Games
I get a lot of questions about monologue auditions: what to wear, whether to make eye contact, etc. By far the most common questions I get, however, are about monologue selection—specifically, whether such-and-such monologue "counts" as comedic, classical, or whatever. I blame the auditors. They ask for a "classical" monologue or a "comedic" monologue, with the assumption that all actors and directors agree on what these labels mean. It's outdated and somewhat irritating. So, here are some pro tips that should help you out if you're trying to select audition monologues.
General Tips
1. Follow Kaitlyn's 1.5 Rule. You'll hear me say this over and over again: if you're performing two monologues and one of them is a bit of a stretch, make sure the other is a perfect fit. If you're 16 and you do a monologue for a 40-year-old father, make sure the other is for a very young person. If one monologue is sort of comedic, make sure the other is very dramatic. In other words, if one might be considered half a monologue (because it only kind of "counts"), make sure the other is a full, dead-on monologue. That's 1.5.
2. Choose audition material that fits your type. A 20-year-old white woman shouldn't audition with "Old Man River" up an octave, so let's not have high school students auditioning with King Lear. (Unless you're in a high school production where students will be called upon to play older characters.) Your monologue doesn't have to be a perfect fit, but the auditors know these plays and they don't want to be insulted. Use Kaitlyn's 1.5 Rule: If one monologue is a bit of a stretch, make sure the other is a perfect fit.
3. Know your source material. It's a given that you should read the full play from which your monologue derives. Use this not only to develop your character and your performance, but when selecting your monologue. If you're auditioning for a play, don't do a monologue from a movie. Don't sing a pop song just because you like it. Choose something that complements the play(s) you're auditioning for.
Classical vs. Modern
In the best of worlds, your auditors will give you clear guidelines (i.e. perform two monologues written after 1900) or give you more flexibility (i.e. perform two contrasting monologues). That's great. However, auditors will often require you to perform a "classical" monologue and a "modern" or "contemporary" monologue.
Classical: This is a time period that means different things to different people. It certainly encompasses everything from the beginning of recorded time through Shakespeare. That includes ancient Greece and, if you want to be creative, can include work from ancient Roman, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, and other pre-1700s theatre. For most auditors, that will also include everything pre-1900: Molière, Goethe, Ibsen, Pushkin, Sheriden, and dozens (if not hundreds) of other playwrights. To confuse matters even further, many auditors consider anything written before 1960 to be "classical." That means that the work of Shaw, Chekhov, Wilde, and even O'Neill, Williams, and Miller might be considered "classical."
The problem, of course, is that time marches inexorably on, and every year another playwright is no longer deemed to be contemporary. Twenty years ago, Arthur Miller would never have been considered classical. My advice when selecting a "classical" monologue is to stick to anything written 80 or more years ago. What auditors are looking for is whether you can handle "classical" language, which tends to be more archaic and stylized than so-called "modern" language. If it was written in the last 80 years, chances are it sounds a lot like something that was written in the last two years.
That means that you have to be careful with translations as well. Just because you choose a monologue from Aeschylus doesn't mean you're doing a "classical" monologue. If the translation has been considerably updated, you're essentially performing a modern monologue.
Looking for a classical monologue that isn't grossly overdone? I recommend George Bernard Shaw. He wrote his plays from 1892-1938. The language is elevated and highly rhetorical. All auditors know who he is, but many will not have heard the monologue you select. I have some examples of both men's and women's monologues from Shaw, as well as some options from Shakespeare. Feel free to use them.
Modern/Contemporary: Usually, this means that auditors are looking for you to perform something that was written by a recent playwright. It's often someone alive—someone that's still writing plays today. When you speak, you should sound like someone that might be speaking today. Again, this will generally apply to any play written in the last 80 years.
If you think the monologue you are selecting is pushing the boundaries of either classical or contemporary labels, use Kaitlyn's 1.5 Rule: make sure the ambiguous monologue is balanced by a monologue that is definitively classical or definitively modern.
Comedic vs. Dramatic
A comedic monologue doesn't need to be laugh-out-loud hilarious. And a dramatic monologue doesn't have to be gut-wrenchingly sober. There are a lot of plays out there (and a lot of monologues) that fall somewhere in-between. Again, the trick here is to use the 1.5 rule: if one of your monologues is ambiguously comedic or dramatic, balance it out with something that falls heavily on the side of comedy or drama.
Here are the most common questions I get about this distinction:
Q. Does my comedic monologue have to come from a comedy? Does my dramatic monologue have to come from a drama?
A. No. Plenty of comedies have moments of high drama (Lucien P. Smith's monologue from The Boys Next Door or Aloysia's diatribe in Shaw's On the Rocks) and plenty of dramas have moments of high comedy (Izzy's opening monologue in Rabbit Hole or the boy's monologue in Henry V). There are also plenty of plays that aren't easily defined as a drama or a comedy. Stoppard and Shaw share this dubious distinction, with many works that are at times heavy drama and at times lighthearted satire.
Q. Does my comedic monologue have to make people laugh?
A. No. Usually. If you are auditioning for a farce or something with a lot of physical comedy, your comedic monologue should show that kind of depth. If this is for a college/scholarship audition or a cattle call, you should at least aim to make people smile.
Q. Does my dramatic monologue have to be sad?
A. No. You should get some kind of emotional response from your audience, but there's a wide range beyond sadness. There are monologues that are disturbing, stirring, passionate, unsettling, and... yes, sad. Just try to identify the main emotional focus of your monologue and make sure it contrasts significantly with the focus of your other monologue.
I hope this helps!
Every time I post monologues on the site, I get a lot of great feedback. Actors know that directors are sick of seeing the same monologues at every audition and they know that directors hate to see obscure and mediocre monologues dragged out of some contemporary playwright no one knows.
So, I present to you twelve monologues by the brilliant George Bernard Shaw. I am using these as audition monologues for an upcoming high school production of "Don Juan in Hell" / No Exit. There are six for men and six for women.
Shaw can be a tricky case if you are in the unfortunate position of having to audition within constraints such as "one comedic, one dramatic" and/or "one classical, one contemporary." He wrote across the turn of the century, from 1892 to 1938. Most auditors will consider this "classical," but his later work can also be considered modern. It's also hard to determine whether he is "comedic" or "dramatic." For help navigating the treacherous waters of monologue classification, check out Kaitlyn's Audition Monologue FAQ.
My other monologue collections can be found here:
So, I present to you twelve monologues by the brilliant George Bernard Shaw. I am using these as audition monologues for an upcoming high school production of "Don Juan in Hell" / No Exit. There are six for men and six for women.
Shaw can be a tricky case if you are in the unfortunate position of having to audition within constraints such as "one comedic, one dramatic" and/or "one classical, one contemporary." He wrote across the turn of the century, from 1892 to 1938. Most auditors will consider this "classical," but his later work can also be considered modern. It's also hard to determine whether he is "comedic" or "dramatic." For help navigating the treacherous waters of monologue classification, check out Kaitlyn's Audition Monologue FAQ.
My other monologue collections can be found here:
- Shavian audition monologues for women
- dramatic Shakespearean audition monologues for women
- comedic Shakespearean audition monologues for women
- dramatic Shakespearean audition monologues for men
- comedic Shakespearean audition monologues for men
* * *
Bishop Peter Cauchon from Saint Joan (Scene IV)
CAUCHON. You mistake me, my lord. I have no sympathy with her political presumptions. But as a priest I have gained a knowledge of the minds of the common people; and there you will find yet another most dangerous idea. I can express it only by such phrases as France for the French, England for the English, Italy for the Italians, Spain for the Spanish, and so forth. It is sometimes so narrow and bitter in country folk that it surprises me that this country girl can rise above the idea of her village for its villagers. But she can. She does. When she threatens to drive the English from the soil of France she is undoubtedly thinking of the whole extent of country in which French is spoken. To her the French-speaking people are what the Holy Scriptures describe as a nation. Call this side of her heresy Nationalism if you will: I can find you no better name for it. I can only tell you that it is essentially anti-Catholic and anti-Christian; for the Catholic Church knows only one realm, and that is the realm of Christ's kingdom. Divide that kingdom into nations, and you dethrone Christ. Dethrone Christ, and who will stand between our throats and the sword? The world will perish in a welter of war.
St. John Hotchkiss from Getting Married
HOTCHKISS. How kind of you to say so, General! You're quite right: I am a snob. Why not? The whole strength of England lies in the fact that the enormous majority of the English people are snobs. They insult poverty. They despise vulgarity. They love nobility. They admire exclusiveness. They will not obey a man risen from the ranks. They never trust one of their own class. I agree with them. I share their instincts. In my undergraduate days I was a Republican—a Socialist. I tried hard to feel toward a common man as I do towards a duke. I couldn't. Neither can you. Well, why should we be ashamed of this aspiration towards what is above us? Why don't I say that an honest man's the noblest of work of God? Because I don't think so. If he's not a gentleman, I don't care whether he's honest or not: I shouldn't let his son marry my daughter. And that's the test, mind. That's the test. You feel as I do. You are a snob in fact: I am a snob, not only in fact, but on principle. I shall go down in history, not as the first snob, but as the first avowed champion of English snobbery, and its first martyr in the army. The navy boasts of two such martyrs in Captains Kirby and Wade, who were shot for refusing to fight under Admiral Benbow, a promoted cabin boy. I have always envied them their glory.
Joey Percival from Misalliance
PERCIVAL. Well, but does that matter, do you think? Patsy fascinates me, no doubt. I apparently fascinate Patsy. But, believe me, all that is not worth considering. One of my three fathers (the priest) has married hundreds of couples: couples selected by one another, couples selected by the parents, couples forced to marry one another by circumstances of one kind or another; and he assures me that if marriages were made by putting all the men's names into one sack and the women's names into another, and having them taken out by a blindfolded child like lottery numbers, there would be just as high a percentage of happy marriages as we have here in England. He said Cupid was nothing but the blindfolded child: pretty idea that, I think! I shall have as good a chance with Patsy as with anyone else. Mind: I'm not bigoted about it. I'm not a doctrinaire: not the slave of a theory. You and Lord Summerhays are experienced married men. If you can tell me of any trustworthy method of selecting a wife, I shall be happy to make use of it. I await your suggestions. [He looks with polite attention to Lord Summerhays, who, having nothing to say, avoids his eye. He looks to Tarleton, who purses his lips glumly and rattles his money in his pockets without a word.] Apparently neither of you has anything to suggest. Then Patsy will do as well as another, provided the money is forthcoming.
John Tanner from Man and Superman (Act I)
TANNER. You, Tavy, are an artist: that is, the true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art. To women he is half vivisector, half vampire. He gets into intimate relations with them to study them, to strip the mask of convention from them, to surprise their inmost secrets, knowing that they have the power to rouse his deepest creative energies, to rescue him from his cold reason, to make him see visions and dream dreams, to inspire him, as he calls it. He persuades women that they may do this for their own purpose whilst he really means them to do it for his. He steals the mother's milk and blackens it to make printers' ink to scoff at her and glorify ideal women with. He pretends to spare her the pangs of child-bearing so that he may have for himself the tenderness of fostering that belong of right to her children. Since marriage began, the great artist has been known as a bad husband. But he is worse: he is a child-robber, a bloodsucker, a hypocrite, and a cheat. Perish the race and wither a thousand women if only the sacrifice of them enable him to act Hamlet better, to paint a finer picture, to write a deeper poem, a greater play, a profounder philosophy! For mark you, Tavy, the artist's work is to shew us ourselves as we really are. Our minds are nothing but this knowledge of ourselves; and he who adds a jot to such knowledge creates new mind as surely as any woman creates new men.
Mr. "Gunner" From Misalliance
THE MAN. No. That’s just it: I’ve no business to do. Do you know what my life is? I spend my days from nine to six—nine hours of daylight and fresh air—in a stuffy little den counting another man's money. I’ve an intellect: a mind and a brain and a soul; and the use he makes of them is to fix them on his tuppences and his eighteenpences and his two pound seventeen and tenpences and see how much they come to at the end of the day and take care that no one steals them. I enter and enter, and add and add, and take money and give change, and fill cheques and stamp receipts; and not a penny of that money is my own: not one of those transactions has the smallest interest for me or anyone else in the world but him; and even he couldn’t stand it if he had to do it all himself. And I'm envied: aye, envied for the variety and liveliness of my job, by the poor devil of a bookkeeper that has to copy all my entries over again. Fifty thousand entries a year that poor wretch makes; and not ten out of the fifty thousand ever has to be referred to again; and when all the figures are counted up and the balance sheet made out, the boss isn’t a penny the richer than he'd be if bookkeeping had never been invented. Of all the damnable waste of human life that ever was invented, clerking is the very worst.
Andrew Undershaft from Major Barbara (Act III)
UNDERSHAFT. Poverty is the worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then: what do they matter? they are only the accidents and illnesses of life: there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty. Pah! [turning on Barbara] you talk of your half-saved ruffian in West Ham: you accuse me of dragging his soul back to perdition. Well, bring him to me here; and I will drag his soul back again to salvation for you. Not by words and dreams; but by thirty-eight shillings a week, a sound house in a handsome street, and a permanent job. In three weeks he will have a fancy waistcoat; in three months a tall hat and a chapel sitting; before the end of the year he will shake hands with a duchess at a Primrose League meeting, and join the Conservative Party.
CAUCHON. You mistake me, my lord. I have no sympathy with her political presumptions. But as a priest I have gained a knowledge of the minds of the common people; and there you will find yet another most dangerous idea. I can express it only by such phrases as France for the French, England for the English, Italy for the Italians, Spain for the Spanish, and so forth. It is sometimes so narrow and bitter in country folk that it surprises me that this country girl can rise above the idea of her village for its villagers. But she can. She does. When she threatens to drive the English from the soil of France she is undoubtedly thinking of the whole extent of country in which French is spoken. To her the French-speaking people are what the Holy Scriptures describe as a nation. Call this side of her heresy Nationalism if you will: I can find you no better name for it. I can only tell you that it is essentially anti-Catholic and anti-Christian; for the Catholic Church knows only one realm, and that is the realm of Christ's kingdom. Divide that kingdom into nations, and you dethrone Christ. Dethrone Christ, and who will stand between our throats and the sword? The world will perish in a welter of war.
St. John Hotchkiss from Getting Married
HOTCHKISS. How kind of you to say so, General! You're quite right: I am a snob. Why not? The whole strength of England lies in the fact that the enormous majority of the English people are snobs. They insult poverty. They despise vulgarity. They love nobility. They admire exclusiveness. They will not obey a man risen from the ranks. They never trust one of their own class. I agree with them. I share their instincts. In my undergraduate days I was a Republican—a Socialist. I tried hard to feel toward a common man as I do towards a duke. I couldn't. Neither can you. Well, why should we be ashamed of this aspiration towards what is above us? Why don't I say that an honest man's the noblest of work of God? Because I don't think so. If he's not a gentleman, I don't care whether he's honest or not: I shouldn't let his son marry my daughter. And that's the test, mind. That's the test. You feel as I do. You are a snob in fact: I am a snob, not only in fact, but on principle. I shall go down in history, not as the first snob, but as the first avowed champion of English snobbery, and its first martyr in the army. The navy boasts of two such martyrs in Captains Kirby and Wade, who were shot for refusing to fight under Admiral Benbow, a promoted cabin boy. I have always envied them their glory.
Joey Percival from Misalliance
PERCIVAL. Well, but does that matter, do you think? Patsy fascinates me, no doubt. I apparently fascinate Patsy. But, believe me, all that is not worth considering. One of my three fathers (the priest) has married hundreds of couples: couples selected by one another, couples selected by the parents, couples forced to marry one another by circumstances of one kind or another; and he assures me that if marriages were made by putting all the men's names into one sack and the women's names into another, and having them taken out by a blindfolded child like lottery numbers, there would be just as high a percentage of happy marriages as we have here in England. He said Cupid was nothing but the blindfolded child: pretty idea that, I think! I shall have as good a chance with Patsy as with anyone else. Mind: I'm not bigoted about it. I'm not a doctrinaire: not the slave of a theory. You and Lord Summerhays are experienced married men. If you can tell me of any trustworthy method of selecting a wife, I shall be happy to make use of it. I await your suggestions. [He looks with polite attention to Lord Summerhays, who, having nothing to say, avoids his eye. He looks to Tarleton, who purses his lips glumly and rattles his money in his pockets without a word.] Apparently neither of you has anything to suggest. Then Patsy will do as well as another, provided the money is forthcoming.
John Tanner from Man and Superman (Act I)
TANNER. You, Tavy, are an artist: that is, the true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art. To women he is half vivisector, half vampire. He gets into intimate relations with them to study them, to strip the mask of convention from them, to surprise their inmost secrets, knowing that they have the power to rouse his deepest creative energies, to rescue him from his cold reason, to make him see visions and dream dreams, to inspire him, as he calls it. He persuades women that they may do this for their own purpose whilst he really means them to do it for his. He steals the mother's milk and blackens it to make printers' ink to scoff at her and glorify ideal women with. He pretends to spare her the pangs of child-bearing so that he may have for himself the tenderness of fostering that belong of right to her children. Since marriage began, the great artist has been known as a bad husband. But he is worse: he is a child-robber, a bloodsucker, a hypocrite, and a cheat. Perish the race and wither a thousand women if only the sacrifice of them enable him to act Hamlet better, to paint a finer picture, to write a deeper poem, a greater play, a profounder philosophy! For mark you, Tavy, the artist's work is to shew us ourselves as we really are. Our minds are nothing but this knowledge of ourselves; and he who adds a jot to such knowledge creates new mind as surely as any woman creates new men.
Mr. "Gunner" From Misalliance
THE MAN. No. That’s just it: I’ve no business to do. Do you know what my life is? I spend my days from nine to six—nine hours of daylight and fresh air—in a stuffy little den counting another man's money. I’ve an intellect: a mind and a brain and a soul; and the use he makes of them is to fix them on his tuppences and his eighteenpences and his two pound seventeen and tenpences and see how much they come to at the end of the day and take care that no one steals them. I enter and enter, and add and add, and take money and give change, and fill cheques and stamp receipts; and not a penny of that money is my own: not one of those transactions has the smallest interest for me or anyone else in the world but him; and even he couldn’t stand it if he had to do it all himself. And I'm envied: aye, envied for the variety and liveliness of my job, by the poor devil of a bookkeeper that has to copy all my entries over again. Fifty thousand entries a year that poor wretch makes; and not ten out of the fifty thousand ever has to be referred to again; and when all the figures are counted up and the balance sheet made out, the boss isn’t a penny the richer than he'd be if bookkeeping had never been invented. Of all the damnable waste of human life that ever was invented, clerking is the very worst.
Andrew Undershaft from Major Barbara (Act III)
UNDERSHAFT. Poverty is the worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then: what do they matter? they are only the accidents and illnesses of life: there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty. Pah! [turning on Barbara] you talk of your half-saved ruffian in West Ham: you accuse me of dragging his soul back to perdition. Well, bring him to me here; and I will drag his soul back again to salvation for you. Not by words and dreams; but by thirty-eight shillings a week, a sound house in a handsome street, and a permanent job. In three weeks he will have a fancy waistcoat; in three months a tall hat and a chapel sitting; before the end of the year he will shake hands with a duchess at a Primrose League meeting, and join the Conservative Party.
Every time I post monologues on the site, I get a lot of great feedback. Actors know that directors are sick of seeing the same monologues at every audition and they know that directors hate to see obscure and mediocre monologues dragged out of some contemporary playwright no one knows.
So, I present to you twelve monologues by the brilliant George Bernard Shaw. I am using these as audition monologues for an upcoming high school production of "Don Juan in Hell" / No Exit. There are six for men and six for women.
Shaw can be a tricky case if you are in the unfortunate position of having to audition within constraints such as "one comedic, one dramatic" and/or "one classical, one contemporary." He wrote across the turn of the century, from 1892 to 1938. Most auditors will consider this "classical," but his later work can also be considered modern. It's also hard to determine whether he is "comedic" or "dramatic." For help navigating the treacherous waters of monologue classification, check out Kaitlyn's Audition Monologue FAQ.
My other monologue collections can be found here:
So, I present to you twelve monologues by the brilliant George Bernard Shaw. I am using these as audition monologues for an upcoming high school production of "Don Juan in Hell" / No Exit. There are six for men and six for women.
Shaw can be a tricky case if you are in the unfortunate position of having to audition within constraints such as "one comedic, one dramatic" and/or "one classical, one contemporary." He wrote across the turn of the century, from 1892 to 1938. Most auditors will consider this "classical," but his later work can also be considered modern. It's also hard to determine whether he is "comedic" or "dramatic." For help navigating the treacherous waters of monologue classification, check out Kaitlyn's Audition Monologue FAQ.
My other monologue collections can be found here:
- Shavian audition monologues for men
- dramatic Shakespearean audition monologues for women
- comedic Shakespearean audition monologues for women
- dramatic Shakespearean audition monologues for men
- comedic Shakespearean audition monologues for men
* * *
Aloysia from On the Rocks (Act II)
ALOYSIA. You shall not put me out by these tricks and ceremonies. My Lord Duke: I would rather touch the hand of the most degraded criminal in London than touch yours. Do you forget how your family drove a whole countryside of honest hardworking Scotch crofters into the sea, and turned their little farms into deer forests because you could get more shooting rents out of them in that way? Do you forget that women in childbirth were carried out by your bailiffs to die by the roadside because they clung to their ancient homesteads and ignored your infamous notices to quit? Would it surprise you to learn that I am only one of thousands of young women who have read the hideous story of this monstrous orgy of house-breaking and murder, and sworn to ourselves that never, if we can help it, will it again be possible for one wicked rich man to say to a whole population "Get off the earth." You will not find that story in your school histories; but in the new histories, the histories of the proletariat, it has been written, not by the venal academic triflers you call historians, but by the prophets of the new order: the men in whom the word is like a burning fire shut up in their bones so that they are weary of forbearing and must speak. It is from you that we shall exact compensation: aye, to the uttermost farthing. Your demand for compensation is dismissed, turned down: we spit it back in your face. The crofters whom you drove from their country to perish in a foreign land would turn in their graves at the chink of a single penny of public money in your hungry pocket.
Major Barbara Undershaft from Major Barbara (Act III)
BARBARA. That is why I have no class, Dolly: I come straight out of the heart of the whole people. If I were middle-class I should turn my back on my father's business; and we should both live in an artistic drawingroom, with you reading the reviews in one corner, and I in the other at the piano, playing Schumann: both very superior persons, and neither of us a bit of use. Sooner than that, I would sweep out the guncotton shed, or be one of Bodger's barmaids. Do you know what would have happened if you had refused papa's offer? I should have given you up and married the man who accepted it. After all, my dear old mother has more sense than any of you. I felt like her when I saw this place—felt that I must have it—that never, never, never could I let it go; only she thought it was the houses and the kitchen ranges and the linen and china, when it was really all the human souls to be saved: not weak souls in starved bodies, crying with gratitude or a scrap of bread and treacle, but fullfed, quarrelsome, snobbish, uppish creatures, all standing on their little rights and dignities. My father shall never throw it in my teeth again that my converts were bribed with bread. [She is transfigured.] I have got rid of the bribe of bread. I have got rid of the bribe of heaven. Let God's work be done for its own sake: the work he had to create us to do because it cannot be done by living men and women. When I die, let him be in my debt, not I in his; and let me forgive him as becomes a woman of my rank.
Hypatia Tarleton from Misalliance
HYPATIA. That’s part of the routine of life here: the very dullest part of it. The young man who comes a-courting is as familiar an incident in my life as coffee for breakfast. Of course, he’s too much of a gentleman to misbehave himself; and I'm too much of a lady to let him; and he’s shy and sheepish; and I'm correct and self-possessed; and at last, when I can bear it no longer, I either frighten him off, or give him a chance of proposing, just to see how he'll do it, and refuse him because he does it in the same silly way as all the rest. You don’t call that an event in one's life, do you? With you it was different. I should as soon have expected the North Pole to fall in love with me as you. You know I'm only a linen-draper's daughter when all's said. I was afraid of you: you, a great man! a lord! and older than my father. And then what a situation it was! Just think of it! I was engaged to your son; and you knew nothing about it. He was afraid to tell you: he brought you down here because he thought if he could throw us together I could get round you because I was such a ripping girl. We arranged it all: he and I. We got Papa and Mamma and Johnny out of the way splendidly; and then Bentley took himself off, and left us—you and me!—to take a walk through the heather and admire the scenery of Hindhead. You never dreamt that it was all a plan: that what made me so nice was the way I was playing up to my destiny as the sweet girl that was to make your boy happy. And then! and then! [She rises to dance and clap her hands in her glee.] And then—ha, ha!—you proposed. You! A father! For your son's girl!
Joan from Saint Joan (Scene V)
JOAN. Ah! if, if, if, if! If ifs and ans were pots and pans there'd be no need of tinkers. [Rising impetuously] I tell you, Bastard, your art of war is no use, because your knights are no good for real fighting. War is only a game to them, like tennis and all their other games: they make rules as to what is fair and what is not fair, and heap armor on themselves and on their poor horses to keep out the arrows; and when they fall they cant get up, and have to wait for their squires to come and lift them to arrange about the ransom with the man that has poked them off their horse. Cant you see that all the like of that is gone by and done with? What use is armor against gunpowder? And if it was, do you think men that are fighting for France and for God will stop to bargain about ransoms, as half your knights live by doing? No: they will fight to win; and they will give up their lives out of their own hand into the hand of God when they go into battle, as I do. Common folks understand this. They cannot afford armor and cannot pay ransoms; but they followed me half naked into the moat and up the ladder and over the wall. With them it is my life or thine, and God defend the right! You may shake your head, Jack; and Bluebeard may twirl his billygoat's beard and cock his nose at me; but remember the day your knights and captains refused to follow me to attack the English at Orleans! You locked the gates to keep me in; and it was the townsfolk and the common people that followed me, and forced the gate, and shewed you the way to fight in earnest.
Lavinia from Androcles and the Lion (Act I)
LAVINIA. No. I couldn't. That is the strange thing, Captain, that a little pinch of incense should make all that difference. Religion is such a great thing that when I meet really religious people we are friends at once, no matter what name we give to the divine will that made us and moves us. Oh, do you think that I would quarrel with you for sacrificing to a god like Diana, if Diana meant to you what Christ means to me? No: but when men who do not know the meaning of the word religion drag me to the foot of an iron statue that has become the symbol of the terror and darkness through which they walk, of their cruelty and greed, of their hatred of God and their oppression of man—when they ask me to pledge my soul before the people that all this wickedness and falsehood is divine truth, I cannot do it, not if they could put a thousand cruel deaths on me. Captain: did you ever try to catch a mouse in your hand? Once there was a dear little mouse that used to come out and play on my table as I was reading. I wanted to take him in my hand and caress him. And I would stretch out my hand; but it always came back in spite of me. I was not afraid of him in my heart; but my hand refused: it is not in the nature of my hand to touch a mouse. Well, Captain, if I took a pinch of incense in my hand and stretched it out over the altar fire, my hand would come back. My body would be true to my faith even if you could corrupt my mind. And all the time I should believe more in Diana than my persecutors have ever believed in anything.
The Patient from Too True To Be Good (Act II)
THE PATIENT. [rising very deliberately] My angel love, you have rescued me from respectability so completely that I have for a month past been living the life of a mountain goat. I have got rid of my anxious worrying mother as completely as a weaned kid, and I no longer hate her. My slavery to cooks stuffing me with long meals of fish, flesh, and fowl is a thing of the miserable past: I eat dates and bread and water and raw onions when I can get them; and when I can’t get them I fast, with the result that I have forgotten what illness means; and if I ran away from you two neither of you could catch me; and if you did I could fight the pair of you with one hand tied behind me. I revel in all your miracles of the universe: the delicious dawns, the lovely sunsets, the changing winds, the cloud pictures, the flowers, the animals and their ways, the birds and insects and reptiles. Every day is a day of adventure with its cold and heat, its light and darkness, its cycles of exultant vigor and exhaustion, hunger and satiety. But the glories of nature don’t last any decently active person a week, unless they’re professional naturalists or mathematicians or a painter or something. I want something sensible to do. If I do nothing but contemplate the universe there is so much in it that is cruel and terrible and wantonly evil, and so much more that is oppressively astronomical and endless and inconceivable and impossible, that I shall just go stark raving mad. The truth is, I am free; I am healthy; I am happy; and I am utterly miserable.
ALOYSIA. You shall not put me out by these tricks and ceremonies. My Lord Duke: I would rather touch the hand of the most degraded criminal in London than touch yours. Do you forget how your family drove a whole countryside of honest hardworking Scotch crofters into the sea, and turned their little farms into deer forests because you could get more shooting rents out of them in that way? Do you forget that women in childbirth were carried out by your bailiffs to die by the roadside because they clung to their ancient homesteads and ignored your infamous notices to quit? Would it surprise you to learn that I am only one of thousands of young women who have read the hideous story of this monstrous orgy of house-breaking and murder, and sworn to ourselves that never, if we can help it, will it again be possible for one wicked rich man to say to a whole population "Get off the earth." You will not find that story in your school histories; but in the new histories, the histories of the proletariat, it has been written, not by the venal academic triflers you call historians, but by the prophets of the new order: the men in whom the word is like a burning fire shut up in their bones so that they are weary of forbearing and must speak. It is from you that we shall exact compensation: aye, to the uttermost farthing. Your demand for compensation is dismissed, turned down: we spit it back in your face. The crofters whom you drove from their country to perish in a foreign land would turn in their graves at the chink of a single penny of public money in your hungry pocket.
Major Barbara Undershaft from Major Barbara (Act III)
BARBARA. That is why I have no class, Dolly: I come straight out of the heart of the whole people. If I were middle-class I should turn my back on my father's business; and we should both live in an artistic drawingroom, with you reading the reviews in one corner, and I in the other at the piano, playing Schumann: both very superior persons, and neither of us a bit of use. Sooner than that, I would sweep out the guncotton shed, or be one of Bodger's barmaids. Do you know what would have happened if you had refused papa's offer? I should have given you up and married the man who accepted it. After all, my dear old mother has more sense than any of you. I felt like her when I saw this place—felt that I must have it—that never, never, never could I let it go; only she thought it was the houses and the kitchen ranges and the linen and china, when it was really all the human souls to be saved: not weak souls in starved bodies, crying with gratitude or a scrap of bread and treacle, but fullfed, quarrelsome, snobbish, uppish creatures, all standing on their little rights and dignities. My father shall never throw it in my teeth again that my converts were bribed with bread. [She is transfigured.] I have got rid of the bribe of bread. I have got rid of the bribe of heaven. Let God's work be done for its own sake: the work he had to create us to do because it cannot be done by living men and women. When I die, let him be in my debt, not I in his; and let me forgive him as becomes a woman of my rank.
Hypatia Tarleton from Misalliance
HYPATIA. That’s part of the routine of life here: the very dullest part of it. The young man who comes a-courting is as familiar an incident in my life as coffee for breakfast. Of course, he’s too much of a gentleman to misbehave himself; and I'm too much of a lady to let him; and he’s shy and sheepish; and I'm correct and self-possessed; and at last, when I can bear it no longer, I either frighten him off, or give him a chance of proposing, just to see how he'll do it, and refuse him because he does it in the same silly way as all the rest. You don’t call that an event in one's life, do you? With you it was different. I should as soon have expected the North Pole to fall in love with me as you. You know I'm only a linen-draper's daughter when all's said. I was afraid of you: you, a great man! a lord! and older than my father. And then what a situation it was! Just think of it! I was engaged to your son; and you knew nothing about it. He was afraid to tell you: he brought you down here because he thought if he could throw us together I could get round you because I was such a ripping girl. We arranged it all: he and I. We got Papa and Mamma and Johnny out of the way splendidly; and then Bentley took himself off, and left us—you and me!—to take a walk through the heather and admire the scenery of Hindhead. You never dreamt that it was all a plan: that what made me so nice was the way I was playing up to my destiny as the sweet girl that was to make your boy happy. And then! and then! [She rises to dance and clap her hands in her glee.] And then—ha, ha!—you proposed. You! A father! For your son's girl!
Joan from Saint Joan (Scene V)
JOAN. Ah! if, if, if, if! If ifs and ans were pots and pans there'd be no need of tinkers. [Rising impetuously] I tell you, Bastard, your art of war is no use, because your knights are no good for real fighting. War is only a game to them, like tennis and all their other games: they make rules as to what is fair and what is not fair, and heap armor on themselves and on their poor horses to keep out the arrows; and when they fall they cant get up, and have to wait for their squires to come and lift them to arrange about the ransom with the man that has poked them off their horse. Cant you see that all the like of that is gone by and done with? What use is armor against gunpowder? And if it was, do you think men that are fighting for France and for God will stop to bargain about ransoms, as half your knights live by doing? No: they will fight to win; and they will give up their lives out of their own hand into the hand of God when they go into battle, as I do. Common folks understand this. They cannot afford armor and cannot pay ransoms; but they followed me half naked into the moat and up the ladder and over the wall. With them it is my life or thine, and God defend the right! You may shake your head, Jack; and Bluebeard may twirl his billygoat's beard and cock his nose at me; but remember the day your knights and captains refused to follow me to attack the English at Orleans! You locked the gates to keep me in; and it was the townsfolk and the common people that followed me, and forced the gate, and shewed you the way to fight in earnest.
Lavinia from Androcles and the Lion (Act I)
LAVINIA. No. I couldn't. That is the strange thing, Captain, that a little pinch of incense should make all that difference. Religion is such a great thing that when I meet really religious people we are friends at once, no matter what name we give to the divine will that made us and moves us. Oh, do you think that I would quarrel with you for sacrificing to a god like Diana, if Diana meant to you what Christ means to me? No: but when men who do not know the meaning of the word religion drag me to the foot of an iron statue that has become the symbol of the terror and darkness through which they walk, of their cruelty and greed, of their hatred of God and their oppression of man—when they ask me to pledge my soul before the people that all this wickedness and falsehood is divine truth, I cannot do it, not if they could put a thousand cruel deaths on me. Captain: did you ever try to catch a mouse in your hand? Once there was a dear little mouse that used to come out and play on my table as I was reading. I wanted to take him in my hand and caress him. And I would stretch out my hand; but it always came back in spite of me. I was not afraid of him in my heart; but my hand refused: it is not in the nature of my hand to touch a mouse. Well, Captain, if I took a pinch of incense in my hand and stretched it out over the altar fire, my hand would come back. My body would be true to my faith even if you could corrupt my mind. And all the time I should believe more in Diana than my persecutors have ever believed in anything.
The Patient from Too True To Be Good (Act II)
THE PATIENT. [rising very deliberately] My angel love, you have rescued me from respectability so completely that I have for a month past been living the life of a mountain goat. I have got rid of my anxious worrying mother as completely as a weaned kid, and I no longer hate her. My slavery to cooks stuffing me with long meals of fish, flesh, and fowl is a thing of the miserable past: I eat dates and bread and water and raw onions when I can get them; and when I can’t get them I fast, with the result that I have forgotten what illness means; and if I ran away from you two neither of you could catch me; and if you did I could fight the pair of you with one hand tied behind me. I revel in all your miracles of the universe: the delicious dawns, the lovely sunsets, the changing winds, the cloud pictures, the flowers, the animals and their ways, the birds and insects and reptiles. Every day is a day of adventure with its cold and heat, its light and darkness, its cycles of exultant vigor and exhaustion, hunger and satiety. But the glories of nature don’t last any decently active person a week, unless they’re professional naturalists or mathematicians or a painter or something. I want something sensible to do. If I do nothing but contemplate the universe there is so much in it that is cruel and terrible and wantonly evil, and so much more that is oppressively astronomical and endless and inconceivable and impossible, that I shall just go stark raving mad. The truth is, I am free; I am healthy; I am happy; and I am utterly miserable.
