Shakespeare Monologues for Women Read online

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  INTRODUCTION

  THE COMEDIES

  Miranda from The Tempest

  Isabella from Measure for Measure

  Luciana from The Comedy of Errors

  The Princess of France from Love’s Labour’s Lost

  Helena from A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  Hermia from A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  Jessica from The Merchant of Venice

  Portia from The Merchant of Venice

  Portia from The Merchant of Venice

  Phoebe from As You Like It

  Phoebe from As You Like It

  Rosalind from As You Like It

  Katharina from The Taming of the Shrew

  Helena from All’s Well That Ends Well

  The Countess of Rossillion from All’s Well That Ends Well

  Olivia from Twelfth Night

  Viola from Twelfth Night

  Hermione from The Winter’s Tale

  Hermion from The Winter’s Tale

  Paulina from The Winter’s Tale

  Marina from Pericles

  THE HISTORIES

  Lady Constance from King John

  Duchess of Gloucester from Richard II

  Lady Elizabeth Percy from Henry IV, Part One

  Lady Elizabeth Percy from Henry IV, Part Two

  The Hostess of the Boar’s Head Tavern from Henry V

  Joan la Pucelle from Henry VI, Part One

  Duchess of Gloucester from Henry VI, Part Two

  Queen Margaret from Henry VI, Part Two

  Queen Margaret from Henry VI, Part Three

  Lady Anne from Richard III

  Queen Katharine from Henry VIII

  THE TRAGEDIES

  Cressida from Troilus and Cressida

  Volumnia from Coriolanus

  Tamora, Queen of the Goths from Titus Andronicus

  Tamora, Queen of the Goths from Titus Andronicus

  The Nurse from Romeo and Juliet

  Juliet from Romeo and Juliet

  Juliet from Romeo and Juliet

  Portia from Julius Caesar

  Lady Macbeth from Macbeth

  Lady Macduff from Macbeth

  Ophelia from Hamlet

  Goneril from King Lear

  Desdemona from Othello

  Emilia from Othello

  Cleopatra from Antony and Cleopatra

  Cleopatra from Antony and Cleopatra

  Imogen from Cymbeline

  The Jailer’s Daughter from The Two Noble Kinsmen

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OTHER TITLES IN THE SERIES

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Introduction

  WHY SHAKESPEARE?

  The basic requirements for most auditions, from drama-school entry to a season at the recreated Globe Theatre in London, will include performing a speech by Shakespeare. Faced with the thirty-eight plays that are generally considered to have been written by Shakespeare, it is daunting for even the most experienced actor to know where to begin finding a suitable speech. Thirty-six of those plays were collected after Shakespeare’s death by his colleagues and printed in what is known as the First Folio, a folio being the size of the sheet of paper it was printed on. Around 750 copies were produced and they sold for £1 each. About 230 still exist and now sell for around £3 million each. A couple of other plays only appeared in what are known as quarto editions, on paper folded to half the size of a folio sheet.

  The Shakespearean canon, all the plays he wrote which have survived, is the heart of English drama. A speech from one of those plays can provide an actor with opportunities to show off their skills and talent in a whole range of ways: vocally and physically, in terms of characterisation and storytelling, emotionally and intellectually. A speech by Shakespeare is the best tool for an actor to demonstrate their craft, and for an audition panel or director to appreciate and judge it.

  CHOOSING YOUR MONOLOGUE

  In this volume I have brought together fifty speeches, from some of the best known to the least common. You will never find a ‘new’ Shakespeare speech. Fashion and contemporary performance are factors that can make speeches appear current and popular. It is also best not to second-guess what speech the actor before or after you will perform. Best to find a speech that you like, enjoy performing and can in some way empathise with. Do not worry about what other actors are doing.

  Choose more than one speech (maybe one comedy, one history and one tragedy) to have in your repertoire so that you always have something suitable when the call comes. Having chosen a speech, you must read the play and find the backstory so you know where the character and the speech are coming from.

  Complexity Some of the speeches in this book are relatively simple and might be more useful for the actor for whom Shakespeare is a new and terrifying experience: Miranda in The Tempest and Joan la Pucelle in Henry VI, Part One, perhaps fall into this category. Others, like Lady Macbeth and Helena in All’s Well That Ends Well, are rich and complex in their language, thought and emotion and might be more suitable for actors seeking a challenge or needing to show the full range of their abilities.

  Age It is rare that we know the age of a character in a play by Shakespeare. Juliet we are told is fourteen. Otherwise ages are for the most part relative. The Countess in All’s Well That Ends Well is older than Helena, whom she has just taken into her care. Lady Macbeth tells us that she has once ‘given suck’ to a child, which implies both age and a backstory that Shakespeare does not reveal in his play. In a production the director will make decisions about the age of his characters and their relative ages to each other, and may ask you to approximate a particular age. In an audition you can be much more flexible in deciding whether the speech of a character is suited to you and your playing age. To give you some guidance I have listed below ‘younger’ and ‘older’ characters whose speeches are in this book. I have done the same with status (‘higher’ and ‘lower’) and with lists of mothers and daughters (another indicator of age and status). I have also identified the speeches with the most obvious comic potential.

  Gender None of these speeches were written to be acted by a woman. Actresses did not exist in Shakespeare’s theatre, and all the plays were written to be acted by men and boys. Gender and the dissemblance of gender are important themes through many of the plays. There are speeches here, both comic and serious, which give you plenty of opportunity to play with gender, from Joan la Pucelle in Henry VI, Part One, to Viola in Twelfth Night and Imogen in Cymbeline. I have included Rosalind’s epilogue speech from As You Like It in which the gender of the actor is confused not for the other characters in the play but for the audience itself.

  Length The speeches vary considerably in the number of words, but not necessarily in the time they take to perform. Hermia’s short speech in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when she wakens lost in the woods, though short of words, contains a great deal of implied action, and the action becomes as important as the words when you are performing it. It is a speech that needs to be given space to breathe and for the spaces and silences within it to be found. Cressida also has comparatively few words, yet her awkwardness and uncertainty means it takes what seems to her an eternity to deliver. In these and many other speeches there are important moments when the character is listening (Imogen in Cymbeline before she enters the cave) or when she is waiting for or expecting a reply (Portia in Julius Caesar and Marina in Pericles).

  Where some speeches are too long for audition purposes I have, as judiciously as possible, made cuts.

  LANGUAGE

  Shakespeare’s audiences went to ‘hear’ plays. It was not until long after his death that anyone wrote of going to ‘see’
a play. So the sounds of Shakespeare’s words are as important as their meanings. Indeed they often help convey the meanings. Enjoy and play with the sounds as you work through the speeches.

  Prose is everyday speech but Shakespeare often heightens that speech, giving it colour, richness, images and so on that we would not use in our everyday lives.

  Poetry is where that heightened use of language is taken further and the speech goes beyond the everyday, and rhythm and rhyme become important.

  Verse is poetry where the rhythms of the words are organised.

  Iambic pentameter is a particular kind of verse. An ‘iamb’ is where a short syllable is followed by a long syllable giving a ‘di-dum’ rhythm. ‘Metre’ is how rhythms are organised in lines of verse. ‘Penta’ is the old Greek word for five. So if you put five iambs in a line of verse you get an iambic pentameter:

  di-dum, di-dum, di-dum, di-dum, di-dum

  This was the main form Shakespeare used in writing his plays: they are the heartbeat of his language. Sometimes it is used rigidly and is easy to spot:

  How happy some o’er other some can be!

  Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.

  (Helena, A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

  Sometimes, especially as he got older and more experienced, Shakespeare played with the form and pulled it around for emotional, dramatic or characterisation effect.

  In order for the rhythm to work, a word ending in ‘–ed’ will sometimes have the letters stressed as a syllable, in which case it is printed ‘–èd’, and sometimes it will not be a separate syllable but be spoken as if the ‘e’ is not there, in which case it is printed ‘–’d’.

  Rhyming couplets Sometimes Shakespeare uses rhyme and when two lines together rhyme we have a rhyming couplet. Often these are used at the end of a speech or scene to indicate finality.

  Punctuation in Shakespeare is a controversial subject. Shakespeare did not prepare his plays for publication and therefore the punctuation in the texts is largely put there by his colleagues or the publisher or printer. Nonetheless, the punctuation in the speeches I have chosen, which follow for the most part the First Folio, can give you some help not just with sense but also with where to breathe, pause, rest, change gear or change thought.

  Vocabulary Shakespeare wrote at a time when English as we know it was developing rapidly. He made up or used for the first time many words and phrases that are now part of our everyday speech. Words that were brand new when Shakespeare used them include: accommodation, critic, dwindle, eventful, exposure, frugal, generous, gloomy, laughable, majestic, misplaced, monumental, multitudinous and obscene. Phrases that he coined include: disgraceful conduct, elbow-room, fair play, green-eyed monster, method in his madness, to thine own self be true, the lady doth protest too much, and it’s Greek to me. Some of the words he used or invented have faded from the language (‘fadge’ meaning ‘to turn out’ in Viola’s speech from Twelfth Night, for example), and some words which are familiar today had different, stronger meanings then, than now. In both these cases, I have glosed their meanings in the notes.

  THE AUDITION

  Thought process It is rare that a character sets out to make a speech, though in some of the big public and political scenes a character does just that. Hermione in The Winter’s Tale has come prepared to defend herself before her accuser, and Portia, too, in The Merchant of Venice has a speech to make in court. But for the most part a speech starts with a single thought which is followed by another and then another until the character has said enough – or been interrupted. Allow time for each of those thoughts to come and be fresh in the mind before they are spoken. Do not be daunted by what can seem endless lines of text. It is not a race to get through to the end. Take the speech one thought at a time.

  Structure As you follow the thoughts, follow too the emotions and language of the speech. Look for its structure. Let yourself show the full range of emotion and vocal possibility within the speech. Seek variety. None of these speeches is on one note. All allow a wide range of vocal and emotional expression.

  Setting and geography Many of these speeches are soliloquies allowing the character to express her thoughts or ideas to an audience while she is alone, such as Viola in Twelfth Night. Other speeches, like Goneril’s in King Lear, are parts of dialogues or conversations. And some, such as Paulina’s in The Winter’s Tale, are directed to large public gatherings. Others may be a combination of all these. Decide who else, if anyone, is there to hear the speech and where they are placed. Give thought to the geography or layout of the place the speech is being spoken in – whether the woods of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the palace of Cleopatra, or the windswept island of The Tempest. Take a few moments when you first come into the audition room to place the other characters and recreate the geography and setting in your mind’s eye (another phrase Shakespeare coined).

  Audience If your speech is directed to an audience, it can be a theatre audience or an audience within the scene. Some speeches are soliloquies which can be played to oneself, to the audience or some combination of the two (Viola and Olivia in Twelfth Night). Others are to a public audience within the play (Hermione and Paulina in The Winter’s Tale). Decide whether and how to use your audition panel as that audience.

  Make the space your own Many other actors will have been in the audition room before you. Many will come after you. Spend a moment or two before you start your speech by focusing and allowing the panel to focus on you. Create the silence out of which your words will come and decide on the energy that the words will bring with them, whether the distress and anguish of Miranda in The Tempest shouting across the storm, or Lady Macbeth preparing to summon up spirits in what might be a fearful silence.

  HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

  For each speech I have given an indication of:

  WHERE If possible I have indicated where and when the action is taking place. Sometimes this can be very specific, either because Shakespeare has told us or because the action is tied to a particular historical event. If the plays are set in times of legend or myth, the date and place are of no direct importance in affecting how you perform them.

  WHO ELSE IS THERE This note gives an indication of who else is on stage and the character’s relationship to them.

  WHAT IS HAPPENING This note will give a context for the speech but it is not a substitute for reading the play and yourself deciding where the speech is coming from.

  WHAT TO THINK ABOUT I have indicated some ideas of things to think about as you are working on the speech. This is by no means an exhaustive list but will give you a way into the speech and should spark other thoughts and ideas of your own.

  WHERE ELSE TO LOOK If you like a speech or character and want to look elsewhere in this collection for similar pieces, this will help you on your way.

  GLOSSARY I have glossed the trickier and more perplexing words, phrases and thoughts in the speeches, but do not worry if you need a dictionary or annotated edition of the play to help you fully understand what your character is saying.

  THE TEXTS Wherever possible, I have used the exemplary texts of The Shakespeare Folios published by Nick Hern Books and edited by Nick de Somogyi, and the speeches appear in the order that they do in the First Folio (comedies, then histories, then tragedies). Speeches from plays not yet published in this series have been edited by me from the First Folio using the same editorial rules. In the case of Pericles and The Two Noble Kinsmen, neither of which appears in the First Folio and both of which are of contested authorship, I have used Quarto texts edited in the same way. All the glosses are my own.

  The following categories may help you find a particular attribute that suits you, or your monologue:

  • OLDER

  The Countess of Rossillion in All’s Well That Ends Well

  Olivia in Twelfth Night

  Hermione in The Winter’s Tale

  Paulina in The Winter’s Tale

  Lady Constance in King John

  Duchess
of Gloucester in Richard II

  The Hostess in Henry V

  Duchess of Gloucester in Henry VI, Part Two

  Queen Margaret in Henry VI, Part Two

  Queen Katharine in Henry VIII

  Volumnia in Coriolanus

  The Nurse in Romeo and Juliet

  Emilia in Othello

  Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra

  • YOUNGER

  Miranda in The Tempest

  Isabella in Measure for Measure

  The Princess of France in Love’s Labour’s Lost

  Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  Jessica in The Merchant of Venice

  Portia in The Merchant of Venice

  Phoebe in As You Like It

  Rosalind in As You Like It

  Helena in All’s Well That Ends Well

  Viola in Twelfth Night

  Joan la Pucelle in Henry VI, Part One

  Cressida in Troilus and Cressida

  Ophelia in Hamlet

  Desdemona in Othello

  The Jailer’s Daughter in The Two Noble Kinsmen

  • MOTHERS

  The Countess of Rossillion in All’s Well That Ends Well

  Lady Constance in King John

  • DAUGHTERS

  Miranda in The Tempest

  Jessica in The Merchant of Venice

  Marina in Pericles

  Juliet in Romeo and Juliet

  Ophelia in Hamlet

  The Jailer’s Daughter in The Two Noble Kinsmen

  • HIGHER STATUS

  The Princess of France in Love’s Labour’s Lost

  Portia in The Merchant of Venice

  Olivia in Twelfth Night

  Hermione in The Winter’s Tale

  Queen Margaret in Henry VI, Part Three

  Volumnia in Coriolanus

  Lady Macbeth in Macbeth

  Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra

  • LOWER STATUS

  Phoebe in As You Like It