Classical Monologues for Women Read online

  WHAT SHE WANTS / OBJECTIVES TO PLAY

  • To let him know in no uncertain terms this is not even a remote possibility.

  • To make him aware of the bigger political picture, rather than the smaller personal one, namely that his progeny should be conceived honourably and that marriage is a sacred institution.

  • To remain respectful, not to overstep the line in her refusal. Her eloquence and choice of language is reverential, and is careful not to offend.

  • To make him aware of his greater duties as a King.

  • To make him think that she believes she is only being tested for her loyalty to her husband.

  Countess of Salisbury

  But that your lips were sacred, my lord,

  You would profane the holy name of love.

  That love you offer me you cannot give,

  For Caesar owes that tribute to his queen;

  That love you beg of me I cannot give,

  For Sarah owes that duty to her lord.

  He that doth clip or counterfeit your stamp

  Shall die, my lord; and will your sacred self

  Commit high treason against the king of heaven,

  To stamp his image in forbidden metal,

  Forgetting your allegiance and your oath?

  In violating marriage’ sacred law,

  You break a greater honour than yourself.

  To be a king is of a younger house

  Than to be married: your progenitor,

  Sole reigning Adam on the universe,

  By God was honoured for a married man,

  But not by him anointed for a king.

  It is a penalty to break your statutes,

  Though not enacted with your highness’ hand;

  How much more to infringe the holy act

  Made by the mouth of God, seal’d with His hand?

  I know my sovereign in my husband’s love,

  Who now doth loyal service in his wars,

  Doth but to try the wife of Salisbury,

  Whether she will hear a wanton’s tale or no.

  Lest being therein guilty by my stay,

  From that, not from my liege, I turn away.

  GLOSSARY

  profane desecrate

  Caesar owes that tribute to his queen the sacrament of marriage applies even to monarchs

  Sarah owes that duty to her lord ‘Even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord’ (1 Peter, 3, 6)

  clip devalue

  is of a younger house is a more recent title

  wanton libertine

  The Two Gentlemen of Verona

  William Shakespeare (1593)

  WHO Julia, beloved of Proteus, a gentleman of Verona, 20s.

  WHERE In Julia’s private chamber. Verona.

  TO WHOM Lucetta, her waiting-woman.

  WHEN Contemporary with authorship.

  WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED Julia’s beloved Proteus has just been sent to Court in Milan by his father. They have had a tearful farewell, but now he has gone, and though she trusts him implicitly, she cannot bear the prospect of being away from him for so long. She decides to get Lucetta, her waiting-woman, to help disguise her as a man in order that she might follow and keep an eye on him.

  WHAT SHE WANTS / OBJECTIVES TO PLAY

  • To win Lucetta over with flattery and genuine regard – but she does need her onside.

  • To teach the extent to which real love will go.

  • To warn Lucetta that she will go anyway, it is inevitable – it will be easier with her support than without.

  • To win her compassion, sympathy and understanding.

  Julia

  Counsel, Lucetta. Gentle girl, assist me,

  And e’en in kind love I do conjure thee,

  Who art the table wherein all my thoughts

  Are visibly character’d and engrav’d,

  To lesson me, and tell me some good mean

  How with my honour I may undertake

  A journey to my loving Proteus.

  [LUCETTA. Alas, the way is wearisome and long.]

  A true devoted pilgrim is not weary

  To measure kingdoms with his feeble steps.

  Much less shall she that hath love’s wings to fly,

  And when the flight is made to one so dear,

  Of such divine perfection as Sir Proteus.

  [LUCETTA. Better forbear till Proteus make return.]

  O, know’st thou not his looks are my soul’s food?

  Pity the dearth that I have pinèd in

  By longing for that food so long a time.

  Didst thou but know the inly touch of love

  Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow

  As seek to quench the fire of love with words.

  [LUCETTA. I do not seek to quench your love’s hot fire,

  But qualify the fire’s extreme rage,

  Lest it should burn above the bounds of reason.]

  The more thou damm’st it up, the more it burns.

  The current that with gentle murmur glides,

  Thou know’st, being stopp’d, impatiently doth rage.

  But when his fair course is not hinderèd

  He makes sweet music with th’enamell’d stones,

  Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge

  He overtaketh in his pilgrimage.

  And so by many winding nooks he strays

  With willing sport to the wild ocean.

  Then let me go, and hinder not my course.

  I’ll be as patient as a gentle stream,

  And make a pastime of each weary step

  Till the last step have brought me to my love.

  And there I’ll rest as after much turmoil

  A blessèd soul doth in Elysium.

  GLOSSARY

  mean method

  dearth famine

  inly heartfelt

  qualify modify, diminish

  sedge reed

  Elysium paradise

  Richard III

  William Shakespeare (1594)

  WHO Lady Anne, the young widow of the murdered Price of Wales, late 20s or older.

  WHERE On the street, between St Paul’s and Chertsey monastery, the place of burial.

  TO WHOM The corpse of Henry VI and the bystanders.

  WHEN 1471.

  WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED Henry VI has been murdered, leaving Edward IV as king, though he is very sick. Richard, Duke of Gloucester is King Edward’s brother, and is determined to seize power himself.

  This speech comes in the second scene of the play, during the funeral procession of Henry VI. Lady Anne asks the pallbearers to lay down the corpse of her father-in-law, that she might say her final goodbye. She knows Richard is responsible for his death and that of her late husband.

  WHAT SHE WANTS / OBJECTIVES TO PLAY

  • To give due rights to her beloved father-in-law, the late King.

  • To curse Richard. She knows he is liable for all that has befallen the House of Lancaster, her family; she is raging on a private and almost domestic level.

  • To publicly denounce Richard, a conscious political act in itself.

  Lady Anne

  Set down, set down your honourable load,

  If honour may be shrouded in a hearse,

  Whilst I a while obsequiously lament

  Th’untimely fall of virtuous Lancaster.

  They set the coffin down.

  Poor key-cold figure of a holy king!

  Pale ashes of the House of Lancaster!

  Thou bloodless remnant of that royal blood!

  Be it lawful that I invocate thy ghost,

  To hear the lamentations of poor Anne,

  Wife to thy Edward, to thy slaughter’d son,

  Stabb’d by the selfsame hand that made these wounds!

  Lo, in these windows that let forth thy life,

  I pour the helpless balm of my poor eyes.

  O curs’d be the hand that made these holes!

  Curs’d the blood that let this
blood from hence!

  Curs’d the heart that had the heart to do it!

  More direful hap betide that hated wretch,

  That makes us wretched by the death of thee,

  Than I can wish to wolves, to spiders, toads,

  Or any creeping venom’d thing that lives!

  If ever he have child, abortive be it,

  Prodigious, and untimely brought to light,

  Whose ugly and unnatural aspect

  May fright the hopeful mother at the view;

  And that be heir to his unhappiness!

  If ever he have wife, let her be made

  More miserable by the death of him

  Than I am made by my young lord and thee!

  Come, now towards Chertsey with your holy load,

  Taken from Paul’s to be interr’d there.

  The gentlemen lift the coffin.

  And still, as you are weary of this weight,

  Rest you, whiles I lament King Henry’s corpse.

  GLOSSARY

  obsequiously with devotion

  helpless balm ineffective medicine

  direful hap betide disastrous fortune visit

  prodigious monstrous

  aspect appearance

  The Comedy of Errors

  William Shakespeare (1595)

  WHO Adriana, wife of Antipholus of Ephesus, 20s.

  WHERE A street in Ephesus.

  TO WHOM To a man she believes to be her husband, in the presence of her sister Luciana.

  WHEN Contemporary with authorship.

  WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED Adriana is a loving, but jealous wife, who is regularly put out by her husband’s attentions to other women. The confusion and error at the centre of this play further fan the flames of this jealousy. In this scene she accosts whom she believes to be her husband, Antipholus, in the street, ordering him home to eat. The man is actually her husband’s long-lost twin.

  WHAT SHE WANTS / OBJECTIVES TO PLAY

  • To make him feel terrible about his lack of attention and her suspicion that he is seeing someone else.

  • To return him to his former self, the man once so besotted with her, by both charming and berating him.

  • To remind him they are married – they are one; well, she is his better half, and what he feels impacts on her directly.

  • To warn him: if the tables were turned and it was she who was suspected of having an affair, he would be going crazy; he is getting off lightly.

  Adriana

  Ay, ay, Antipholus, look strange and frown:

  Some other mistress hath thy sweet aspects.

  I am not Adriana, nor thy wife.

  The time was once when thou unurg’d wouldst vow

  That never words were music to thine ear,

  That never object pleasing in thine eye,

  That never touch well welcome to thy hand,

  That never meat sweet-savour’d in thy taste,

  Unless I spake, or look’d, or touch’d, or carv’d to thee.

  How comes it now, my husband, O how comes it

  That thou art then estrangèd from thyself? –

  Thy ‘self’ I call it, being strange to me

  That, undividable, incorporate,

  Am better than thy dear self’s better part.

  Ah, do not tear away thyself from me;

  For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall

  A drop of water in the breaking gulf,

  And take unmingled thence that drop again

  Without addition or diminishing,

  As take from me thyself, and not me too.

  How dearly would it touch thee to the quick

  Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious,

  And that this body, consecrate to thee,

  By ruffian lust should be contaminate?

  Wouldst thou not spit at me, and spurn at me,

  And hurl the name of husband in my face,

  And tear the stain’d skin off my harlot brow,

  And from my false hand cut the wedding ring,

  And break it with a deep-divorcing vow?

  I know thou canst, and therefore see thou do it!

  I am possess’d with an adulterate blot;

  My blood is mingled with the crime of lust.

  For if we two be one, and thou play false,

  I do digest the poison of thy flesh,

  Being strumpeted by thy contagion.

  Keep then fair league and truce with thy true bed,

  I live unstain’d, thou undishonourèd.

  GLOSSARY

  sweet-savour’d delicious

  carv’d to carved meat for

  incorporate combined in one body

  fall let drop

  licentious promiscuous

  possess’d with endowed with

  King John

  William Shakespeare (1596)

  WHO Constance, Duchess of Brittany, mother of Arthur, mid-30s or more.

  WHERE In King Philip’s camp, after the Battle of Angiers, France.

  TO WHOM King Philip and the Cardinal.

  WHEN 1201.

  WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED In her attempt to put her son Arthur on the throne of England, following his displacement by his uncle King John, Constance has aligned herself with King Philip of France. However, following an initial battle, England and France agree peace. But when King John is excommunicated from the Catholic Church, Pandulph, the Pope’s legate, orders the French to resume their warfare upon King John. In the conflict that follows, John’s army beats back the French and captures Arthur, taking him back to England. Constance has just been told this: she is hysterical and beyond comfort, as it indicates his sure and imminent torture and death. Largely unsympathetic, King Philip and Cardinal Pandulph accuse her of being ‘as fond of grief as of your child’ and suggest that she is demonstrating ‘madness, and not sorrow’.

  WHAT SHE WANTS / OBJECTIVES TO PLAY

  • To not live in a world that doesn’t hold her son in it.

  • To distance those she is with from her grief, and to belittle them as counsellors.

  • To vent her agony and despair, she will rage – she is entitled to.

  • To let the world know of the horror that has befallen her.

  Lady Constance

  No, I defy all counsel, all redress,

  But that which ends all counsel, true redress:

  Death, Death, O amiable, lovely Death,

  Thou odoriferous stench: sound rottenness,

  Arise forth from the couch of lasting night,

  Thou hate and terror to prosperity,

  And I will kiss thy detestable bones,

  And put my eyeballs in thy vaulty brows,

  And ring these fingers with thy household worms,

  And stop this gap of breath with fulsome dust,

  And be a carrion monster like thyself.

  Come, grin on me, and I will think thou smil’st

  And buss thee as thy wife: Misery’s love,

  O, come to me!

  [KING PHILIP. O fair affliction, peace!]

  No no, I will not, having breath to cry:

  O that my tongue were in the thunder’s mouth!

  Then with a passion would I shake the world,

  And rouse from sleep that fell anatomy

  Which cannot hear a lady’s feeble voice,

  Which scorns a modern invocation.

  [PANDULPH. Lady, you utter madness, and not sorrow.]

  Thou art not holy to belie me so.

  I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine,

  My name is Constance, I was Geoffrey’s wife,

  Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost:

  I am not mad – I would to God I were!

  For then ’tis like I should forget myself.

  O, if I could, what grief should I forget?

  Preach some philosophy to make me mad,

  And thou shalt be canonis’d, Cardinal.

  For, being not mad, but sensible of grief,

  My r
easonable part produces reason

  How I may be deliver’d of these woes,

  And teaches me to kill or hang myself.

  If I were mad, I should forget my son,

  Or madly think a babe of clouts were he.

  I am not mad. Too well, too well I feel

  The different plague of each calamity. [ . . . ]

  Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

  Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,

  Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,

  Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

  Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;

  Then have I reason to be fond of grief.

  Fare you well; had you such a loss as I,

  I could give better comfort than you do.

  She unbinds her hair.

  I will not keep this form upon my head,

  When there is such disorder in my wit.

  O Lord! My boy, my Arthur, my fair son!

  My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!

  My widow-comfort, and my sorrow’s cure!

  GLOSSARY

  odoriferous sweet-smelling

  couch bed

  carrion scavenging (preying on rotten flesh)

  buss kiss

  fell anatomy dreadful skeleton

  modern invocation trite appeal

  belie slander

  sensible of sensitive to

  clouts swaddling clothes

  Bussy D’Ambois

  George Chapman (1604)

  WHO Tamyra, Countess of Montsurry. 20s plus.

  WHERE In Tamyra’s private chambers.

  TO WHOM She believes she is alone after the line break, on dismissing her maidservant.

  WHEN 1580s.

  WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED Tamyra has just said goodbye to her husband, the Count. He will be back the following morning. We believe her to be chaste; in the previous scene she rebuffed the advances made on her by the King’s brother, Monsieur. She pleaded a case for honour within marriage. When she complained of his advances, her husband suggested she just let it be: that was the way of the court. But we now learn that she is actually in love with somebody else, the eponymous hero of the play. She knows if she gives in to her desire for him, hell gates will open for her; she knows that everything is at stake, but she cannot resist him any longer. Bussy D’Ambois, her would-be lover, is an enchanting mix of poet and brutal war machine; he is newly returned to the court and very much flavour of the month. She is waiting for the Friar to bring him up to her chamber through a secret back vault.