myself. I have to. Nobody likes me anymore. She’ll come home, I know she will. I mean, we’ve been married ten years, you make allowances. I’m a shit I admit it. But what nobody seems to give me credit for, is I hate myself. I accomplish a thing just to see how worthless it is. I know that. I eat myself basically. I keep winning, watching it prove nothing but my own failure. She’s the only thing I didn’t win, Michael. She took me. I don’t know why. I have to keep her. We’ll make up. We’ve been doing it for a decade. And if we can’t, we’ll bury it, like nuclear waste, and we’ll move on. We’ve done it before. That’s what people do. Do you remember when your mother died and I hugged you? I was a better person then. I want to help you. I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say. You gotta feel snakebit. Michael, you’re going to be fine. They know so much more now. I know you’re going to be fine.

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Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar

AMIR: You keep saying that like it means something. You still don’t get it. The Quran is about tribal life in a seventh-century desert, Isaac. The point isn’t just academic. There’s a result to believing that a book written about life in a specific society fifteen hundred years ago is the word of God: You start wanting to re-create that society. After all, it’s the only one in which the Quran makes any literal sense. That’s why you have people like the Taliban. They’re trying to re-create the world in the image of the one that’s in the Quran. Amir has since gotten up from the table and is now pouring himself another drink. Here’s the kicker. And this is the real problem: It goes way deeper than the Taliban. To be Muslim—truly—means not only that you believe all this. It means you fight for it, too. Politics follows faith? No distinction between mosque and state? Remember all that? So if the point is that the world in the Quran was a better place than this world, well, then let’s go back. Let’s stone adulterers. Let’s cut off the hands of thieves. Let’s kill the unbelievers. And so, even if you’re one of those lapsed Muslims sipping your after-dinner scotch alongside your beautiful white American wife—and watching the news and seeing folks in the Middle East dying for values you were taught were purer—and stricter—and truer… you can’t help but feel just a little a bit of pride.

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Male and Female Classical Monologues For Auditions

Many programs ask you to include at least one classical monologue, so if you’re looking for classical monologues for women or classical monologues for men, here are ten to pick from:

Agamemnon by Aeschylus (Male)

AGAMEMNON: And what and I supposed to tell them?
It’s too late for turning back. Too late.
You Gods,
How cleartell this heartache?
How begin to break the binds
Of these threads in which I’m now entwined?
Some Gods plays with me and my plans,
His cunning far outwits my petty wiles.
The rabble live with lighter load,
Unencumbered, they can cry
When the fates fuck them around.
Not so us people of position,
We must appearances preserve.
We are the slaves of our supporters.
Trapped helpless in their gaze.
What can I do?
I am ashamed to show my grief,
Yet it is shameful not to shed a tear,
Such misfortune now enmesh me.
You Gods, were things not bad enough
Without Klytaimnestra coming too?
With what words will I greet my wife?
With what face can I look at her?
A mother must tend to her daughter, I suppose,
On her daughter’s wedding day.
Though this father grieves at how
He must give his child away.
My child,
My ill-starred child,
Who will now honeymoon with Hades
On her knees she’ll beg me;
Father, do not marry me to martyrdom, Papa-

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The Merchant of Venice By William Shakespeare (Female)

PORTIA:
If to do were as easy as to know what were good to
do, chapels had been churches and poor men’s
cottages princes’ palaces. It is a good divine that
follows his own instructions: I can easier teach
twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the
twenty to follow mine own teaching. The brain may
devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps
o’er a cold decree: such a hare is madness the
youth, to skip o’er the meshes of good counsel the
cripple. But this reasoning is not in the fashion to
choose me a husband. O me, the word ‘choose!’ I may
neither choose whom I would nor refuse whom I
dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curbed
by the will of a dead father. Is it not hard,
Nerissa, that I cannot choose one nor refuse none?

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All’s Well That Ends Well By William Shakespeare (Male)

PAROLLES: It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational increase, and there was never virgin got till virginity was first lost. That you were made of is metal to make virgins. Virginity by being once lost may be ten times found; by being ever kept is ever lost. ‘Tis too cold a companion. Away with’t! ‘Tis against the rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity is to accuse your mothers, which is most infallible disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin; virginity murders itself, and should be buried in highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese, consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by’t. Out with’t! Within ten year it will make itself ten, which is a goodly increase, and the principal itself not much the worse. Away with’t! ‘Tis a commodity will lose the gloss with lying: the longer kept, the less worth. Off with’t while ’tis vendible; answer the time of request. Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of fashion, richly suited, but unsuitable, just like the brooch and the toothpick, which wear not now. Your date is better in your pie and your porridge than in your cheek; and your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French withered pears: it looks ill, it eats drily. Marry, ’tis a withered pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet ’tis a withered pear! Will you anything with it?

Medea by Euripides (Male)

JASON: I ought not to be rash, it seems, in speech,

But like the skilful pilot, who, with sails

Scarce half unfurled, his bark more surely guides,

Escape, O woman, your ungoverned tongue.

Since you the benefits on me conferred

Exaggerate in so proud a strain, I deem

That I to Venus only, and no god

Or man beside, my prosperous voyage owe.

Although a wondrous subtlety of soul

To you belong, ’twere an invidious speech

For me to make should I relate how Love

By his inevitable shafts constrained you

To save my life. I will not therefore state

This argument too nicely, but allow,

As you did aid me, it was kindly done.

But by preserving me have you gained more

Than you bestowed, as I shall prove: and first,

Transplanted from barbaric shores, you dwell

In Grecian regions, and have here been taught

To act as justice and the laws ordain,

Nor follow the caprice of brutal strength.

By all the Greeks your wisdom is perceived,

And you acquire renown; but had you still

Inhabited that distant spot of earth,

You never had been named. I would not wish

For mansions heaped with gold, or to exceed

The sweetest notes of Orpheus’ magic lyre,

Were those unfading wreaths which fame bestows

From me withheld by fortune. I thus far

On my own labours only have discoursed.

For you this odious strife of words began.

But in espousing Creon’s royal daughter,

With which you have reproached me, I will prove

That I in acting thus am wise and chaste,

That I to you have been the best of friends,

And to our children. But make no reply.

Since hither Iolchos’ land I came,

Accompanied by many woes, and such

As could not be avoided, what device

More advantageous would an exile frame

Than wedding the king’s daughter? Not through hate

To you, which you reproach me with, not smitten

With love for a new consort, or a wish

The number of my children to augment:

For those we have already might suffice,

And I complain not. But to me it seemed

Of great importance that we both might live

As suits our rank, nor suffer abject need,

Well knowing that each friend avoids the poor.

I also wished to educate our sonsIn such a manner as befits my race

And with their noble brothers yet unborn,

Make them one family, that thus, my house

Cementing, I might prosper. In some measure

Is it your interest too that by my bride

I should have sons, and me it much imports,

By future children, to provide for those

Who are in being. Have I judged amiss?

You would not censure me, unless your soul

Were by a rival stung. But your whole sex

Hath these ideas; if in marriage blest

Ye deem nought wanting, but if some reverse

Of fortune e’er betide the nuptial couch,

All that was good and lovely ye abhor.

Far better were it for the human race

Had children been produced by other means,

No females e’er existing: hence might man

Exempt from every evil have remained.

Much Ado About Nothing By William Shakespeare (Male)

BENEDICK: This can be no trick: the conference was sadly borne. They have the truth of this from Hero. They seem to pity the lady: it seems her affections have their full bent. Love me! why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censured: they say I will bear myself proudly, if I perceive the love come from her; they say too that she will rather die than give any sign of affection. I did never think to marry: I must not seem proud: happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending. They say the lady is fair; ’tis a truth, I can bear them witness; and virtuous; ’tis so, I cannot reprove it; and wise, but for loving me; by my troth, it is no addition to her wit, nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her. I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me, because I have railed so long against marriage: but doth not the appetite alter? a man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age. Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour? No, the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married. Here comes Beatrice. By this day! she’s a fair lady: I do spy some marks of love in her.

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Macbeth By William Shakespeare (Female)

HECATE: Have I not reason, beldams as you are,

Saucy and overbold? How did you dare

To trade and traffic with Macbeth

In riddles and affairs of death;

And I, the mistress of your charms,

The close contriver of all harms,

Was never called to bear my part

Or show the glory of our art?

And, which is worse, all you have done

Hath been but for a wayward son,

Spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do,

Loves for his own ends, not for you.

But make amends now: get you gone

And at the pit of Acheron

Meet me i’ th’ morning. Thither he

Will come to know his destiny.

Your vessels and your spells provide,

Your charms and everything beside.

I am for th’ air. This night I’ll spend

Unto a dismal and a fatal end.

Great business must be wrought ere noon.

Upon the corner of the moon

There hangs a vap’rous drop profound;

I’ll catch it ere it come to ground:

And that, distilled by magic sleights,

Shall raise such artificial sprites

As by the strength of their illusion

Shall draw him on to his confusion.

He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear

His hopes ‘bove wisdom, grace, and fear:

And you all know security

Is mortals’ chiefest enemy.

[Music, and a song.]

Hark! I am called. My little spirit, see,

Sits in a foggy cloud and stays for me.

Ajax by Sophocles (Female)

TECMESSA: You shall hear all that passed,

Being sharers in the event. At dead of night,

When the evening campfires no longer blazed,

He grasped his two-edged weapon, and seemed bent

To sally upon some errand, objectless.

I, in surprise, said to him “What dost thou, Ajax?

Why thus unsummoned either by the voice

Of messengers, or any trumpet-call,

Goest thou forth? Now the whole host is sleeping!

“But briefly he replied and in cant phrase;

“Woman, a woman should be seen, not heard.”

I held my tongue, and he rushed forth alone.

What there befell him truly I cannot say;

But he came in and brought, bound all together,

Bulls, herdmen’s dogs and fleecy spoil of sheep.

Some he beheaded; of some, their heads bent upward,

He cut the throats and clave the chins in twain,

And some he bound and tortured, as if human,

(Though it was cattle he fell on;) and at last

Rushing out through the door he hurled up words

To a phantom, some against Atridae, some

About Ulysses, laughing loud and long

At all the outrage he had wreaked on them;

Then darting back into the hut, once more

Hardly and by degrees he comes to reason;

When looking on the chamber filled with havock

He shrieked, and smote his head. Then he sat down,

Flinging himself among the weltering wrack

Of sheep that he had butchered, and clutched hold

Upon his hair with his clenched fists. Since then,

Most of the time he sat, uttering no sound;

After, he threatened me–’twas terrible!

If I disclosed not all that had befallen,

And questioned me, what could have come to him.

O friends, in fear, I told him the whole story,

So far as I well knew it. Instantly

He burst out crying lamentably–cries

Such as I never heard from him before.

For clamour of the kind, he ever taught,

Belonged to base and pusillanimous spirits;

Rather, suppressing all shrill outcries, he

Would groan, low, like the rumbling of a bull.

Now, prostrate under such adversity,

He, without meat or drink, sits on the ground

Among the beasts his edge has dealt on, dumb.

And plain it is he meditates no good;

That way, at least, his words and wailings tend.

But O dear friends–for therefore was my errand-

Come in and help us, if by any means

You have the power; for such men as he

Are conquered by the counsels of a friend.

Octavia By Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Female)

OCTAVIA: Though I should endure what must be borne, ne’er could my woes be ended, save by gloomy death. With my mother slain, my father by crime snatched from me, robbed of my brother, by wretchedness and grief o’erwhelmed, by sorrow crushed, by my husband hated, and set beneath my slave, the sweet light brings no joy to me; for my heart is ever trembling, not with the fear of death, but of crime — be crime but lacking to my misfortunes, death will be delight. For ’tis a punishment far worse than death to look in the tyrant’s face, all swollen with rage ‘gainst wretched me, to kiss my foe, to fear his very nod, obedience to whom my smarting grief could not endure after my brother’s death, most sinfully destroyed, whose throne he usurps, and rejoices in being the worker of a death unspeakable. How oft does my brother’s sad shade appear before my eyes when rest has relaxed my body, and sleep weighed down my eyes, weary with weeping. Now with smoking torches he arms his feeble hands, and with deadly purpose aims at his brother’s eyes and face; and now in trembling fright takes refuge in my chamber; his enemy pursues and, e’en while the lad clings in my embrace, savagely he thrusts his sword through both our bodies. Then trembling and mighty terror banish my slumbers, and bring back to my wretched heart its grief and fear. Add to all this the proud concubine, bedecked with our house’s spoil, as gift for whom the son set his own mother on the Stygian bark; and, when she had o’ercome dread shipwreck and the sea, himself more pitiless than ocean’s waves, slew her with the sword. What hope of safety, after crimes so great, have I? My victorious foe threatens my chamber, blazes with hate of me, and, as the reward of her adultery, demands of my husband his lawful consort’s head. Arise thou, my father, from the shades and bring help to thy daughter who calls on thee; or else, rending the earth, lay bare the Stygian abyss, that I may plunge thither headlong.

Medea By Euripides (Female)

MEDEA: O my sons!

My sons! ye have a city and a house

Where, leaving hapless me behind, without

A mother ye for ever shall reside.

But I to other realms an exile go,

Ere any help from you I could derive,

Or see you blest; the hymeneal pomp,

The bride, the genial couch, for you adorn,

And in these hands the kindled torch sustain.

How wretched am I through my own perverseness!

You, O my sons, I then in vain have nurtured,

In vain have toiled, and, wasted with fatigue,

Suffered the pregnant matron’s grievous throes.

On you, in my afflictions, many hopes

I founded erst: that ye with pious care

Would foster my old age, and on the bier

Extend me after death–much envied lot

Of mortals; but these pleasing anxious thoughts

Are vanished now; for, losing you, a life

Of bitterness and anguish shall I lead.

But as for you, my sons, with those dear eyes

Fated no more your mother to behold,

Hence are ye hastening to a world unknown.

Why do ye gaze on me with such a look

Of tenderness, or wherefore smile? for these

Are your last smiles. Ah wretched, wretched me!

What shall I do? My resolution fails.

Sparkling with joy now I their looks have seen,

My friends, I can no more. To those past schemes

I bid adieu, and with me from this land

My children will convey. Why should I cause

A twofold portion of distress to fall

On my own head, that I may grieve the sire

By punishing his sons? This shall not be:

Such counsels I dismiss. But in my purpose

What means this change? Can I prefer derision,

And with impunity permit the foe

To ‘scape? My utmost courage I must rouse:

For the suggestion of these tender thoughts

Proceeds from an enervate heart. My sons,

Enter the regal mansion. [Exuent SONS.] As for those

Who deem that to be present were unholy

While I the destined victims offer up,

Let them see to it. This uplifted arm

Shall never shrink. Alas! alas! my soul

Commit not such a deed. Unhappy woman,

Desist and spare thy children; we will live

Together, they in foreign realms shall cheer

Thy exile. No, by those avenging fiends

Who dwell with Pluto in the realms beneath,

This shall not be, nor will I ever leave

My sons to be insulted by their foes.

They certainly must die; since then they must,

I bore and I will slay them: ’tis a deed

Resolved on, nor my purpose will I change.

Full well I know that now the royal bride

Wears on her head the magic diadem,

And in the variegated robe expires:

But, hurried on by fate, I tread a path

Of utter wretchedness, and them will plunge

Into one yet more wretched. To my sons

Fain would I say: “O stretch forth your right hands

Ye children, for your mother to embrace.

O dearest hands, ye lips to me most dear,

Engaging features and ingenuous looks,

May ye be blest, but in another world;

For by the treacherous conduct of your sire

Are ye bereft of all this earth bestowed.

Farewell, sweet kisses–tender limbs, farewell!

And fragrant breath! I never more can bear

To look on you, my children.” My afflictions

Have conquered me; I now am well aware

What crimes I venture on: but rage, the cause

Of woes most grievous to the human race,

Over my better reason hath prevailed.

As You Like It By William Shakespeare

PHEBE: I would not by thy executioner.

I fly thee, for I would not injure thee.

Thou tell’st me there is murder in mine eye:

‘Tis pretty, sure, and very probable

That eyes, that are the frail’st and softest things,

Who shut their coward gates on atomies,

Should be called tyrants, butchers, murderers.

Now I do frown on thee with all my heart,

And if mine eyes can wound, now let them kill thee.

Now counterfeit to swound; why, not fall down;

Or if thou canst not, O, for shame, for shame,

Lie not, to say mine eyes are murderers.

Now show the wound mine eye hath made in thee;

Scratch thee but with a pin, and there remains

Some scar of it; lean upon a rush,

The cicatrice and capable impressure

Thy palm some moment keeps; but now mine eyes,

Which I have darted at thee, hurt thee not,

Nor I am sure there is no force in eyesThat can do hurt.

Here are some additional tips from industry professionals:

• Choose a monologue from a play that you have seen or read. This will help you understand the character and the context of the monologue.
• Don’t be afraid to make the monologue your own. Add your own personal touches to the monologue to make it more interesting and engaging.
• Be confident and have fun! The most important thing is to enjoy the process and to let your personality shine through.

Final Thoughts

Finding good monologues for auditions or college audition monologues can be challenging, but any of the above options should impress your drama school! Thank you and hope you can find a piece out of the 50 Great Monologues For Auditions!

MONOLOGUES FOR ACTORS

The post Monologues For Auditions appeared first on We Are Actors.

I’m a 90’s kid. Full disclosure, I was born in 1982 so I’m a little bit of an 80’s kid too. But there is something very special about the 90’s, and I appreciate that this could just be nostalgia talking, but I doubt it.

The thing I loved the most about the 90’s were the movies. There is a ‘new age noir’ quality to so many films that went on to become classics. From the genre defining movie that was Pulp Fiction to the old Hollywood thrill of Seven. And of course there was Fight Club, The Matrix, In The Name If The Father, The Mask and also some total stinkers like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter and Wild Wild West… What were they thinking!? Jean-Claude Van Dam as Guile? Seriously? But I digress.

In honor of my own trip down memory lane I recently took, I have complied a few monologues from movies you know and love (and if you don’t? Bloody educate yourself!).

FYI, Some of these are riddled with foul language. You’ve been warned.

1-6 are for the boys. 6-12 are for the girls. But they are all for whoever really…

Enjoy!

1. Reservoir Dogs (1992)

Mr Brown:

Uh uh, I don’t tip…No, I don’t believe in it…Don’t give me that, if she don’t make enough money, she can quit….I don’t tip because society says I have to. All right, I mean I’ll tip if somebody really deserves a tip, if they really put forth the effort, I’ll give them something extra, but I mean this tipping automatically, uh, it’s for the birds. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, they’re just doing their job…She was okay. She wasn’t anything special…Look, I ordered coffee, right? Now we’ve been here a long fuckin’ time and she’s only filled my cup three times. I mean, when I order coffee, I want it filled six times…The words ‘too fucking busy’ shouldn’t be in a waitress’ vocabulary…

Jesus Christ, I mean, these ladies aren’t starvin’ to death. They make minimum wage. You know, I used to work minimum wage and when I did, I wasn’t lucky enough to have a job that society deemed tip-worthy… You know what this is? It’s the world’s smallest violin playing just for the waitresses…So’s workin’ at McDonald’s, but you don’t feel the need to tip them, do ya? Well, why not? They’re serving you food. But no, society says – don’t tip these guys over here, but tip these guys over here. That’s bullshit…

Fuck all that…I mean, I’m very sorry the government taxes their tips. That’s fucked up. That ain’t my fault. I mean, it would appear that waitresses are one of the many groups the government fucks in the ass on a regular basis. I mean, if you show me a piece of paper that says the government shouldn’t do that, I’ll sign it. Put it to a vote, I’ll vote for it, but what I won’t do is play ball. And this non-college bullshit you’re givin’ me, I got two words for that: learn to fuckin’ type, ’cause if you’re expectin’ me to help out with the rent, you’re in for a big fuckin’ surprise.

2. 4 Rooms (1995)

Ted:

My name is not Theodore, it’s TED, TED, TED, T2E2D 2..TED2NOT TEDDY, NOT THEODORE . . . TED . . . . Yes, my mother did me the service of naming me Theodore and I haven’t a clue as to how you know that because everyone who knows that lives a long way away from here. Do you have any idea what it’s like to go to school where all the other kids’ parents are in jail doing time for crimes like grand larceny, aggravated assault, burglary and murder, and you get stuck with a mother who names you Theodore and dressed you up in little matching pink outfits with, get this, a little blue bow fucking tie! Well, I’ll tell you what happens. Pretty soon Theodore becomes “Theo the Thumper,” and when Theo the Thumper gets old enough, he packs his bags and goes thousands of miles away where he can put the whole bloody mess behind him. So, if you don’t mind, shoot me now, because no one is going to call me that again. My name is Ted, okay? Got it? TED!

3. Pulp Fiction (1994)

Captain Koons:

Hello, little man. Boy, I sure heard a bunch about you. See, I was a good friend of your dad’s. We were in that Hanoi pit of hell together over five years. Hopefully…you’ll never have to experience this yourself, but when two men are in a situation like me and your Dad were, for as long as we were, you take on certain responsibilities of the other. If it had been me who had not made it, Major Coolidge would be talkin’ right now to my son Jim. But the way it turned out is I’m talkin’ to you, Butch. I got somethin’ for you.
(The Captain sits down and pulls a gold wrist watch from his pocket)
This watch I got here was first purchased by your great-grandfather during the first World War. It was bought in a little general store in Knoxville, Tennessee. Made by the first company to ever make wrist watches. Up till then people just carried pocket watches. It was bought by private Doughboy Erine Coolidge on the day he set sail for Paris. It was your great-grandfather’s war watch and he wore it everyday he was in that war. When he had done his duty, he went home to your great-grandmother, took the watch off, put it an old coffee can, and in that can it stayed ’til your granddad Dane Coolidge was called upon by his country to go overseas and fight the Germans once again. This time they called it World War II. Your great-grandfather gave this watch to your granddad for good luck. Unfortunately, Dane’s luck wasn’t as good as his old man’s. Dane was a Marine and he was killed — along with the other Marines at the battle of Wake Island. Your granddad was facing death, he knew it. None of those boys had any illusions about ever leavin’ that island alive. So three days before the Japanese took the island, your granddad asked a gunner on an Air Force transport name of Winocki, a man he had never met before in his life, to deliver to his infant son, who he’d never seen in the flesh, his gold watch. Three days later, your granddad was dead. But Winocki kept his word. After the war was over, he paid a visit to your grandmother, delivering to your infant father, his Dad’s gold watch. This watch. (holds it up, long pause) This watch was on your Daddy’s wrist when he was shot down over Hanoi. He was captured, put in a Vietnamese prison camp. He knew if the gooks ever saw the watch it’d be confiscated, taken away. The way your Dad looked at it, that watch was your birthright. He’d be damned if any slopes were gonna put their greasy yella hands on his boy’s birthright. So he hid it in the one place he knew he could hide something. His ass. Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. Then he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable hunk of metal up my ass two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you.

4. Clerks (1994)

Randal:

Oh, f–k you! F–k you, pal! Jesus, there you go. Trying to pass the buck. I`m the source of all your misery. Who closed the store to play hockey? Who closed the store to go to a wake? Who tried to win back his ex-girlfriend without even discussing how he felt with his present one? You want to blame somebody? Blame yourself! (mimicking) ‘I’m not even supposed to be here today.’ You sound like an asshole! Jesus, nobody twisted your arm to be here. You’re here of your own volition. You like to think the weight of the world rests on your shoulder, like this place would fall apart if Dante wasn’t here. Jesus, you over-compensate for havin’ what’s basically a monkey’s job. You push f–kin’ buttons! Anybody could waltz in here and do our jobs. You, you’re so obsessed with making it seem so much more epic, so much more important than it really is. Christ, you work in a convenience store, Dante, and badly I might add. I work in a s–tty video store, badly as well. You know, that guy Jay’s got it right, man, he has no delusions about what he does. Us – we like to make ourselves seem so much more important than the people that come in here to buy a paper or God forbid, cigarettes. We look down on them as if we’re so advanced. Well, if we’re so f–kin’ advanced, what are we doin’ working here?

5. Four Weddings And A Funeral (1994)

Matthew:

Gareth used to prefer funerals to weddings. He said it was easier to get enthusiastic about a ceremony one had an outside chance of eventually being involved in. In order to prepare this speech, I rang a few people, to get a general picture of how Gareth was regarded by those who met him. Fat seems to be a word that people most connected with him. Terribly rude also rang a lot of bells. So very fat and very rude seems to have been a stranger’s viewpoint. On the other hand, some of you have been kind enough to ring me and let me know that you loved him, which I know he’d have been thrilled to hear. You remember his fabulous hospitality, his strange experimental cooking. The recipe for ‘Duck a la Banana’ fortunately goes with him to his grave. Most of all, you tell me of his enormous capacity for joy. When joyful, when joyful for highly vocal drunkenness. But I hope joyful is how you will remember him. Not stuck in a box in a church. Pick your favorite of his waistcoats and remember him that way. The most splendid, replete, big-hearted, weak-hearted as it turned out, and jolly bugger most of us ever met. As for me, you may ask how I will remember him, what I thought of him. Unfortunately there, I don’t have words. Perhaps you will forgive me if I turn from my own feelings to the words of another splendid bugger: W.H. Auden. This is actually what I wanted to say:

‘Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum, Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let the aeroplanes circle, moaning overhead, Scribbling on the sky the message: He is Dead. Put crepe bows ’round the white necks of the public doves, Let traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West. My working week and my Sunday rest. My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song, I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now, put out every one. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood, For nothing now can ever come to any good.’

6. Joe vs the volcano (1990)

Joe Banks:

Mr. Waturi, Frank. I quit….I’ve been working here four and a half years. The work I did I probably could have done in six months. That leaves four years left over. Four years. If I had them now – like gold in my hand. (he presents his lamp to DeDe) Here, this is for you. Goodbye, DeDe.

He then turns around to confront Mr. Waturi:

This life. Life, what a joke! This situation, this room…You look terrible, Mr. Waturi. You look like a bag of shit stuffed in a cheap suit. Not that anybody could look good under these zombie lights. I, I, I can feel them sucking the juice out of my eyeballs. Suck suck suck suck suck. $300 bucks a week. That’s the news. For $300 bucks a week, I’ve lived in this sink, this used rubber (Frank: “Watch it, mister. There’s a woman here”) Don’t you think I know that, Frank? Don’t you think I’m aware that there is a woman here? I can smell her, like, like a flower. I can taste her like sugar on my tongue. When I’m 20 feet away, I can hear the fabric of her dress when she moves in her chair! Not that I’ve done anything about it.

I’ve gone all day, every day, not doing, not saying, not taking the chance, for $300 dollars a week. And Frank, the coffee, it stinks. It tastes like arsenic. These lights give me a headache. If they don’t give you a headache, you must be dead, so let’s arrange the funeral….You’re not tellin’ me nothin’….Why, I ask myself, why have I put up with you, I can’t imagine. But I know. It’s fear. Yellow freakin’ fear. I’ve been too chicken-shit afraid to live my life, so I sold it to you for $300 freakin’ dollars a week! (He grabs Waturi by the collar) You are lucky I don’t kill you! You’re lucky I don’t rip your freakin’ throat out! But I’m not going to! And maybe you’re not so lucky at that. ‘Cause I’m gonna leave you here, Mr. Wahoo Waturi. And what could be worse than that? (Joe leaves but then the door re-opens and he comes back in) DeDe?… How about dinner tonight?

7. Election (1999)

Tracy Flick:

Poet Henry David Thoreau once wrote, ‘I cannot make my days longer, so I strive to make them better.’ With this election, we here at Carver also have an opportunity to make our high school days better. During this campaign, I have spoken with many of you about your many concerns. I spoke with Eliza Ramirez, a freshman, who said she feels alienated from her own homeroom. I spoke with sophomore Reggie Banks who said his mother works in the cafeteria and can’t afford to buy him enough spiral notebooks for his classes…

I care about Carver and I care about each and every one of you, and together we can all make a difference. When you cast your vote for Tracy Flick next week, you won’t just be voting for me. You’ll be voting for yourself and for every other student here at Carver. Our days might not be any longer, but they can sure be better. Thank you.

8. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Alice:

Do you remember last summer at Cape Cod?…Do you remember one night in the dining room, there was this young naval officer and he was sitting near our table with two other officers?…The waiter brought him a message, at which point he left. Nothing rings a bell?…

Well, I first saw him that morning in the lobby. He was, he was checking into the hotel and he was following the bellboy with his luggage to the elevator. He-he glanced at me as he walked past. Just a glance. Nothing more. But I could hardly move. That afternoon, Helena went to the movies with her friend, and you and I made love. And we made plans about our future and we talked about Helena. And yet at no time was he ever out of my mind. And I thought if he wanted me, even if it was only for one night, I was ready to give up everything. You. Helena. My whole f–king future. Everything.

And yet it was weird, ’cause at the same time, you were dearer to me than ever. And, and at that moment, my love for you was both tender and sad. I-I barely slept that night, and I woke up the next morning in a panic. I didn’t know whether I was afraid that he had left or that he might still be there. But by dinner, I realized he was gone and I was relieved.

9. Magnolia (1999)

Linda Partridge:

I have to tell you something, I have something to tell you. I want to change his will. Can I change his will? I need to….No, no, no, you see, uhm, I never loved him. I never loved him. Earl. When I met him, when I started, I met him, I f–ked him, and I married him because I wanted his money. Do you understand? I’m telling you this. I’ve never told anyone, I didn’t love him, but now, you know, I know I’m in that will. I mean, we’re all there together. We made that fucking thing and all the money I’ll get. And I don’t want it, because I love him so much now. I’ve fallen in love with him now for real as he’s dying. And, uhm, I look at him, and he’s about to go, Alan. He’s moments. I took care of him through this, Alan. What now, then? I don’t want him to die.

I didn’t love him when we met, and I did so many bad things to him that he doesn’t know. Things that I want to confess to him, but now I do. I love him….This isn’t any f–king medication talking! This isn’t — I don’t know, I don’t know. Can you give me nothing? You, you have power of attorney! Can you go, can you go in the final fucking moments and change the will? I-I don’t want any money. I couldn’t live with myself with this thing that I’ve done. I’ve done so many bad things. I fucked around. I fucking cheated on him. I fucking cheated on him, Alan! There. There. You’re his lawyer, our lawyer. I am his wife. We are married. I broke the contract of marriage. I fucked around on him many times. I sucked other men’s cocks…

10. Beautiful Girls (1996)

Gina Barrisano:

You’re both fuckin’ insane. You want to know what your problem is? MTV, Playboy, and Madison fucking Avenue. Yes. Let me explain something to you, ok? Girls with big tits have big asses. Girls with little tits have little asses. That’s the way it goes. God doesn’t fuck around; he’s a fair guy. He gave the fatties big, beautiful tits and the skinnies little tiny niddlers. It’s not my rule. If you don’t like it, call him….(picking up a Penthouse magazine in a grocery store) Oh, guys, look what we have here. Look at this, your favorite, oh you like that?…Yeah, that’s nice, right? Well, it doesn’t exist, OK? Look at the hair, the hair is long, it’s flowing. It’s like a river. Well, it’s a fuckin’ weave, OK? And the tits? Please! I could hang my overcoat on them. Tits, by design, were invented to be suckled by babies. Yes, they’re purely functional. These are Silicon City. And look, my favorite, the shaved pubis. Pubic hair being so unruly and all. Very key. This is a mockery, this is sham, this is bullshit…

Implants, collagen, plastic, capped teeth, the fat sucked out, the hair extended, the nose fixed, the bush shaved… These are not real women, all right? They’re beauty freaks. And they make all us normal women with our wrinkles, our puckered boobs… our cellulite feel somehow inadequate. Well I don’t buy it, all right? But you fuckin’ mooks, if you think that if there’s a chance in hell that you’ll end up with one of these women, you don’t give us real women anything approaching a commitment. It’s pathetic. I don’t know what you think you’re gonna do. You’re gonna end up eighty-years old, drooling in some nursing home, then you’re gonna decide it’s time to settle down, get married, have kids? What, are you gonna find a cheerleader?

Look at Paul. With his models on the wall, his dog named Elle McPherson. He’s insane. He’s obsessed. You’re all obsessed. If you had an ounce of self-esteem, of self-worth, of self-confidence, you would realize that as trite as it may sound, beauty is truly skin-deep. And you know what, if you ever did hook one of those girls, I guarantee you’d be sick of her… No matter how perfect the nipple, how supple the thigh, unless there’s some other s–t going on in the relationship besides the physical, it’s gonna get old, OK? And you guys, as a gender, have got to get a grip. Otherwise, the future of the human race is in jeopardy.

11. Dangerous Minds (1995)

Lou Ann Johnson:

Learning is the prize. Yes, knowing how to read something and understand it is the prize. Okay? Knowing how to think is the prize….Okay. Well, yeah, well, you know how to run, too. But not the way you could run if you trained. You know, the mind is like a muscle, okay, and if you want it to be really powerful, you got to work it out. Okay? Each new fact gives you another choice. Each new idea builds another muscle, okay, and it’s those muscles that are gonna make you really strong. Those are your weapons. In this unsafe world, I want to arm you….Yeah. Hey, try it, you’re just sittin’ here anyway. Look. Okay, if at the end of the term, you’re not faster, stronger and smarter, you will have lost nothing. But if you are, you’ll be that much tougher to knock down.

12. Passion Fish (1992)

Nina:

‘I didn’t ask for the anal probe.’ Four years starving in New York, doing showcases I had to pay for myself. That was my first big break. My first feature, this like zero-budget movie about people who are taken up into alien spaceships and given physicals against their will. I go in for the audition, and the director is really intense and mysterious and he has me sit with my eyes closed and free-associate, right? We do these improvs about the aliens representing our most primal fears. And it’s great. Finally some real acting. And they tell me before I leave that I’ve got the part. Only I don’t know what it is yet, but I’m so thrilled because it’s this feature, you know. It’s not a student film or anything. So the agent gives me my script, and I go through it Iooking for Margaret, the part that they say I have. And I’ve got my yellow underliner marker in my hand, only it’s drying out. And finally I find only one page with the corner folded over. And I’m in this therapy group of these people who have had these alien physicals. And I’ve, I’ve got only one line: ‘I didn’t ask for the anal probe.’…

But I’m a professional, right? I prepared. I had back story on this woman. I knew that she had been to the hairdresser betore she came to the therapy group. I knew that she didn’t trust that guy who sat next to the fuchsia. I knew that, uhm, she, she turned the TV set on the minute she got back to her apartment, just for the sound of it. And I even had my uhm, my boyfriend, my boyfriend at the time, with a thermometer, you know, uhm, for the sense memory, right? I was loaded for fucking bear.

So finally it comes time to shoot the scene. And they do one take of the wide shot, and they stop before my line. I was, I was terrified that they were gonna cut it. They move in for reaction shots, close-ups. Mostly things that mean that I have to go and sit outside because the camera is set up where my chair is. Well, by the time they get to me, the crew is grumpy because it’s late and they’re non-union and they don’t get paid extra for overtime. The lead actor is gone. He’s got his shrink appointment. And I’m, I’m alone. And I’m staring at this piece of tape stuck to a stand next to the camera. And the director says, ‘Okay, uh, let’s try it a few times without cutting and, uh, show me a few different colors.’ — (with different emphases on various words) ‘I didn’t ask for the anal probe.’ ‘I didn’t ask for the anal probe.’ ‘I didn’t ask for the anal probe.’ ‘I didn’t ask for the anal probe.’ That was it”

MONOLOGUES FOR ACTORS

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