Shakespeare Monologues for Women

Luke Dixon

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781780010038
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Acting & Auditioning

Full of fresh speeches from Shakespeare's plays, this is the ideal guide for actors of all ages and experience.

As an actor at any level you are likely to be called upon to perform a speech from Shakespeare. A great deal will depend on your coming up with something fresh that is suited both to your particular performing skills and to the purposes of the audition. This is where this volume of The Good Audition Guides comes in.

Drawing on his extensive experience as a theatre director and in drama training, Luke Dixon has chosen fifty monologues for female actors from across the whole of Shakespeare's canon. Featured here are some of the very best-loved works (such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, Henry V and Hamlet ) alongside many less well-known (and often more intriguing) speeches from plays like Love's Labour's Lost and The Merchant of Venice.

Each monologue is prefaced with a neat summary of the vital information you need to place the piece in context and to perform it to maximum effect and in your own unique way. The volume also features a user-friendly introduction on the whole process of selecting your speech, tackling Shakespeare's language and approaching the audition itself.' Sound practical advice for anyone attending an audition ' Teaching Drama Magazine on The Good Audition Guides.

Henry IV, Part One

WHO Lady Elizabeth ‘Kate’ Percy, wife of Henry ‘Harry Hotspur’ Percy.

WHERE Warkworth Castle, Northumberland, her home, c. 1403.

WHO ELSE IS THERE Her husband Harry Hotspur.

WHAT IS HAPPENING Harry Hotspur has just told his wife that he must leave her ‘within these two hours’. Lady Percy questions her husband as to why he spends so much time on his own, demands he tell her his plans and explain why he talks of war in his sleep.

WHAT TO THINK ABOUT

•   Hotspur says nothing in response to his wife. This could be a factor in driving on her speech.

•   We know from a later speech (see next page) how much Lady Percy loves and admires her husband.

•   There is a feeling here of a woman who has lost the relationship she once had with her husband. Her words might be tinged with grief, sadness, anger, concern, love, desire, or a combination of any or all of these.

•   Lady Percy has lost sleep as she has watched over her husband. Decide how this might affect the scene.

WHERE ELSE TO LOOK Portia (Julius Caesar) is also distressed by her husband’s nocturnal behaviour and demands to know his secrets.

Lady Elizabeth Percy

“O my good lord, why are you thus alone?

For what offence have I this fortnight been

A banish’d woman from my Harry’s bed?

Tell me, sweet lord, what is’t that takes from thee

Thy stomach, pleasure and thy golden sleep?

Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth,

And start so often when thou sit’st alone?

Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks;

And given my treasures and my rights of thee

To thick-ey’d musing and curs’d melancholy?*

In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watch’d,

And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars,

Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed,

Cry ‘Courage! To the field!’ And thou hast talk’d

Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents,

Of palisadoes,* frontiers, parapets,

Of basilisks,* of cannon, culverin,*

Of prisoners’ ransom, and of soldiers slain,

And all the currents of a heady fight.

Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war,

And thus hath so bestirr’d thee in thy sleep,

That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow

Like bubbles in a late-disturbèd stream,

And in thy face strange motions have appear’d,

Such as we see when men restrain their breath

On some great sudden hest.* O, what portents are these?

Some heavy business hath my lord in hand,

And I must know it, else he loves me not.”

 

(Act 2, scene 3, lines 37–64)

GLOSSARY

 

given my treasures and my rights of thee / To thick-ey’d musing and curs’d melancholy – ignored my love and my rights as a wife because of your depression

palisadoes – defences made of pointed stakes

basilisks – large cannons

culverin – small cannon

hest – command

Henry IV, Part Two

WHO Lady Elizabeth ‘Kate’ Percy, wife of Henry ‘Harry Hotspur’ Percy.

WHERE Warkworth Castle, Northumberland, c. 1403.

WHO ELSE IS THERE The Earl of Northumberland (father of her recently killed husband) and his wife.

WHAT IS HAPPENING Her husband, Harry Hotspur, has been killed in battle by Harry Monmouth (later Henry V), Hotspur’s calls to his father, the Earl of Northumberland, having gone unanswered. The Earl has now joined the rebel army. Lady Percy and his wife (her mother-in-law) try to dissuade him from going.

WHAT TO THINK ABOUT

• Much of the speech paints a picture of her dead husband (referred to as Percy, Harry or Hotspur), bringing him to life.

• Imagine what Hotspur’s ‘thick’ voice sounded like and how that might colour Lady Percy’s speech as she recollects it.

• She may be lost in the past as she talks of her husband and her marriage and then return to the present when she accuses Northumberland of having abandoned him.

• Do not forget that Northumberland’s wife is also present.

• Remember that Monmouth is the man who killed her husband.

WHERE ELSE TO LOOK Cleopatra (Antony and Cleopatra) speaks lovingly of the absent and later dead Antony.

Lady Elizabeth Percy

“O yet, for God’s sake, go not to these wars!

The time was, father, that you broke your word

When you were more endear’d to it than now;

When your own Percy, when my heart’s dear Harry,

Threw many a northward look to see his father

Bring up his powers; but he did long in vain.

Who then persuaded you to stay at home?

There were two honours lost: yours and your son’s.

For yours, the God of heaven brighten it!

For his, it stuck upon him as the sun

In the grey vault of heaven, and by his light

Did all the chivalry of England move

To do brave acts. He was indeed the glass*

Wherein the noble youth did dress themselves.

He had no legs that practis’d not his gait;

And speaking thick, which nature made his blemish,

Became the accents of the valiant;

For those that could speak low and tardily

Would turn their own perfection to abuse,

To seem like him. So that in speech, in gait,

In diet, in affections of delight,

In military rules, humours of blood,*

He was the mark and glass, copy and book,

That fashion’d others. And him – O wondrous him!

O miracle of men! – him did you leave,

Second to n...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• 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