871 Best Play Monologues

Alcott (Violet)

Category: Play Role: Violet From: Alcott

Violet says

Your instincts are right. I can’t wait for when you fall on your face. I hate you so much. So so much. So so so much. I’ve done everything. I cut my hair. She doesn’t notice. I dye my hair, I dye it back, shave it off, grow it back. Nothing. Change my eye shadow. Change my lipstick. I put on my good bra and the tight dress and glitter but nothing. Nothing. You wear that and have that face and don’t write a fucking word and she’s all over you drooling like Prague shouldn’t drool.

Agamemnon (Cassandra)

Agamemnon (Cassandra)

Category: Play Role: Cassandra From: Agamemnon

Oh, mistery, misery! Again comes on me
The terrible labor of true prophecy, dizzying prelude.
Do you see these who sit before the house,
Children, like the shapes of dreams?
Children who seem to have been killed by their kinsfolk,
Filling their hands with meat, flesh of themselves,
Guts and entrails, handfuls of lament –
Clear what they hold – the same their father tasted.
For this I declare someone is plotting vengeance –
A lion? Lion but coward, that lurks in bed,
Good watchdog truly against the lord’s return-
My lord, for I must bear the yoke of serfdom.
A daring criminal! Female murders male.
It is Agamemnon’s death that you shall witness!
Ah, what a fire it is! It comes upon me.
It is the two-foot lioness who beds
Beside a wolf, the noble lion away,
It is she will kill me! Brewing a poisoned cup
She will mix my punishment while sharpening
The dagger for her husband; to pay back murder
For my being brought here. Destruction!
They call me crazy, like a fortune-teller,
A poor starved beggar-woman – and I bore it!
And now the prophet undoing his prophetess
Has brought me to this final darkness.
Instead of my father’s altar the executioner’s block
Waits me the victim, red with my hot blood.
I will go in and have the courage to die.
Look, these gates are the gates of Death.
I greet them, and pray that I may meet a
Deft and mortal stroke so that I may close my
Eyes as my blood ebbs in an easy death.

A Raisin in the Sun (Beneatha)

A Raisin in the Sun (Beneatha)

Category: Play Role: Beneatha From: A Raisin in the Sun

BENEATHA: Me?…Me?…Me, I”m nothing…Me. When I was very small…we used to take our sleds out in the wintertime and the only hills we had were the ice-covered stone steps of some houses down the street. And we used to fill them in with snow and make them smooth and slide down them all day…and it was very dangerous you know…far too steep…and sure enough one day a kid named Rufus came down too fast and hit the sidewalk… and we saw his face just split open right there in front of us… And I remember standing there looking at his bloody open face thinking that was the end of Rufus. But the ambulance came and they took him to the hospital they fixed the broken bones and they sewed it all up…and the next time I saw Rufus he just had a little line down the middle of his face…I never got over that…That that was what one person could do for another, fix him up -sew up the problem, make him all right again. That was the most marvelous thing in the world…I wanted to do that. I always thought it was the one concrete thing in the world that a human being could do. Fix up the sick, you know -and make them whole again. This was truly being God.No -I wanted to cure. It used to be so important to me. I wanted to cure. It used to matter. I used to care. I mean about people and how their bodies hurt…I think I stopped.RelatedShareTweetPin

That that was what one person could do for another, fix him up -sew up the problem, make him all right again. That was the most marvelous thing in the world…I wanted to do that. I always thought it was the one concrete thing in the world that a human being could do. Fix up the sick, you know -and make them whole again. This was truly being God.No -I wanted to cure. It used to be so important to me. I wanted to cure. It used to matter. I used to care. I mean about people and how their bodies hurt…I think I stopped.RelatedShareTweetPin

No -I wanted to cure. It used to be so important to me. I wanted to cure. It used to matter. I used to care. I mean about people and how their bodies hurt…I think I stopped.RelatedShareTweetPin

I think I stopped.RelatedShareTweetPin

A Thing Of Beauty (Amy)

Category: Play Role: Amy From: A Thing Of Beauty

Amy says

We don’t make art. Art makes itself through us. But we have to be open to let the muse in. I mean the state of being where it’s not just us doing it. Time passes and you don’t notice. It’s like you’re in a trance. You come out and you feel like you were led on forces beyond you and just touched God. It doesn’t happen every time. For some people almost never. But it’s the reason to make something. It’s the dirty secret of why people are really artists. It’s the chance you get to commune. That high you get from creation when you’re with the muse . . . Or with God or whatever you want to call it. And you come out of it and you’re like how did I do that? It couldn’t have been me. It must have been someone else.

I think athletes know about it too. Scientists. Mathematicians. They all know what it is to get in the zone. It’s just that for me, the way to that thing is through painting … Or sculpting. But the muse won’t come if you’re thinking about your critics. It’s why Fred doesn’t read reviews. It’s why artists drink. That shuts up the critical voices for a little while, at first, but it destroys you other ways I guess. I don’t know. I’m not an alcoholic. But I am addicted to making art with my muse. If you could only access that all the time– but you can’t. Or at least I can’t. But that’s the flaw of criticism.

You think the artist is creating something for you. But she’s not. She’s feeding her addiction. The art is just the byproduct of the process. The art is for the artist, not for the people.

A Thing Of Beauty (Arthur)

Category: Play Role: Arthur From: A Thing Of Beauty

Arthur says

Atrocious. Juvenile. Bland. Obvious. Derivative. There is no skill whatsoever. It’s an imitation of other hacks rehashed to make this hack look less of a hack. I’m offended that I was even asked to come to this event. The maker of this dreck has single-handedly devalued what it is to be a human while proving his parents right. He should have been a dentist. At least then it would be clear that his intent to cause us all pain and misery was not accidental. It makes me want to do physical harm to myself. I would rather slit my wrists than have to look at it. Please stab me. Please stab me to death so I can get this image out of my retinas. I just want this nightmare to be over. And I do mean nightmare. I don’t speak in hyperbole. Someone should break his arms so he can never do anything like this ever again. Perhaps his legs too, lest he try to paint with his toes. Better still, he should be shot in the head and his organs harvested to repay any persons of sub-par intelligence who may have at one time purchased his art. No, not “art.” “Work?” Not “work.” What can we say? Scribbling? Leavings? Ejaculate? It makes my eyes hurt.

A Thing Of Beauty (Fred)

Category: Play Role: Fred From: A Thing Of Beauty

Fred says

I know you don’t want to pick up the phone because you know it’s me, but I really wish you would. Marie? It’s your father, Marie. I mean, I understand. I do. It’s just, sometimes when I stop to get something to drink–No, not that kind of drink–I don’t -not now–but some water or something. I go hours and hours without eating sometimes but you have to stop now and again. But what I was saying, whenever I stop working these days, you’re the only think I think of. If I’m honest with myself, most of my work is about you. I want to hear from you. I want to hear your voice. Maybe you’ll call me or maybe next time I call, you’ll pick up. I won’t be around forever. I’m not dying. That’s not what this call is about, but I’m not young anymore either. I was hoping -anyway, give me a call if you can. I talk to your mom sometimes. We’re talking again. She says you’re doing really well. She’s proud. I’d like to be proud too if you’ll let me. Call me if you…

(The phone beeps signaling the end of the message.)

A Woman of No Importance (Gerald)

Category: Play Role: Gerald From: A Woman of No Importance

Gerald says

Mother, how changeable you are! You don’t seem to know your own mind for a single moment. An hour and a half ago in the Drawing-room you agreed to the whole thing; now you turn round and make objections, and try to force me to give up my one chance in life. Yes, my one chance. You don’t suppose that men like Lord Illingworth are to be found every day, do you, mother? It is very strange that when I have had such a wonderful piece of good luck, the one person to put difficulties in my way should be my own mother. Besides, you know, mother, I love Hester Worsley. Who could help loving her? I love her more than I have ever told you, far more. And if I had a position, if I had prospects, I could – I could ask her to – Don’t you understand now, mother, what it means to me to be Lord Illingworth’s secretary? To start like that is to find a career ready for one – before one – waiting for one. If I were Lord Illingworth’s secretary I could ask Hester to be my wife. As a wretched bank clerk with a hundred a year it would be an impertinence. Then I have my ambition left, at any rate. That is something – I am glad I have that! You have always tried to crush my ambition, mother – haven’t you? You have told me that the world is a wicked place, that success is not worth having, that society is shallow, and all that sort of thing – well, I don’t believe it, mother. I think the world must be delightful. I think society must be exquisite. I think success is a thing worth having. You have been wrong in all that you taught me, mother, quite wrong. Lord Illingworth is a successful man. He is a fashionable man. He is a man who lives in the world and for it. Well, I would give anything to be just like Lord Illingworth.

A Woman of No Importance (Hester)

Category: Play Role: Hester From: A Woman of No Importance

Hester says

We are trying to build up life, Lady Hunstanton, on a better, truer, purer basis than life rests on here. This sounds strange to you all, no doubt. How could it sound other than strange? You rich people in England, you don’t know how you are living. How could you know? You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. Living, as you all do, on others and them, you sneer at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season. With all your pomp and wealth and art you don’t know how to live – you don’t even know that. You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing. You have lost life’s secret. Oh, your English society seems to me shallow, selfish, foolish. It has blinded its eyes, and stopped its ears. It lies like a leper in purple. It sits like a dead thing smeared with gold. It is all wrong, all wrong.

A Woman of No Importance (Mrs. Allonby)

Category: Play Role: Mrs. Allonby From: A Woman of No Importance

Mrs. Allon says

He should persistently compromise us in public, and treat us with absolute respect when we are alone. And yet he should be always ready to have a perfectly terrible scene, whenever we want one, and to become miserable, absolutely miserable, at a moment’s notice, and to overwhelm us with just reproaches in less than twenty minutes, and to be positively violent at the end of half an hour, and to leave us for ever at a quarter to eight, when we have to go and dress for dinner. And when, after that, one has seen him for really the last time, and he has refused to take back the little things he has given one, and promised never to communicate with one again, or to write one any foolish letters, he should be perfectly broken-hearted, and telegraph to one all day long, and send one little notes every half-hour a private hansom, and dine quite alone at the club, so that every one should know how unhappy he was. And after a whole dreadful week, during which one has gone about everywhere with one’s husband, just to show how absolutely lonely one was, he may be given a third last parting, in the evening, and then, if his conduct has been quite irreproachable, and one has behaved really badly to him, he should be allowed to admit that he has been entirely in the wrong, and when he has admitted that, it becomes a woman’s duty to forgive, and one can do it all over again from the beginning, with variations.

A Woman of No Importance (Mrs. Arbuthnot)

Category: Play Role: Mrs. Arbuthnot From: A Woman of No Importance

Mrs. Arbuthnot says

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