Monologues

No, dear reader, I do not make a pun at my name, 'mono,' beginning a thread devoted to monologues. Of course, post any quotes from plays you particularly enjoyed, but, as a reference for others searching for decent monologues from admired playwrights, especially post good monologues.
Having just finished reading Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, I wanted to post Faustus' monologue while immediately preceding and his actual descent into hell. This begins on line 140 of Act V, Scene II. *sigh, it reminds me how much I would love to put this play on stage . . . someday. Enjoy.

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Faustus: O Faustus!
Now has thou but one bare hour to live
And then thou must be damned perpetually.
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven
That time may cease and midnight never come:
Fair nature's eye, rise, rise again and make
Perpetual day, or let this hour be but a year,
A month, a week, a natural day -
That Faustus may repent and save his soul.
O lente lente currite noctis equi!*
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike:
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned!
O, I'll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down?
See, see where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!
One drop of blood will save me. O my Christ! -
Rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!
Yet will I call on Him! O spare me, Lucifer! -
Where is it now? 'Tis gone: and see where God
Stretcheth out His arm and bends His ireful brows!
Mountains and hills, come, come and fall on me
And his me from the heavy wratch of God!
No?
Then will I headlong run into the earth.
Gape earth! O no, it will not harbor me.
You stars that reigned at my nativity,
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draws up Faustus like a foggy mist
Into the entrails of yon laboring cloud
That when you vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from your smoky mouths -
But let my soul mount and ascend to heaven!

The watch strikes.

O half the hour is passed! 'Twill all be passed anon!
O God,
If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul,
Yet for Christ's sake, whose blod hath ransomed me,
Impose some end to my incessant pain!
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,
A hundred thousand, and at last be saved!
No end is limited to damned souls!
Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul?
Or why is this immortal that thou hast?
O, Pythagoras' metempsychosis, wert that true
This soul should fly from me and I be changed
Into some brutish beast.
All beasts are happy, for when they die
Their souls are soon dissolved in elements.
But mind must live still to be plagued in hell!
Cursed be the parents that engendered me!
No Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer
That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven.

The clock strikes twelve.

It strikes, it strikes! Now body, turn to air,
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell!
O soul, be changed into small water-drops
And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found.

Thunder, and enter the Devils

My God, my God! Look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile!
Ugly Hell, gape not! Come not Lucifer!
I'll burn my books! - O Mephostophilis!

Exeunt Devils with Faustus

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*[I]O . . . equis: slowly, slowly run, O horses of the night (Latin).

one of the most famous monologues ever:

HAMLET:
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 wished. 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 despised 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 fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered 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 enterprise of great pitch 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 remembered.

Our Town, by Thornton Wider, is one of my favorite plays. It kind of cuts to the heart of what's significant in life. It's late,and I'm tired...I'm copying this so I don't have to type it all:

Emily has just died in childbirth and has been given the chance to go back home to a time she wishes to see. Looking at her mother and father whom she will never see again, she realizes what a mistake it was to have gone back.

Emily: (softly, more in wonder than in grief)
I can't bear it. They're so young and beautiful. Why did they ever have to get old? Mama, I'm here. I'm grown up. I love you all, everything. - I can't look at everything hard enough. (pause, talking to her mother who does not hear her. She speaks with mounting urgency) Oh, Mama, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I'm dead. You're a grandmother, Mama. I married George Gibbs, Mama. Wally's dead, too. Mama, his appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway. We felt just terrible about it - don't you remember? But, just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're happy. Let's look at one another. (pause, looking desperate because she has received no answer. She speaks in a loud voice, forcing herself to not look at her mother) I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. (she breaks down sobbing, she looks around) I didn't realize. All that was going on in life and we never noticed. Take me back - up the hill - to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover's Corners? Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking? and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-ironed dresses and hot baths? and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you. (she asks abruptly through her tears) Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? - every, every minute? (she sighs) I'm ready to go back. I should have listened to you. That's all human beings are! Just blind people.

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Originally Posted by lavendar1

Our Town, by Thornton Wider, is one of my favorite plays. It kind of cuts to the heart of what's significant in life. It's late,and I'm tired...I'm copying this so I don't have to type it all:

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Very nice, lavendar! Perhaps I will have to read that sometime . . . ;)

Another monologue I always enjoyed, coming from The Crucible by Arthur Miller, ACT IV Scene VI:

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Elizabeth:Elizabeth: John, it come to naught that I should forgive you, if you'll not forgive yourself. It is not my soul, John, it is yours. Only be sure of this, for I know it now: Whatever you will do, it is a good man does it. I have read my heart this three month, John. (Pause) I have sins of my own to count. It needs a cold wife to prompt lechery. Better you should know me! You take my sins upon you, John. John, I counted myself so plain, so poorly made, no honest love could come to me! Suspicion kissed you when I did; I never knew how I should say my love. It were a cold house I kept!

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Though not exactly a monologue, more a conversation, I always thought this selection from The Diary Of Anne Frank suits the whole play with perfection --

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Anne: Aren't adults awful? Aren't they impossible? Treating us as if we were still in the nursery.

Peter: Don't let it bother you. It doesn't bother me.

Anne: I suppose you can't really blame them . . . they think back to what they were like at our age. They don't realize how much more advanced we are . . . When you think what wonderful discussions we've had! . . . I have so many questions in my mind, without any answers.

Anne: Look, Peter, the sky. What a lovely, lovely day! Aren't the clouds beautiful? You know what I do when it seems as if I couldn't stand being cooped up for one more minute? I think myself out. I think myself on a walk in the park where I used to go with Pim. Where the jonquils and the crocus and the violets grow down the slopes. You know the most wonderful part about thinking yourself out? You can have it any way you like. You can have roses and violets and chrysanthemums all blooming at the same time? It's funny? I used to take it all for granted? And now I've gone crazy about everything to do with nature. Haven't you?

Peter: I've gone crazy. I think if something doesn't happen soon? if we don't get out of here?I cant stand much more of it!

Anne: I wish you had a religion, Peter.

Peter: No, thanks! Not me!

Anne: Oh, I don't mean you have to be Orthodox, or believe in heaven and hell and purgatory and things? I just mean some religion? It doesn't matter what. Just to believe in something! When I think of all that's out there? The trees and flowers and seagulls, when I think of the dearness of you, Peter? And the goodness of people we know? Mr. Kraler, Miep, Dirk, the vegetable man, all risking their lives for us everyday? When I think of these good things, I'm not afraid any more? I find myself, and God, and I?

Peter: That's fine! But when I begin to think, I get mad! Look at us, hiding out for two years. Not able to move! Caught here like? Waiting for them to come and get us? And all for what?

Anne: We're not the only people that've had to suffer. There've always been people that've had to, sometimes one race, sometimes another, and yet?

Peter: That doesn't make me feel any better!

Anne: I know it's terrible, trying to have any faith, when people are doing such horrible, but you know what I sometime think? I think the world may be going through a phase, the way I was with Mother. It'll pass, maybe not for hundreds of years, but some day. I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are really good at heart.

Peter: I want to see something now? Not a thousand years from now!

Anne: But, Peter, if you'd only look at it as part of a great pattern, that we're just a little minute in the life? Listen to us, going at each other like a couple of stupid grownups! Look at the sky now. Isn't it lovely?

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This comes from a play that was co-written by Will Shakespeare and is called "Sir Thomas More". Thomas More (a lawyer) is sent to St Martin in the Fields, to put down a riot. The rioters are angry about the 'strangers' in their midst (by 'strangers' they mean foreigners) and they have the usual complaints about foreigners... that they take our jobs and our homes and they should be sent back home etc. Useful to think of it as representing not only foreigners but any minority groups. It's a plea for humanity really. I hope it makes us all see that prejudice exists but that even in the 'old' days there were those who opposed and challenged it. (by the way I believe its the only existing example of Will's handwriting and is in the British Museum in London) Anyway, someone cries out that the foreigners should be removed, and sir Thomas answers....

"Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise hath chid down all the majesty of England. Imagine that you see the wretched strangers, with their babies at their backs and their poor luggage, plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation, and that you sit as kings in your desires, authority quite silenced by your brawn. What had you got? I'll tell you; You had taught how insolence and strong hand should prevail; how order should be quelled; and by this pattern, not one of you should live an aged man. For other ruffians as their fancies wrought, with self-same hand, self-reason and self-right, would 'shark' on you; And men, like ravenous fishes would feed on one another.

Grant that the king (as he is clement if the offender mourned) should come so short of your great trespass as but to,..banish you. Whither wuold you go? What country by the nature of your trespass should give you harbour? Go ye to France or Flanders, to any German province, to Spain or Portugal...nay, anywhere that not adheres to England...why, you must needst be strangers. Would you be pleased to find a nation of such barbarous temper, that beaking out in hideous violence would not afford you an abode on earth? Whet their detested knives against your throats, spurned you like dogs and like as if that God owned not, nor made not you. Nor that the elements were not all appropriate to your comforts but 'chartered' unto them! What would you feel, to be thus used?

This is the strangest case. And this! Your Mountainous inhumanity!"

Hope it hits home!

"...and the band played waltzing matilda" (McGowan)

Ever since helping put Shakespeare's Macbeth on stage, I have loved this monologue - always a classic:

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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-oppressèd 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' th' 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 half-world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleep. Witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings; and withered murder,
Alarumed 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.

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Not really in literature, but when I think Monologues I think Kids in the Hall and especailly Scott. So I decided to give all a sample and began to search the web and I found one that I like, and thought was hiklarious when I first saw it. For those who don't know Kids in the Hall is Canada's equvilant to Monty Python and Scott B(can't remember his last name) was accually a figure head for the North American Homosexuality movement. He was brave and funny, being one of the first openly gay entertains in North American history, he came out on the third aniversy show to much of the surprise of the other four men in the group.

So here is Scott's monologue on lax parents who revuise to teach their childern English:

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Originally Posted by Scott: English

Scott: I speak English. Believe or not, there's a lot of people out there who don't. I find that sad. Why . . . why don't they speak English? Is it `cause they find it too difficult? That's ridiculous -- it's easy. I spoke it my whole life and I never had any problems. Is it because they don't like it? That's ludicrous. It's a great language. Whyyyy . . . Shakespeare's in English . . . barely. Maybe they don't speak it `cause it's not their first language. So? I mean, where were their parents? Why, why did they teach `em a language that nobody speaks?
And, and it's not like they speak just one other language -- no, no, there's tons of `em like Spanish, or German, or check this one out: Hindi. In France, everyone speaks French `cause they think it's cool. Gives `em, gives `em an excuse to smoke.

I was in this country, I don't want to say its name cause I don't want to be called racist, so let me just call `em . . . "they." Anyways, my theory is they don't even understand each other, they just run around jabberin' away in gibberish pretendin' to understand each other just to make you feel like a jerk! You know? This happened to me. I'm in this little store in Holland and I asked the guy behind the counter for razor blades. He looks at me real funny like I'm a fag or somethin' and says, "Donna speakah eenglaize" in this really weird accent. I . . . I don't know what to do, I mean, what's wrong with this clown? So, so, I repeat it real slowly like I would to a dog and then he says it again, "Donna speakah eenglaize." So I don't know what to do, so I reach over the counter, grab the blades and walk out. Uh, what would you do? The guy overreacts, you know, Europeans. Runs after me yelling at me in some weird accent, Hollandaise, I guess, and an old woman in wooden shoes comes clompin' up to see what the problem is. So I tell her to go back to dipping candles or whatever it is they do. She pretends not to understand me. So I hit her. She overreacts. Dies. You know, Europeans.

Voice over: Lights out, _____.

Scott: What did he say? Why doesn't he speak English? See what I'm tellin' ya?

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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.

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That is so powerful! Some people tell me that books aren't suspensful or interesting enough for them . . . how could you put the play down at this point??

One of many decent and humorous quotes from A Midsummer Night's Dream of Shakespeare:

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Helena: How happy some o'er other some can be!
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;
He will not know what all but he do know.
And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities.
Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste;
Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste.
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
So the boy Love is perjured everywhere.
For ere Demetrius looked on Hermia's eyne,
He hailed down oaths that he was only mine;
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
So he dissolved, and show'rs of oaths did melt.
I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight.
Then to the wood will he to-morrow night
Pursue her; and for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense.
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his sight thither and back again.

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Perhaps one of my favorite monologues - from Electra by Euripides. I recommend the Emily Townsend Vermeule translation, but I found this one on a Google search:

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Electra: Let me then speak; but where shall I begin.
Thy insults to recount? With what conclude?
Or how pursue the train of my discourse?
I never with the opening morn forbore
To breathe my silent plaints, which to thy face
I wished to utter, from my former fears
If e'er I should be free: I now am free.
Now, to thee living what I wished to speak,
I will recount. Thou hast destroyed my hopes,
Made me an orphan, him and me bereft
Of a dear father, by no wrongs enforced.
My mother basely wedding, thou hast slain
The glorious leader of the Grecian arms,
Yet never didst thou tread the fields of Troy.
Nay, such thy folly, thou couldst hope to find
My mother, shouldst thou wed her, nought of ill
To thee intending: hence my father's bed
By thee was foully wronged. But let him know
Who with forbidden love another's wife
Corrupts, then by necessity constrained
Receives her as his own, should he expect
To find that chastity preserved to him,
Which to her former bed was not preserved,
He must be wretched from his frustrate hope.
And what a life of misery didst thou lead,
Though not by thee deemed ill? Thy conscious mind
Of thy unholy nuptials felt the guilt:
My mother knew that she an impious man
In thee had wedded; and, polluted both,
Thou hadst her fortune, she thy wickedness.
'Mongst all the Argives, this had fame divulged,
The man obeys the wife, and not the wife
Her husband: shameful this, when in the house
The woman sovereign rules, and not the man.
And when of children speaks the public voice
As from the mother, not the father sprung,
To me it is unpleasing. He who weds
A wife of higher rank and nobler blood,
Sinks into nothing, in her splendour lost.
Thus truth unknown, thy pride was most deceived,
Thyself as great thou vauntedst, in the power
Of riches vainly elevate; but these
Are nothing, their enjoyment frail and brief;
Nature is firm, not riches; she remains
For ever, and triumphant lifts her head.
But unjust wealth, which sojourns with the base,
Glitters for some short space, then flies away.
To women thy demeanour I shall pass
Unmentioned, for to speak it ill beseems
A virgin's tongue; yet I shall make it known
By indistinct suggestion. Arrogance
Swelled thy vain mind, for that the royal house
Was thine, and beauty graced thy perfect form.
But be not mine a husband whose fair face
In softness with a virgin's vies, but one
Of manly manners; for the sons of such
By martial toils are trained to glorious deeds:
The beauteous only to the dance give grace.
Perish, thou wretch, to nothing noble formed;
Such was thou found, and vengeance on thy head
At length hath burst; so perish all, that dare
Atrocious deeds! Nor deem, though fair his course
At first, that he hath vanquished Justice ere
He shall have reached the goal, the end of life.

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Does anyone else feel strongly reminded of Carl Jung? :D

I love this one. I performed it for a Forensics presentation. Hard to memorize, but very powerful.


What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day

i got a brother in law named Westmoreland...

Really. That is a very uncommon name.

Angelo, however you might view him as a character, has a fantastic monologue where he tries to figure things out:

To the best of recollection:

From thee, even from thy virtue.
What's this? What's this?
Is this her fault or mine,
The tempter or the tempter who sins most?
Not she, nor doth she tempt
But it is I that lying by the violet in the sun
Do as the carion does not as the flower
Corrupt with virtuous season.
Can it be that modesty may more betray our sense
Than woman's lightness?
Having waste ground enough, shall we desire
To raise the sanctuary and pitch our evils there?
O fie, fie, fie. Where art thou?
Or what art thou, Angelo?
Dost thou desire her fouly for those things that
Make her good?
Oh, let her brother live.
Theves for their robery have authority
When judges steal themselves.
What, do I love her that I desire to see her face again
And feast upon those eyes?
O, cunning enemy that to catch a saint
With saints dost bait thy hook.
Never could the strumpet with all her double vigor,
Art and nature, once stir my temper
But this virtuous maid subdues me quite.
Ever 'til now, when men were fond
I smiled and wondered how.

I like these lines of Macbeth when Seyton informs him about the cry of women( in ActV Sc V ll 7-8). They reflect the full misery of Macbeth's
harrowing plight --- and show a personal and sensitive side of his character:

" I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
The time has been my senses would have cool'd
To hear a night-shriek,and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in't."
leading to the lines a little later :
"And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death."

We like Harding's monologue from "One Flew over Cuckoo Nest" by Wassermann. (yes, we are aware that it is based on Kesey) We don't have the english version at hand, but would like it if somebody would post it.
We mean the one where Harding starts with praising Nurse Ratched and ends up with saying what a witch she is. A wonderful monologue.
Of course, Chief Bromden's monologues are wonderful too.