The Classical Monologue (W)

Women

Michael Earley, Philippa Keil, Michael Earley, Philippa Keil

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781136083242
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Arti performative

First Published in 1993. The Classical Monologue in two volumes, one for men and one for women, is a fresh selection of the best speeches from the repertoire of the classical theatre, from the Greeks to the beginning of the 20th century. These great dramatic monologues--from all periods and styles, all varied in tone and genre--make an indispensable actor's companion for auditioning, rehearsing and performing. Each monologue is accompanied by textual notes explaining any unusual vocabulary or syntax, and by commentary in which the editors offer interpretative points and practical advice in preparing the speech for performance. Both beginners and experienced actors will find The Classical Monologue a treasury of theatrical riches waiting to be released on stage.

The Spanish Tragedy

(c. 1586) Thomas Kyd

DOI: 10.4324/9781315001661-5

Act 5, scene 2. Spain. Hieronimo’s garden.

Isabella (40s) is the wife of Hieronimo, a Marshal of Spain. Her son Don Horatio was found murdered in the family garden earlier in the play. Vengeance has been slow in coming and during that time Isabella’s hapless grief over her son’s tragedy has gradually driven her insane. Here she strikes out with a knife in her hand, in a speech that also sees her physically ripping apart the place where Horatio’s body was found hanging from a tree.

ISABELLA (with a weapon).

Tell me no more! – O monstrous homicides!

Since neither piety or pity moves

The king to justice or compassion,

I will revenge myself upon this place,

Where thus they murdered my beloved son.

She cuts down the arbour.

Down with these branches and these loathsome boughs

Of this unfortunate and fatal pine!

Down with them, Isabella; rent¹ them up,

¹ rent cut and root

And burn the roots from whence the rest is sprung!

I will not leave a root, a stalk, a tree,

A bough, a branch, a blossom, nor a leaf,

No, not an herb within this garden-plot, –

Accursèd complot² of my misery!

² complot accomplice

Fruitless for ever may this garden be,

Barren the earth, and blissless whosoever

Imagines not to keep it unmanured!³

An eastern wind, commixed with noisome airs,

Shall blast the plants and the young saplings;

The earth with serpents shall be pestered,

And passengers,⁴ for fear to be infect,

³ unmanured uncultivated ⁴ passengers passers-by

Shall stand aloof, and, looking at it, tell:

‘There, murdered, died the son of Isabel.’

Ay, here he died, and here I him embrace:

See, where his ghost solicits with his wounds

Revenge on her that should revenge his death.

Hieronimo, make haste to see thy son;

For sorrow and despair hath cited⁵ me

⁵ cited summoned, also incited

To hear Horatio plead with Rhadamanth.⁶

⁶ Rhadamanth Radamanthus, one of the mythical judges of the underworld

Make haste, Hieronimo, to hold excused

Thy negligence in pursuit of their deaths,

Whose hateful wrath bereaved him of his breath.

Ah, nay, thou dost delay their deaths

Forgives the murderers of thy noble son,

And none but I bestir me – to no end!

And as I curse this tree from further fruit,

So shall my womb be cursèd for his sake;

And with this weapon will I wound the breast,

The hapless breast, that gave Horatio suck.

She stabs herself.

[lines 1–38]

commentary: Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy was one of the most popular and influential Elizabethan plays. It created a vogue for a ghoulish form of melodrama and its impact can be seen in other famous revenge tragedies, most notably Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It is full of ghosts, deceit and outrageous villainy. The play also employs theatrically effective scenes and characters, calculated to excite an audience. An extremely political plot, involving the rivalry between Spain and Portugal, is thrown aside after Don Horatio, Hieronimo’s son, is murdered by Don Balthazar, a violent Portuguese prince, and a rival for the hand of Bel-Imperia. The death and discovery of Horatio unleash a chain of incidents that culminates in the punishment of the villains and the separate suicides of Hieronimo and his wife Isabella.

Isabella, a very minor character in the play, suddenly comes to dramatic life in this very late scene. Neither justice nor revenge has rooted out the murderers of her son, leaving her mad and in despair. So Isabella decides to take ‘justice’ into her own hands. With a knife as a kind of scythe she chops down the vines and branches in her arbour, the scene of her son’s murder and where he was found hanging from a tree (the ‘fatal pine’). Powerless to be a revenger herself (that is a role reserved for her husband Hieronimo), Isabella can only take revenge on the scene of the murder. This is an incredibly physical scene. Isabella is one of the first in a long line of Elizabethan and Jacobean madwomen who usually play scenes of madness with their hair loose to indicate the venting of emotion and lack of constraint. Her speech, in blank verse, puts into words her shock and trauma at the memory of her son’s death. The brutal, macabre murder carried out at night in the garden has given the scene a weird and forbidding atmosphere. The actor should notice that Isabella expresses her grief in deeply vocalised vowels, particularly the ‘o’ sounds at the start: ‘Tell me no more – O monstrous homicides!’ Sorrow becomes a deeply felt emotion echoed in the very words themselves. The garden itself and each of the plants becomes a personified accomplice in the murder, even the very air participated in the crime. Isabella wants revenge since she cannot have justice. The most surprising aspect of the speech is her abrupt suicide at the end, unprepared for and very swift. The dramatic consequence of this scene is that it will force Hieronimo to finally revenge the murder so it must be performed with high impact.

Tamburlaine (Part I)

(c. 1590) Christopher Marlowe

DOI: 10.4324/9781315001661-6

Act 5, scene 1. Western Asia in the fourteenth century. A military camp.

Zenocrate (20s), daughter to the Sultan of Egypt, is first the captive and then the wife of Tamburlaine, the ruthless conqueror. Tamburlaine and his troops lay siege to the city of Damascus and butcher the inhabitants. Seeing the carnage and so many of her countrymen dead, Zenocrate registers shock and dismay. She tries to reconcile what she sees with her love for Tamburlaine as she unburdens herself to her maid Anippe.

ZENOCRATE.

Wretched Zenocrate, that liv’st to see

Damascus walls dy’d with Egyptian blood,

Thy father’s subjects and thy countrymen;

The streets strowed¹ with dissevered joints of men,

¹ strowed strewn

And wounded bodies gasping yet for life;

But most accurs’d, to see the sun-bright troop

Of heavenly virgins and unspotted maids,

Whose looks might make the angry god of arms

To break his sword and mildly treat of love,

On horsemen’s lances to be hoisted up,

And guiltlessly endure a cruel death.

For every fell and stout² Tartarian³ steed,

² fell and stout fierce and strong ³ Tartarian i.e. referring to Tartarus, the infernal regions of hell

That stamp’d on others with their thund’ring hoofs,

When all their riders charg’d their quivering spears,

Began to check the ground⁴ and rein themselves,

⁴ check the ground i.e. stop short

Gazing upon the beauty of their looks.

Ah, Tamburlaine, wert thou the cause of this,

That term’st Zenocrate thy dearest love?

Whose lives were dearer to Zenocrate

Than her own life, or aught save thine own love.

But see, another bloody spectacle!

Ah, wretched eyes, the enemies of my heart,

How are ye glutted with these grievous objects,

And tell my soul more tales of bleeding ruth!⁵ …

⁵ ruth compassion, pity

Earth, cast up fountains from thy entrails,⁶

⁶ entrails pronounced as three syllables

And wet thy cheeks for their untimely deaths!

Shake with their weight in sign of fear and grief!

Blush Heaven, that gave them honour at their birth

And le...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Notes to the Actor
• A Word about the Translations
• Classical Greek
• Elizabethan and Jacobean
• French and Spanish
• Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English
• English and Irish (Nineteenth and Twentieth Century)
• German, Scandinavian and Russian