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!

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The post Othello Monologues appeared first on We Are Actors.

The Hamlet soliloquies.

The most popular play by the world’s best known playwright, contains the world’s most famous character from a play who has the most recognizable lines in the history of theater.

Here are all of Hamlet’s monologues, including everything from ‘To be, or not to be.’ To the lesser known ‘Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath seal’d thee for herself.’

Enjoy this list of Monologues From Hamlet!

1. Act 1, Scene 2

O that this too too solid flesh would melt,
Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on’t! ah, fie! ‘Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead! Nay, not so much, not two.
So excellent a king, that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on; and yet, within a month-
Let me not think on’t! Frailty, thy name is woman!-
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father’s body
Like Niobe, all tears- why she, even she
(O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourn’d longer) married with my uncle;
My father’s brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules. Within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good.
But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue!

2. Act 1, Scene 4

Ay, marry, is’t;But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour’d in the breach than the observance.
This heavy-headed revel east and west
Makes us traduc’d and tax’d of other nations;
They clip us drunkards and with swinish phrase
Soil our addition; and indeed it takes
From our achievements, though perform’d at height,
The pith and marrow of our attribute.
So oft it chances in particular men
That, for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As in their birth,- wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin,-
By the o’ergrowth of some complexion,
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
Or by some habit that too much o’erleavens
The form of plausive manners, that these men
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
Being nature’s livery, or fortune’s star,
Their virtues else- be they as pure as grace,
As infinite as man may undergo-
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault. The dram of e’il
Doth all the noble substance often dout To his own scandal.

3. Act 1, Scene 5

O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?
And shall I couple hell? Hold, hold, my heart!
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the table of my memory
I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix’d with baser matter. Yes, by heaven!
O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables! Meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain
At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark. [Writes.]
So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word:
It is ‘Adieu, adieu! Remember me.’
I have sworn’t.

4. Act 2, Scene 2

I will tell you why. So shall my anticipation prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the King and Queen moult no feather. I have of late- but wherefore I know not- lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire- why, it appeareth no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me- no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

5. Act 2, Scene 2

O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That, from her working, all his visage wann’d,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing! No, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn’d defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by th’ nose? gives me the lie i’ th’ throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this, ha?
‘Swounds, I should take it! for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver’d and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave’s offal. Bloody bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murther’d,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must (like a whore) unpack my heart with words
And fall a-cursing like a very drab,
A scullion!
Fie upon’t! foh! About, my brain! Hum, I have heard
That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim’d their malefactions;
For murther, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ, I’ll have these Players
Play something like the murther of my father
Before mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks;
I’ll tent him to the quick. If he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be a devil; and the devil hath power
T’ assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me. I’ll have grounds
More relative than this. The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.
[Exit]

5. Act 3, Scene 1

To be, or not to be- that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them. To die- to sleep-
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die- to sleep.
To sleep- perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub!
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death-
The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns- puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.- Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia!- Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins rememb’red.

6. Act 3, Scene 1

Hamlet. Get thee to a nunnery! Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do, crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?

Ophelia. At home, my lord.

Hamlet. Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in’s own house. Farewell.

Ophelia. O, help him, you sweet heavens!

Hamlet. If thou dost marry, I’ll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery. Go, farewell. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell.

Ophelia. O heavenly powers, restore him!

Hamlet. I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig, you amble, and you lisp; you nickname God’s creatures and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I’ll no more on’t! it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no moe marriages. Those that are married already- all but one- shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go.

7. Act 3, Scene 2

Hamlet. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc’d it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as live the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the cars of the groundlings, who (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipp’d for o’erdoing Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.

First Player. I warrant your honour.

Hamlet. Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature; to show Virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o’erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly (not to speak it profanely), that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature’s journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

First Player. I hope we have reform’d that indifferently with us, sir.

Hamlet. O, reform it altogether! And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them. For there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That’s villanous and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready.

8. Act 3, Scene 2

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath seal’d thee for herself. For thou hast been
As one, in suff’ring all, that suffers nothing;
A man that Fortune’s buffets and rewards
Hast ta’en with equal thanks; and blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled
That they are not a pipe for Fortune’s finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
That is not passion’s slave, and I will wear him
In my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee. Something too much of this I
There is a play to-night before the King.
One scene of it comes near the circumstance,
Which I have told thee, of my father’s death.
I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,
Even with the very comment of thy soul
Observe my uncle. If his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
It is a damned ghost that we have seen,
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan’s stithy. Give him heedful note;
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face,
And after we will both our judgments join
In censure of his seeming.

9. Act 3, Scene 2

‘Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother!
O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom.
Let me be cruel, not unnatural;
I will speak daggers to her, but use none.
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites-
How in my words somever she be shent,
To give them seals never, my soul, consent!

10. Act 3, Scene 3

Now might I do it pat, now he is praying;
And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven,
And so am I reveng’d. That would be scann’d.
A villain kills my father; and for that,
I, his sole son, do this same villain send
To heaven.
Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge!
He took my father grossly, full of bread,
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May;
And how his audit stands, who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
‘Tis heavy with him; and am I then reveng’d,
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?
No. Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent.
When he is drunk asleep; or in his rage;
Or in th’ incestuous pleasure of his bed;
At gaming, swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in’t-
Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damn’d and black
As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays.
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.

11. Act 3, Scene 4

Look here upon th’s picture, and on this,
The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.
See what a grace was seated on this brow;
Hyperion’s curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;
A station like the herald Mercury
New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill:
A combination and a form indeed
Where every god did seem to set his seal
To give the world assurance of a man.
This was your husband. Look you now what follows.
Here is your husband, like a mildew’d ear
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes
You cannot call it love; for at your age
The heyday in the blood is tame, it’s humble,
And waits upon the judgment; and what judgment
Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have,
Else could you not have motion; but sure that sense
Is apoplex’d; for madness would not err,
Nor sense to ecstacy was ne’er so thrall’d
But it reserv’d some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozen’d you at hoodman-blind?
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense
Could not so mope.
O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron’s bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax
And melt in her own fire. Proclaim no shame
When the compulsive ardour gives the charge,
Since frost itself as actively doth burn,
And reason panders will.

12. Act 4, Scene 4

How all occasions do inform against me
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unus’d. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on th’ event,-
A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward,- I do not know
Why yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to do,’
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means
To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me.
Witness this army of such mass and charge,
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit, with divine ambition puff’d,
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death, and danger dare,
Even for an eggshell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour’s at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep, while to my shame I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men
That for a fantasy and trick of fame
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

13. Act 5, Scene 1

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times. And now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kiss’d I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Quite chap- fall’n? Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. Make her laugh at that.

The post Monologues From Hamlet appeared first on We Are Actors.

Shakespeare monologues are easy to come by since most, if not all, of the Bard’s plays, feature many monologues. The challenge is selecting the right Shakespeare monologue to rehearse acting techniques.

The best monologues for actors aren’t necessarily the most difficult but the most impactful to the arc of the tale.

Although he did receive patronage from the aristocracy, Shakespeare’s dialogue captured common men and women’s tone. The language of Elizabethan England, while explicitly formal, was also imbued with a wide variety of colloquialisms.

In that tradition, here are twenty Shakespeare monologues that aren’t worked on that often.

Shakespeare Monologues For Men

1. The Taming of the Shrew – Act III, Scene 2

Petruchio:

They shall go forward, Kate, at thy command.
Obey the bride, you that attend on her;
to the feast, revel and domineer,
Carouse full measure to her maidenhead;
Be mad and merry, or go hang yourselves.
But for my bonny Kate, she must with me.
Nay, look not big, nor stamp, nor stare, nor fret;
I will be master of what is mine own-
She is my goods, my chattels, she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing,
And here she stands; touch her whoever dare;
I’ll bring mine action on the proudest he
That stops my way in Padua. Grumio,
Draw forth thy weapon; we are beset with thieves;
Rescue thy mistress, if thou be a man.
Fear not, sweet wench; they shall not touch thee, Kate;
I’ll buckler thee against a million.

2. Richard III – Act IV, Scene 6

King Richard:

As I intend to prosper and repent,
So thrive I in my dangerous attempt
Of hostile arms! myself myself confound!
Heaven and fortune bar me happy hours!
Day, yield me not thy light; nor, night, thy rest!
Be opposite all planets of good luck
To my proceedings, if, with pure heart’s love,
Immaculate devotion, holy thoughts,
I tender not thy beauteous princely daughter!
In her consists my happiness and thine;
Without her, follows to this land and me,
To thee, herself, and many a Christian soul,
Death, desolation, ruin and decay:
It cannot be avoided but by this;
It will not be avoided but by this.
Therefore, good mother,—I must can you so—
Be the attorney of my love to her:
Plead what I will be, not what I have been;
Not my deserts, but what I will deserve:
Urge the necessity and state of times,
And be not peevish-fond in great designs.

3. Othello – Act III, Scene 3

Othello:

As I intend to prosper and repent,
So thrive I in my dangerous attempt
Of hostile arms! myself myself confound!
Heaven and fortune bar me happy hours!
Day, yield me not thy light; nor, night, thy rest!
Be opposite all planets of good luck
To my proceedings, if, with pure heart’s love,
Immaculate devotion, holy thoughts,
I tender not thy beauteous princely daughter!
In her consists my happiness and thine;
Without her, follows to this land and me,
To thee, herself, and many a Christian soul,
Death, desolation, ruin and decay:
It cannot be avoided but by this;
It will not be avoided but by this.
Therefore, good mother,—I must can you so—
Be the attorney of my love to her:
Plead what I will be, not what I have been;
Not my deserts, but what I will deserve:
Urge the necessity and state of times,
And be not peevish-fond in great designs.

4. King Lear – Act II, Scene 4

Lear:

O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man’s life is cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady:
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st
Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need- Y
ou heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age; wretched in both.
If it be you that stirs these daughters’ hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,
And let not women’s weapons, water drops,
Stain my man’s cheeks! No, you unnatural hags!
I will have such revenges on you both
That all the world shall- I will do such things-
What they are yet, I know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth! You think I’ll weep.
No, I’ll not weep.
I have full cause of weeping, but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws
Or ere I’ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!

5. The Merchant of Venice – Act III, Scene 2

Bassanio:

O sweet Portia,
Here are a few of the unpleasant’st words
That ever blotted paper! Gentle lady,
When I did first impart my love to you,
I freely told you, all the wealth I had
Ran in my veins, I was a gentleman;
And then I told you true: and yet, dear lady,
Rating myself at nothing, you shall see
How much I was a braggart. When I told you
My state was nothing, I should then have told you
That I was worse than nothing; for, indeed,
I have engaged myself to a dear friend,
Engaged my friend to his mere enemy,
To feed my means. Here is a letter, lady;
The paper as the body of my friend,
And every word in it a gaping wound,
Issuing life-blood. But is it true, Salerio?
Have all his ventures fail’d? What, not one hit?
From Tripolis, from Mexico and England,
From Lisbon, Barbary and India?
And not one vessel ‘scape the dreadful touch
Of merchant-marring rocks?

6. A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Act II, Scene 2

Puck:

Through the forest have I gone.
But Athenian found I none,
On whose eyes I might approve
This flower’s force in stirring love.
Night and silence..Who is here?
Weeds of Athens he doth wear:
This is he, my master said,
Despised the Athenian maid;
And here the maiden, sleeping sound,
On the dank and dirty ground.
Pretty soul! she durst not lie
Near this lack-love, this kill-courtesy.
Churl, upon thy eyes I throw
All the power this charm doth owe.
When thou wakest, let love forbid
Sleep his seat on thy eyelid:
So awake when I am gone;
For I must now to Oberon.

7. Macbeth – Act II, Scene 1

Macbeth:

Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use.
Mine eyes are made the fools o’ the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still,
And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. There’s no such thing:
It is the bloody business which informs
Thus to mine eyes. Now o’er the one halfworld
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain’d sleep; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate’s offerings, and wither’d murder,
Alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace.
With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
[A bell rings]
I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

8. Troilus and Cressida – Act V, Scene 2

Troilus:

This she? no, this is Diomed’s Cressida:
If beauty have a soul, this is not she;
If souls guide vows, if vows be sanctimonies,
If sanctimony be the gods’ delight,
If there be rule in unity itself,
This is not she. O madness of discourse,
That cause sets up with and against itself!
Bi-fold authority! where reason can revolt
Without perdition, and loss assume all reason
Without revolt: this is, and is not, Cressid.
Within my soul there doth conduce a fight
Of this strange nature that a thing inseparate
Divides more wider than the sky and earth,
And yet the spacious breadth of this division
Admits no orifex for a point as subtle
As Ariachne’s broken woof to enter.
Instance, O instance! strong as Pluto’s gates;
Cressid is mine, tied with the bonds of heaven:
Instance, O instance! strong as heaven itself;
The bonds of heaven are slipp’d, dissolved, and loosed;
And with another knot, five-finger-tied,
The fractions of her faith, orts of her love,
The fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy relics
Of her o’er-eaten faith, are bound to Diomed.

9. Twelfth Night, Or What You Will – Act IV, Scene 3

Sebastian:

This is the air; that is the glorious sun;
This pearl she gave me, I do feel’t and see’t;
And though ’tis wonder that enwraps me thus,
Yet ’tis not madness. Where’s Antonio, then?
I could not find him at the Elephant:
Yet there he was; and there I found this credit,
That he did range the town to seek me out.
His counsel now might do me golden service;
For though my soul disputes well with my sense,
That this may be some error, but no madness,
Yet doth this accident and flood of fortune
So far exceed all instance, all discourse,
That I am ready to distrust mine eyes
And wrangle with my reason that persuades me
To any other trust but that I am mad
Or else the lady’s mad; yet, if ’twere so,
She could not sway her house, command her followers,
Take and give back affairs and their dispatch
With such a smooth, discreet and stable bearing
As I perceive she does: there’s something in’t
That is deceiveable. But here the lady comes.

10. Julius Caesar – Act III, Scene 1

Antony:

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,—
Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips,
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue—
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter’d with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
\With carrion men, groaning for burial.
[Enter a Servant]
You serve Octavius Caesar, do you not?

Any student of theatre would do well to rehearse from these monologues for men.

Shakespeare Monologues For Women

1. A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Act III, Scene 2

Hermia:“O spite! O hell! I see you all are bent
To set against me for your merriment:
If you were civil and knew courtesy,
You would not do me thus much injury.
Can you not hate me, as I know you do,
But you must join in souls to mock me too?
If you were men, as men you are in show,
You would not use a gentle lady so;
To vow, and swear, and superpraise my parts,
When I am sure you hate me with your hearts.
You both are rivals, and love Hermia;
And now both rivals, to mock Helena:
A trim exploit, a manly enterprise,
To conjure tears up in a poor maid’s eyes
With your derision! none of noble sort
Would so offend a virgin, and extort
A poor soul’s patience, all to make you sport.”

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

Download This Monologue Here

2. The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene 2

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?

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

Download This Monologue Here

3. Troilus and Cressida – Act I, Scene 2

Cressida: Words, vows, gifts, tears, and love’s full sacrifice,
He offers in another’s enterprise;
But more in Troilus thousandfold I see
Than in the glass of Pandar’s praise may be;
Yet hold I off. Women are angels, wooing:
Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.
That she beloved knows nought that knows not this:
Men prize the thing ungain’d more than it is:
That she was never yet that ever knew
Love got so sweet as when desire did sue.
Therefore this maxim out of love I teach:
Achievement is command; ungain’d, beseech:
Then though my heart’s content firm love doth bear,
Nothing of that shall from mine eyes appear.

Age: 20s 30s
Gender: Female
From: Monologues From Plays
Type: Classical
One minute monologue: Yes

Download This Monologue Here

4. Macbeth – Act IV, Scene 3 (this one is popular but we love it)

Lady Macbeth: The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry ‘Hold, hold!’

Age: 20s 30s 40s 50s
Gender: Female
From: Monologues From Plays
Type: Classical
One minute monologue: No

Download This Monologue Here

5. Twelfth Night, Or What You Will – Act III, Scene 1 

Olivia: O, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful
In the contempt and anger of his lip!
A murderous guilt shows not itself more soon
Than love that would seem hid: love’s night is noon.
Cesario, by the roses of the spring,
By maidhood, honour, truth and every thing,
I love thee so, that, maugre all thy pride,
Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide.
Do not extort thy reasons from this clause,
For that I woo, thou therefore hast no cause,
But rather reason thus with reason fetter,
Love sought is good, but given unsought better.

Age: 20s 30s 40s
Gender: Female
From: Monologues From Plays
Type: Classical
One minute monologue: Yes

Download This Monologue Here

6. King Lear – Act I, Scene 4 

Goneril: This admiration, sir, is much o’ th’ savour
Of other your new pranks. I do beseech you
To understand my purposes aright.
As you are old and reverend, you should be wise.
Here do you keep a hundred knights and squires;
Men so disorder’d, so debosh’d, and bold
That this our court, infected with their manners,
Shows like a riotous inn. Epicurism and lust
Make it more like a tavern or a brothel
Than a grac’d palace. The shame itself doth speak
For instant remedy. Be then desir’d
By her that else will take the thing she begs
A little to disquantity your train,
And the remainder that shall still depend
To be such men as may besort your age,
Which know themselves, and you.

Age: 20s 30s 40s
Gender: Male
From: Monologues From Plays
Type: Classical
One minute monologue: No

Download This Monologue Here

7. Julius Caesar – Act II, Scene 2 

Calpurnia: Caesar, I never stood on ceremonies,
Yet now they fright me. There is one within,
Besides the things that we have heard and seen,
Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.
A lioness hath whelped in the streets;
And graves have yawn’d, and yielded up their dead;
Fierce fiery warriors fought upon the clouds,
In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;
The noise of battle hurtled in the air,
Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan,
And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.
O Caesar! these things are beyond all use,
And I do fear them.

Age: 20s 30s 40s
Gender: Female
From: Monologues From Plays
Type: Classical
One minute monologue: Yes

Download This Monologue here

8. The Taming of the Shrew – Act IV, Scene 3 

Kate: The more my wrong, the more his spite appears.
What, did he marry me to famish me?
Beggars that come unto my father’s door
Upon entreaty have a present alms;
If not, elsewhere they meet with charity;
But I, who never knew how to entreat,
Nor never needed that I should entreat,
Am starv’d for meat, giddy for lack of sleep;
With oaths kept waking, and with brawling fed;
And that which spites me more than all these wants-
He does it under name of perfect love;
As who should say, if I should sleep or eat,
‘Twere deadly sickness or else present death.
I prithee go and get me some repast;
I care not what, so it be wholesome food.

Age: 20s 30s
Gender: Female
From: Monologues From Plays
Type: Classical
One minute monologue: Yes

Download This Monologue Here

9. Othello – Act I, Scene 3 (This one too) 

Desdemona: That I did love the Moor to live with him,
My downright violence and storm of fortunes
May trumpet to the world: my heart’s subdued
Even to the very quality of my lord:
I saw Othello’s visage in his mind,
And to his honour and his valiant parts
Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate.
So that, dear lords, if I be left behind,
A moth of peace, and he go to the war,
The rites for which I love him are bereft me,
And I a heavy interim shall support
By his dear absence. Let me go with him.

Age: 20s 30s 40s 50s
Gender: Female
From: Monologues From Plays
Type: Classical
One minute monologue: Yes

Download This Monologue Here

10. Richard III – Act IV, Scene 4 

Margaret: Bear with me; I am hungry for revenge,
And now I cloy me with beholding it.
Thy Edward he is dead, that stabb’d my
Edward: Thy other Edward dead, to quit my Edward;
Young York he is but boot, because both they
Match not the high perfection of my loss:
Thy Clarence he is dead that kill’d my Edward;
And the beholders of this tragic play,
The adulterate Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Grey,
Untimely smother’d in their dusky graves.
Richard yet lives, hell’s black intelligencer,
Only reserved their factor, to buy souls
And send them thither: but at hand, at hand,
Ensues his piteous and unpitied end:
Earth gapes, hell burns, fiends roar, saints pray.
To have him suddenly convey’d away.
Cancel his bond of life, dear God, I prey,
That I may live to say, The dog is dead!

Age: 20s 30s 40s 50s
Gender: Female
From: Monologues From Plays
Type: Classical
One minute monologue: No

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Please check out more monologues for women here .

The post Shakespeare Monologues That Aren’t That Popular 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

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