Men | wsmonologues

Below are monologues for men by William Shakespeare.

All's Well That Ends Well - 1 Monologue

PAROLLES: (comic)

It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational increase, and there was never virgin got till virginity was first lost. That you were made of is metal to make virgins. Virginity by being once lost may be ten times found; by being ever kept is ever lost. 'Tis too cold a companion. Away with't! 'Tis against the rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity is to accuse your mothers, which is most infallible disobedience. He that hangs himself is a virgin; virginity murders itself, and should be buried in highways out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese, consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by't. Out with't! Within ten year it will make itself ten, which is a goodly increase, and the principal itself not much the worse. Away with't! 'Tis a commodity will lose the gloss with lying: the longer kept, the less worth. Off with't while 'tis vendible; answer the time of request. Virginity, like an old courtier, wears her cap out of fashion, richly suited, but unsuitable, just like the brooch and the toothpick, which wear not now. Your date is better in your pie and your porridge than in your cheek; and your virginity, your old virginity, is like one of our French withered pears: it looks ill, it eats drily. Marry, 'tis a withered pear; it was formerly better; marry, yet 'tis a withered pear! Will you anything with it?
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Antony and Cleopatra -1 Monologue

ANTONY: (dramatic)

All is lost!

This foul Egyptian hath betrayed me:

My fleet hath yielded to the foe, and yonder

They cast their caps up and carouse together

Like friends long lost. Triple-turned whore! 'tis thou

Has sold me to this novice, and my heart

Makes only wars on thee. Bid them all fly;

For when I am revenged upon my charm,

I have done all. Bid them all fly, begone.

O sun, thy uprise shall I see no more.

Fortune and Antony part here, even here

Do we shake hands. All come to this? The hearts

That spanieled me at heels, to whom I gave

Their wishes, do discandy, melt their sweets

On blossoming Caesar; and this pine is barked,

That overtopped them all. Betrayed I am.

O this false soul of Egypt! this grave charm,

Whose eye becked forth my wars, and called them home,

Whose bosom was my crownet, my chief end,

Like a right gypsy hath at fast and loose

Beguiled me to the very heart of loss.

What, Eros, Eros! [Enter Cleopatra.] Ah, thou spell! Avaunt!

Vanish, or I shall give thee thy deserving

And blemish Caesar's triumph. Let him take thee

And hoist thee up to the shouting plebeians;

Follow his chariot, like the greatest spot

Of all thy sex. Most monster-like be shown

For poor'st diminitives, for dolts, and let

Patient Octavia plough thy visage up

With her preparèd nails. [Exit Cleopatra.] 'Tis well th' art gone,

If it be well to live; but better 'twere

Thou fell'st into my fury, for one death

Might have prevented many. Eros, ho!

The shirt of Nessus is upon me; teach me,

Alcides, thou mine ancestor, thy rage.

Let me lodge Lichas on the horns o' th' moon

And with those hands that grasped the heaviest club

Subdue my worthiest self. The witch shall die.

To the young Roman boy she hath sold me, and I fall

Under his plot: she dies for 't. Eros, ho!

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Coriolanus - 2 Monologues

MENENIUS:(comic)

I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in't; said to be something imperfect in favoring the first complaint; hasty and tinder-like upon too trivial motion; one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning. What I think, I utter, and spend my malice in my breath. Meeting two such wealsmen as you are, -- I cannot call you Lycurguses -- if the drink you give me touch my palate adversely, I make a crooked face at it. I cannot say your worships have delivered the matter well, when I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables; and though I must be content to bear with those that say you are reverend grave men, yet they lie deadly that tell you you have good faces. If you see this in the map of my microcosm, follows it that I am known well enough too? What harm can your bisson conspectuities glean out of this character, if I be known well enough too? You know neither me, yourselves, nor anything. You are ambitious for poor knaves' caps and legs. You wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange-wife and a forset-seller, and then rejourn the controversy of threepence to a second day of audience. When you are hearing a matter between party and party, if you chance to be pinched with the colic, you make faces like mummers; set up the bloody flag against all patience; and, in roaring for a chamber-pot, dismiss the controversy bleeding, the more entangled by your hearing. All the peace you make in their cause is, calling both the parties knaves. You are a pair of strange ones. Our very priests must become mockers, if they shall encounter such ridiculous objects as you are. When you speak best unto the purpose, it is not worth the wagging of your beards; and your beards deserve not so honorable a grave as to stuff a botcher's cushion or to be entombed in an ass's pack-saddle. Yet you must be saying Marcius is proud; who, in a cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessors since Deucalion, though peradventure some of the best of 'em were hereditary hangmen. Good-e'en to your worships. More of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians. I will be bold to take my leave of you.

...

CORIOLANUS:(dramatic)

My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done

To thee particularly and to all the Volsces

Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness may

My surname, Coriolanus. The painful service,

The extreme dangers, and the drops of blood

Shed for my thankless country are requited

But with that surname -- a good memory,

And witness of the malice and displeasure

Which thou shouldst bear me. Only that name remains.

The cruelty and envy of the people,

Permitted by our dastard nobles, who

Have all forsook me, hath devoured the rest;

And suffered me by th' voice of slaves to be

Whooped out of Rome. Now this extremity

Hath brought me to thy hearth, not out of hope--

Mistake me not -- to save my life; for if

I had feared death, of all the men i' th' world

I would have 'voided thee; but in mere spite,

To be full quit of those my banishers,

Stand I before thee here. Then if thou hast

A heart of wreak in thee, that wilt revenge

Thine own particular wrongs, and stop those maims

Of shame seen through thy country, speed thee straight,

And make my misery serve thy turn. So use it

That my revengeful services may prove

As benefits to thee; for I will fight

Against my cank'red country with the spleen

Of all the under fiends. But if so be

Thou dar'st not this, and that to prove more fortunes

Th' art tired, then, in a word, I also am

Longer to live most weary; and present

My throat to thee and to thy ancient malice;

Which not to cut would show thee but a fool,

Since I have ever followed thee with hate,

Drawn tuns of blood out of thy country's breast,

And cannot live but to thy shame, unless

It be to do thee service.

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Cymbeline - 1 Monologue

POSTHUMUS:(dramatic)

Is there no way for men to be, but women

Must be half-workers? We are all bastards,

And that most venerable man which I

Did call my father was I know not where

When I was stamped. Some coiner with his tools

Made me a counterfeit; yet my mother seemed

The Dian of that time. So doth my wife

The nonpareil of this. O, vengeance, vengeance!

Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained

And prayed me oft forbearance -- did it with

A pudency so rosy, the sweet view on't

Might well have warmed old Saturn -- that I thought her

As chaste as unsunned snow. O, all the devils!

This yellow Iachimo in an hour, was't not?

Or less? At first? Perchance he spoke not, but,

Like a full-acorned boar, a German one,

Cried 'O!' and mounted; found no opposition

But what he looked for should oppose and she

Should from encounter guard. Could I find out

The woman's part in me! For there's no motion

That tends to vice in man but I affirm

It is the woman's part. Be it lying, note it,

The woman's; flattering, hers; deceiving, hers;

Lust and rank thoughts, hers, hers; revenges, hers;

Ambitions, covetings, change of prides, disdain,

Nice longings, slanders, mutability,

All faults that man may name, nay, that hell knows,

Why, hers, in part or all, but rather all.

For even to vice

They are not constant, but are changing still

One vice but of a minute old for one

Not half so old as that. I'll write against them,

Detest them, curse them. Yet 'tis greater skill

In a true hate to pray they have their will;

The very devils cannot plague them better.

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Hamlet - 4 Monologues

HAMLET: (dramatic)

To be, or not to be--that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--

No more--and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--

To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprise of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now,

The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remembered.

...

HAMLET:(dramatic)

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

Is it not monstrous that this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force his soul so to his own conceit

That from her working all his visage wanned,

Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing,

For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

That he should weep for her? What would he do

Had he the motive and the cue for passion

That I have? He would drown the stage with tears

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,

Make mad the guilty and appal the free,

Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed

The very faculties of eyes and ears.

Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak

Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant for my cause,

And can say nothing. No, not for a king,

Upon whose property and most dear life

A damned defeat was made. Am I a coward?

Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?

Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?

Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat

As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?

Ha, 'swounds, I should take it, for it cannot be

But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall

To make oppression bitter, or ere this

I should ha' fatted all the region kites

With this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!

Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

O, vengeance!

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,

That I, the son of a dear father murdered,

Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,

Must like a whore unpack my heart with words

And fall a-cursing like a very drab,

A stallion! Fie upon't, foh! About, my brains.

Hum --

I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play

Have by the very cunning of the scene

Been struck so to the soul that presently

They have proclaimed their malefactions.

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak

With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players

Play something like the murder of my father

Before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks.

I'll tent him to the quick. If 'a do blench,

I know my course. The spirit that I have seen

May be a devil, and the devil hath power

T' assume a pleasing shape, yea, and perhaps

Out of my weakness and my melancholy,

As he is very potent with such spirits,

Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds

More relative than this. The play's the thing

Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

...

HAMLET:(dramatic)

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, by use all gently, for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly (not to speak profanely), that neither having th' accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. Reform it altogether! And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them, for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That's villainous and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready

...

GHOST:(dramatic)

I ake thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combinèd locks to part,

And each particular hair to stand an end

Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.

But this eternal blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!

If thou didst ever thy dear father love,

Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,

A serpent stung me. So the whole ear of Denmark

Is by a forgèd process of my death

Rankly abused. But know, thou noble youth,

The serpent that did sting thy father's life

Now wears his crown. Thy uncle,

Ay, that incestuous, that adulterous beast,

With witchcraft of his wit, with traiterous gifts--

O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power

So to seduce! -- won to his shameful lust

The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen.

O Hamlet, what a falling-off was there,

From me, whose love was of that dignity

That it went hand in hand even with the vow

I mam thy father's spirit,

Doomed for a certain term to walk the night,

And for the day confined to fast in fires,

Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature

Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid

To tell the secrets of my prison house,

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,

Made to her in marriage, and to decline

Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor

To those of mine!

But virtue, as it never will be moved,

Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,

So lust, though to a radiant angel linked,

Will sate itself in a celestial bed

And prey on garbage.

But soft, methinks I scent the morning air.

Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,

My custom always of the afternoon,

Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole

With juice of cursed hebona in a vial,

And in the porches of my ears did pour

The leperous distilment, whose effect

Holds such an enmity with blood of man

That swift as quicksilver it courses through

The natural gates and alleys of the body,

And with a sudden vigor it doth posset

And curd, like eager droppings into milk,

The thin and wholesome blood. So did it mine,

And a most instant tetter barked about

Most lazar-like with vile and loathsome crust

All my smooth body.

Thus was I sleeping by a brother's hand

Of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched,

Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,

Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled,

No reck'ning made, but sent to my account

With all my imperfections on my head.

O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!

If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not.

Let not the royal bed of Denmark be

A couch for luxury and damnèd incest.

But howsomever thou pursues this act,

Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive

Against thy mother aught. Leave her to heaven

And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge

To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once.

The glowworm shows the matin to be near

And gins to pale his uneffectual fire.

Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me.

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HENRY IV, PART I - 4 Monologues

HOTSPUR: (dramatic)

My liege, I did deny no prisoners.

But I remember, when the fight was done,

When I was dry with rage and extreme toil,

Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword,

Came there a certain lord, neat and trimly dressed,

Fresh as a bridegroom, and his chin new reaped

Showed like a stubble land at harvest home.

He was perfumèd like a milliner,

And twixt his finger and his thumb he held

A pouncet box, which ever and anon

He gave his nose, and took't away again;

Who therewith angry, when it next came there,

Took it in snuff; and still he smiled and talked;

And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,

He called them untaught knaves, unmannerly,

To bring a slovenly unhandsome corse

Betwixt the wind and his nobility.

With many holiday and lady terms

He questioned me, amongst the rest demanded

My prisoners in your majesty's behalf.

I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold,

To be so pestered with a popingay,

Out of my grief and my impatience

Answered neglectingly, I know not what--

He should, or he should not; for he made me mad

To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,

And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman

Of guns and drums and wounds -- God save the mark! --

And telling me the sovereignest thing on earth

Was parmacity for an inward bruise,

And that it was great pity, so it was,

This villainous saltpetre should be digged

Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,

Which many a good fellow had destroyed

So cowardly, and but for these vile guns,

He would himself have been a soldier.

This bald unjointed chat of his, my lord,

I answered indirectly, as I said,

And I beseech you, let not his report

Come current for an accusation

Betwixt my love and your high majesty.

...

FALSTAFF: (comic)

If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet. I have misused the king's press damnably. I have got, in exchange of a hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I press me none but good householders, yeomen's sons; inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as had been asked twice on the banes -- such a commodity of warm slaves as had as lieve hear the devil as a drum, such as fear the report of a caliver worse than a struck fowl or a hurt wild duck. I pressed me none but such toasts-and-butter, with hearts in their bellies no bigger than pins' heads, and they have bought out their services; and now my whole charge consists of ancients, corporals, lieutenants, gentlemen of companies -- slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs licked his sores; and such as indeed were never soldiers, but discarded unjust servingmen, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters, and ostlers trade-fall'n; the cankers of a calm world and a long peace; ten times more dishonorable ragged than an old fazed ancient; and such have I to fill up the rooms of them as have bought out their services that you would think that I had a hundred and fifty tattered prodigals lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad fellow met me on the way, and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets and pressed the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I'll not march through Coventry with them, that's flat. Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on, for indeed I had the most of them out of prison. There's not a shirt and a half in all my company, and the half-shirt is two napkins tacked together and thrown over the shoulders like a herald's coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stol'n from my host at Saint Alban's, or the red-nose innkeeper of Daventry. But that's all one; they'll find linen enough on every hedge.

...

FALSTAFF:(comic)

Peace, good pintpot. Peace, good ticklebrain. -- Harry, I do not only marvel where thou spendest thy time, but also how thou art accompanied. For though the camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears. That thou art my son I have partly thy mother's word, partly my own opinion, but chiefly a villainous trick of thine eye and a foolish haning of thy nether lip that doth warrant me. If then thou be son to me, here lies the point: why, being son to me, art thou so pointed at? Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher and eat blackberries? A question not to be asked. There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often heard of, and it is known to many in our land by the name of pitch. This pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile; so doth the company thou keepest. For, Harry, now I do not speak to thee in drink, but in tears; not in pleasure, but in passion; not in words only, but in woes also: and yet there is a virtuous man whom I have often noted in thy company, but I know not his name. A goodly portly man, i' faith, and a corpulent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye, and a most noble carriage; and, as I think, his age some fifty, or, by'r Lady, inclining to threescore; and now I remember me, his name is Falstaff. If that man should be lewdly given he deceiveth me; for, Harry, I see virtue in his looks. If then the tree may be known by the fruit, as the fruit by the tree, then, peremptorily I speak it, there is virtue in that Falstaff. Him keep with, the rest banish. And tell me now, thou naughty varlet, tell me where hast thou been this month?
...

KING:(comic)

God pardon thee! Yet let me wonder, Harry,

At thy affections, which do hold a wing

Quite from the flight of all thy ancestors.

Thy place in council thou hast rudely lost,

Which by thy younger brother is supplied,

And art almost an alien to the hearts

Of all the court and princes of my blood.

The hope and expectation of thy time

Is ruined, and the soul of every man

Prophetically do forethink thy fall.

Had I so lavish of my presence been,

So common-hackneyed in the eyes of men,

So stale and cheap to vulgar company,

Opinion, that did help me to the crown,

Had still kept loyal to possession

And left me in reputeless banishment,

A fellow of no mark nor likelihood.

By being seldom seen, I could not stir

But, like a comet, I was wond'red at;

That men would tell their children, 'This is he!'

Others would say, 'Where? Which is Bolingbrook?'

And then I stole all courtesy from heaven,

And dressed myself in such humility

That I did pluck allegiance from men's hearts,

Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths

Even in the presence of the crownèd king.

Thus did I keep my person fresh and new,

My presence, like a robe pontifical,

Ne'er seen but wond'red at; and so my state,

Seldom but sumptuous, showed like a feast

And wan by rareness such solemnity.

The skipping king, he ambled up and down

With shallow jesters and rash bavin wits,

Soon kindled and soon burnt; carded his state;

Mingled his royalty with cap'ring fools;

Had his great name profanèd with their scorns

And gave his countenance, against his name,

To laugh at gibing boys and stand the push

Of every beardless vain comparative;

Grew a companion to the common streets,

Enfeoffed himself to popularity;

That, being daily swallowed by men's eyes,

They surfeited with honey and began

To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little

More than a little is by much too much.

So, when he had occasion to be seen,

He was but as the cuckoo is in June,

Heard, not regarded -- seen, but with such eyes

As, sick and blunted with community,

Afford no extraordinary gaze,

Such as is bent on sunlike majesty

When it shines seldom in admiring eyes;

But rather drowsed and hung their eyelids down,

Slept in his face, and rend'red such aspect

As cloudy men use to their adversaries,

Being with his presence glutted, gorged, and full.

And in that very line, Harry, standest thou;

For thou hast lost thy princely privilege

With vile participation. Not an eye

But is aweary of thy common sight,

Save mine, which hath desired to see thee more;

Which now doth that I would not have it do--

Make blind itself with foolish tenderness.

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Henry V - 6 Monologues

KING:(dramatic)

The mercy that was quick in us but late,

By your own counsel is suppressed and killed.

You must not dare for shame to talk of mercy;

For your own reasons turn into your bosoms

As dogs upon their masters, worrying you.

See you, my princes and my noble peers,

These English monsters! My Lord of Cambridge here--

You know how apt our love was to accord

To furnish him with all appertinents

Belonging to his honor; and this man

Hath, for a few light crowns, lightly conspired

And sworn unto the practices of France

To kill us here in Hampton; to the which

This knight, no less for bounty bound to us

Than Cambridge is, hath likewise sworn. But O,

What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop, thou cruel,

Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature?

Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels,

That knew'st the very bottom of my soul,

That almost mightst have coined me into gold,

Wouldst thou have practiced on me for thy use?

May it be possible that foreign hire

Could out of thee extract one spark of evil

That might annoy my finger? 'Tis so strange

That, though the truth of it stands off as gross

As black and white, my eye will scarcely see it.

Treason and murder ever kept together,

As two yoke-devils sworn to either's purpose,

Working so grossly in a natural cause

That admiration did not whoop at them;

But thou, 'gainst all proportion, didst bring in

Wonder to wait on treason and on murder;

And whatsoever cunning fiend it was

That wrought upon thee so preposterously

Hath got the voice in hell for excellence.

All other devils that suggest by treasons

Do botch and bungle up damnation

With patches, colors, and with forms being fetched

From glist'ring semblances of piety;

But he that tempered thee bade thee stand up,

Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason,

Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor.

If that same demon that hath gulled thee thus

Should with his lion gait walk the whole world,

He might return to vasty Tartar back

And tell the legions, 'I can never win

A soul so easy as that Englishman's.'

O, how hast thou with jealousy infected

The sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful?

Why, so didst thou. Seem they grave and learnèd?

Why, so didst thou. Come they of noble family?

Why, so didst thou. Seem they religious?

Why, so didst thou. Or are they spare in diet,

Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger,

Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,

Garnished and decked in modest complement,

Not working with the eye without the ear,

And but in purgèd judgment trusting neither?

Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem;

And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot

To mark the full-fraught man and best indued

With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;

For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like

Another fall of man. Their faults are open.

Arrest them to the answer of the law;

And God acquit them of their practices!

...

KING: (dramatic)

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,

Or close the wall up with our English dead!

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness and humility,

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

Then imitate the action of the tiger:

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,

Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage;

Then lend the eye a terrible aspect:

Let it pry through the portage of the head

Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it

As fearfully as doth a gallèd rock

O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,

Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean.

Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,

Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit

To his full height! On, on, you noble English,

Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof,

Fathers that like so many Alexanders

Have in these parts from morn till even fought

And sheathed their swords for lack of argument.

Dishonor not your mothers; now attest

That those whom you called fathers did beget you!

Be copy now to men of grosser blood

And teach them how to war! And you, good yeomen,

Whose limbs were made in England, show us here

The mettle of your pasture. Let us swear

That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not,

For there is none of you so mean and base

That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,

Straining upon the start. The game's afoot!

Follow your spirit; and upon this charge

Cry 'God for Harry! England and Saint George!'

...

BOY: (comic)

As young as I am, I have observed these three swashers. I am boy to all three; but all three, though they would serve me, could not be man to me; for indeed three such antics do not amount to a man. For Bardolph, he is white-livered and red-faced; by the means whereof 'a faces it out, but fights not. For Pistol, he hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword; by the means whereof 'a breaks word and keeps whole weapons. For Nym, he hath heard that men of few words are the best men, and therefore he scorns to say his prayers, lest 'a should be thought a coward; but his few bad words are matched with as few good deeds, for 'a never broke any man's head but his own, and that was against a post when he was drunk. They will steal anything, and call it purchase. Bardolph stole a lute-case, bore it twelve leagues, and sold it for three halfpence. Nym and Bardolph are sworn brothers in filching, and in Calais they stole a fire-shovel. I knew by that piece of service the men would carry coals. They would have me as familiar with men's pockets as their gloves or handkerchers; which makes much against my manhood, if I should take from another's pocket to put into mine; for it is plain pocketing up of wrongs. I must leave them and seek some better service. Their villainy goes against my weak stomach, and therefore I must cast it up.

...
KING:(dramatic)

So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him; or if a servant, under his master's command transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant's damnation. But this is not so. The king is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not their death when they purpose their services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers. Some peradventure have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have defeated the law and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to fly from God. War is his beadle, war is his vengeance; so that here men are punished for before-breach of the king's laws in now the king's quarrel. Where they feared the death, they have borne life away; and where they would be safe, they perish. Then if they die unprovided, no more is the king guilty of their damnation than he was before guilty of those impieties for the which they are now visited. Every subject's duty is the king's, but every subject's soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed -- wash every mote out of his conscience; and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained; and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think that, making God so free an offer, he let him outlive that day to see his greatness and to teach others how they should prepare.

...

BERGUNDY:(dramatic)

My duty to you both, on equal love,

Great Kings of France and England! That I have labored

With all my wits, my pains, and strong endeavors

To bring your most imperial majesties

Unto this bar and royal interview,

Your mightiness on both parts best can witness.

Since, then, my office hath so far prevailed

That, face to face and royal eye to eye,

You have congreeted, let it not disgrace me

If I demand before this royal view,

What rub or what impediment there is

Why that the naked, poor, and mangled Peace,

Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births,

Should not, in this best garden of the world,

Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage.

Alas, she hath from France too long been chased,

And all her husbandry doth lie in heaps,

Corrupting in it own fertility.

Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,

Unprunèd dies; her hedge even-pleached,

Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,

Put forth disordered twigs; her fallow leas

The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory

Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts

That should deracinate such savagery.

The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth

The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,

Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,

Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems

But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burrs,

Losing both beauty and utility.

And all our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges,

Defective in their natures, grow to wildness.

Even so our houses and ourselves and children

Have lost, or do not learn for want of time,

The sciences that should become our country;

But grow like savages, as soldiers will,

That nothing do but meditate on blood,

To swearing and stern looks, diffused attire,

And everything that seems unnatural.

Which to reduce into our former favor

You are assembled; and my speech entreats

That I may know the let why gentle Peace

Should not expel these inconveniences

And bless us with her former qualities.

...

KING HENRY:(comic)

Marry, if you would put me to verses or to dance for your sake, Kate, why, you undid me. For the one I have neither words nor measure; and for the other I have no strength in measure, yet a reasonable measure in strength. If I could win a lady at leapfrog, or by vaulting into my saddle with my armor on my back, under the correction of bragging be it spoken, I should quickly leap into a wife. Or if I might buffet for my love, or bound my horse for her favors, I could lay on like a butcher and sit like a jackanapes, never off. But, before God, Kate, I cannot look greenly, not gasp our my eloquence, nor I have no cunning in protestation, only downright oaths which I never use till urged, nor never break for urging. If thou canst love a fellow of this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth sunburning, that never looks in his glass for love of anything he sees there, let thine eye by thy cook. I speek to thee plain soldier. If thou canst love me for this, take me; if not, to say to thee that I shall die, is true; but for thy love, by the Lord, no; yet I love thee too. And while thou liv'st, dear Kate, take a fellow of plain and uncoined constancy, for he perforce must do thee right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other places. For these fellows of infinite tongue that can rhyme themselves into ladies' favors, they do always reason themselves out again. What! A speaker is but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad. A good leg will fall, a straight back will stoop, a black beard will turn white, a curled pate will grow bald, a fair face will wither, a full eye will wax hollow; but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon; or rather, the sun, and not the moon, for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly. If thou would have a such a one, take me; and take me, take a soldier; take a soldier, take a king. And what say'st thou then to my love? Speak, my fair, and fairly, I pray thee.

..................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Henry V - 6 Monologues

KING:(dramatic)

The mercy that was quick in us but late,

By yggest by treasons

Do botch and bungle up damnation

With patches, colors, and with forms being fetched

From glist'ring semblances of piety;

But he that tempered thee bade thee stand up,

Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason,

Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor.

If that same demon that hath gulled thee thus

Should wiour own counsel is suppressed and killed.

You must not dare for shame to talk of mercy;

For your own reasons turn into your bosoms

As dogs upon their masters, worrying you.

See you, my princes and my noble peers,

These English monsters! My Lord of Cambridge here--

You know how apt our love was to accord

To furnish him with all appertinents

Belonging to his honor; and this man

Hath, for a few light crowns, lightly conspired

And sworn unto the practices of France

To kill us here in Hampton; to the which

This knight, no less for bounty bound to us

Than Cambridge is, hath likewise sworn. But O,

What shall I say to thee, Lord Scroop, thou cruel,

Ingrateful, savage, and inhuman creature?

Thou that didst bear the key of all my counsels,

That knew'st the very bottom of my soul,

That almost mightst have coined me into gold,

Wouldst thou have practiced on me for thy use?

May it be possible that foreign hire

Could out of thee extract one spark of evil

That might annoy my finger? 'Tis so strange

That, though the truth of it stands off as gross

As black and white, my eye will scarcely see it.

Treason and murder ever kept together,

As two yoke-devils sworn to either's purpose,

Working so grossly in a natural cause

That admiration did not whoop at them;

But thou, 'gainst all proportion, didst bring in

Wonder to wait on treason and on murder;

And whatsoever cunning fiend it was

That wrought upon thee so preposterously

Hath got the voice in hell for excellence.

All other devils that suth his lion gait walk the whole world,

He might return to vasty Tartar back

And tell the legions, 'I can never win

A soul so easy as that Englishman's.'

O, how hast thou with jealousy infected

The sweetness of affiance! Show men dutiful?

Why, so didst thou. Seem they grave and learnèd?

Why, so didst thou. Come they of noble family?

Why, so didst thou. Seem they religious?

Why, so didst thou. Or are they spare in diet,

Free from gross passion or of mirth or anger,

Constant in spirit, not swerving with the blood,

Garnished and decked in modest complement,

Not working with the eye without the ear,

And but in purgèd judgment trusting neither?

Such and so finely bolted didst thou seem;

And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot

To mark the full-fraught man and best indued

With some suspicion. I will weep for thee;

For this revolt of thine, methinks, is like

Another fall of man. Their faults are open.

Arrest them to the answer of the law;

And God acquit them of their practices!

...

KING: (dramatic)

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,

Or close the wall up with our English dead!

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness and humility,

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

Then imitate the action of the tiger:

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,

Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage;

Then lend the eye a terrible aspect:

Let it pry through the portage of the head

Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it

As fearfully as doth a gallèd rock

O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,

Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean.

Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,

Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit

To his full height! On, on, you noble English,

Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof,

Fathers that like so many Alexanders

Have in these parts from morn till even fought

And sheathed their swords for lack of argument.

Dishonor not your mothers; now attest

That those whom you called fathers did beget you!

Be copy now to men of grosser blood

And teach them how to war! And you, good yeomen,

Whose limbs were made in England, show us here

The mettle of your pasture. Let us swear

That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not,

For there is none of you so mean and base

That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,

Straining upon the start. The game's afoot!

Follow your spirit; and upon this charge

Cry 'God for Harry! England and Saint George!'

...

BOY: (comic)

As young as I am, I have observed these three swashers. I am boy to all three; but all three, though they would serve me, could not be man to me; for indeed three such antics do not amount to a man. For Bardolph, he is white-livered and red-faced; by the means whereof 'a faces it out, but fights not. For Pistol, he hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword; by the means whereof 'a breaks word and keeps whole weapons. For Nym, he hath heard that men of few words are the best men, and therefore he scorns to say his prayers, lest 'a should be thought a coward; but his few bad words are matched with as few good deeds, for 'a never broke any man's head but his own, and that was against a post when he was drunk. They will steal anything, and call it purchase. Bardolph stole a lute-case, bore it twelve leagues, and sold it for three halfpence. Nym and Bardolph are sworn brothers in filching, and in Calais they stole a fire-shovel. I knew by that piece of service the men would carry coals. They would have me as familiar with men's pockets as their gloves or handkerchers; which makes much against my manhood, if I should take from another's pocket to put into mine; for it is plain pocketing up of wrongs. I must leave them and seek some better service. Their villainy goes against my weak stomach, and therefore I must cast it up.

...
KING:(dramatic)

So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him; or if a servant, under his master's command transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant's damnation. But this is not so. The king is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not their death when they purpose their services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers. Some peradventure have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have defeated the law and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to fly from God. War is his beadle, war is his vengeance; so that here men are punished for before-breach of the king's laws in now the king's quarrel. Where they feared the death, they have borne life away; and where they would be safe, they perish. Then if they die unprovided, no more is the king guilty of their damnation than he was before guilty of those impieties for the which they are now visited. Every subject's duty is the king's, but every subject's soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed -- wash every mote out of his conscience; and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained; and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think that, making God so free an offer, he let him outlive that day to see his greatness and to teach others how they should prepare.

...

BERGUNDY:(dramatic)

My duty to you both, on equal love,

Great Kings of France and England! That I have labored

With all my wits, my pains, and strong endeavors

To bring your most imperial majesties

Unto this bar and royal interview,

Your mightiness on both parts best can witness.

Since, then, my office hath so far prevailed

That, face to face and royal eye to eye,

You have congreeted, let it not disgrace me

If I demand before this royal view,

What rub or what impediment there is

Why that the naked, poor, and mangled Peace,

Dear nurse of arts, plenties, and joyful births,

Should not, in this best garden of the world,

Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage.

Alas, she hath from France too long been chased,

And all her husbandry doth lie in heaps,

Corrupting in it own fertility.

Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,

Unprunèd dies; her hedge even-pleached,

Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,

Put forth disordered twigs; her fallow leas

The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory

Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts

That should deracinate such savagery.

The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth

The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover,

Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank,

Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems

But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burrs,

Losing both beauty and utility.

And all our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges,

Defective in their natures, grow to wildness.

Even so our houses and ourselves and children

Have lost, or do not learn for want of time,

The sciences that should become our country;

But grow like savages, as soldiers will,

That nothing do but meditate on blood,

To swearing and stern looks, diffused attire,

And everything that seems unnatural.

Which to reduce into our former favor

You are assembled; and my speech entreats

That I may know the let why gentle Peace

Should not expel these inconveniences

And bless us with her former qualities.

...

KING HENRY:(comic)

Marry, if you would put me to verses or to dance for your sake, Kate, why, you undid me. For the one I have neither words nor measure; and for the other I have no strength in measure, yet a reasonable measure in strength. If I could win a lady at leapfrog, or by vaulting into my saddle with my armor on my back, under the correction of bragging be it spoken, I should quickly leap into a wife. Or if I might buffet for my love, or bound my horse for her favors, I could lay on like a butcher and sit like a jackanapes, never off. But, before God, Kate, I cannot look greenly, not gasp our my eloquence, nor I have no cunning in protestation, only downright oaths which I never use till urged, nor never break for urging. If thou canst love a fellow of this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth sunburning, that never looks in his glass for love of anything he sees there, let thine eye by thy cook. I speek to thee plain soldier. If thou canst love me for this, take me; if not, to say to thee that I shall die, is true; but for thy love, by the Lord, no; yet I love thee too. And while thou liv'st, dear Kate, take a fellow of plain and uncoined constancy, for he perforce must do thee right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other places. For these fellows of infinite tongue that can rhyme themselves into ladies' favors, they do always reason themselves out again. What! A speaker is but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad. A good leg will fall, a straight back will stoop, a black beard will turn white, a curled pate will grow bald, a fair face will wither, a full eye will wax hollow; but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the moon; or rather, the sun, and not the moon, for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps his course truly. If thou would have a such a one, take me; and take me, take a soldier; take a soldier, take a king. And what say'st thou then to my love? Speak, my fair, and fairly, I pray thee.

...................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Henry VI, Part I - 1 Monologue

KING:(dramatic)

Come hither you that would be combatants.

Henceforth I charge you, as you love our favor,

Quite to forget this quarrel and the cause.

And you, my lords: remember where we are,

In France, amongst a fickle wavering nation.

If they perceive disssension in our looks

And that within ourselves we disagree,

How will their grudging stomachs be provoked

To willfull disobedience, and rebel!

Beside, what infamy will there arise

When foreign princes shall be certified

That for a toy, a thing of no regard,

King Henry's peers and chief nobility

Destroyed themselves and lost the realm of France!

O, think upon the conquest of my father,

My tender years, and let us not forgo

That for a trifle that was bought with blood!

Let me be umpire in this doubtful strife.

I see no reason, if I wear this rose,

[Puts on a red rose.]

That any one should therefore be suspicious

I more incline to Somerset than York.

Both are my kinsmen, and I love them both.

As well they may upbraid me with a crown

Because forsooth the King of Scots is crowned.

But your discretions better can persuade

Than I am able to instruct or teach;

And therefore, as we hither came in peace,

So let us still continue peace and love.

Cousin of York, we institute your grace

To be our regent in these parts of France;

And, good my Lord of Somerset, unite

Your troops of horsemen with his bands of foot;

And like true subjects, sons of your progenitors,

Go cheerfully together and digest

Your angry choler on your enemies.

Ourself, my Lord Protector, and the rest,

After some respite will return to Calais;

From thence to England, where I hope ere long

To be presented, by your victories,

With Charles, Alençon, and that traitorous rout.

...................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Henry VI, Part II - 1 Monologue

YORK:(dramatic)

Anjou and Maine are given to the French,

Paris is lost; the state of Normandy

Stands on a tickle point now they are gone.

Suffolk concluded on the articles,

The peers agreed, and Henry was well pleased

To change two dukedoms for a duke's fair daughter.

I cannot blame them all. What is't to them?

'Tis thine they give away, and not their own.

Pirates may make cheap pennyworths of their pillage,

And purchase friends, and give to courtesans,

Still revelling like lords till all be gone,

While as the silly owner of the goods

Weeps over them and wrings his hapless hands

And shakes his head and trembling stands aloof

While all is shared and all is borne away,

Ready to starve and dare not touch his own.

So York must sit and fret and bite his tongue

While his own lands are bargained for and sold.

Methinks the realms of England, France, and Ireland

Bear that proportion to my flesh and blood

As did the fatal brand Althaea burnt

Unto the prince's heart of Calydon.

Anjou and Maine both given unto the French?

Cold news for me! for I had hope of France,

Even as I have of fertile England's soil.

A day will come when York shall claim his own;

And therefore I will take the Nevils' parts,

And make a show of love to proud Duke Humphrey,

And when I spy advantage, claim the crown,

For that's the golden mark I seek to hit.

Nor shall proud Lancaster usurp my right,

Nor hold the sceptre in his childish fist,

Nor wear the diadem upon his head,

Whose churchlike humors fits not for a crown.

Then, York, be still awhile, till time do serve.

Watch thou and wake when others be asleep,

To pry into the secrets of the state.

Till Henry, surfeiting in joys of love,

With his new bride and England's dear-bought queen,

And Humphrey with the peers be fallen at jars.

Then will I raise aloft the milk-white rose,

With whose sweet smell the air shall be perfumed,

And in my standard bear the arms of York

To grapple with the house of Lancaster;

And force perforce I'll make him yield the crown

Whose bookish rule hath pulled fair England down.

...................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Henry VI, Part III - 1 Monologue

YORK:(dramatic)

She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France,

Whose tongue more poisons than the adder's tooth,

How ill-beseeming is it in thy sex

To triumph like an Amazonian trull

Upon their woes whom fortune captivates.

But that thy face is vizard-like, unchanging,

Made impudent with use of evil deeds,

I would assay, proud queen, to make thee blush.

To tell thee whence thou cam'st, of whom derived,

Were shame enough to shame thee, wert thou not shameless.

Thy father bears the type of King of Naples,

Of both the Sicils and Jerusalem,

Yet not so wealthy as an English yeoman.

Hath that poor monarch taught thee to insult?

It needs not nor it boots thee not, proud queen,

Unless the adage must be verified,

That beggars mounted run their horse to death.

'Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud;

But God he knows thy share thereof is small.

'Tis virtue that doth make them most admired;

The contrary doth make thee wond'red at.

'Tis government that makes them seem divine;

The want thereof makes thee abominable.

Thou art as opposite to every good

As the Antipodes are unto us

Or as the South to the Septentrion.

O tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide!

How couldst thou drain the lifeblood of the child,

To bid the father wipe his eyes withal,

And yet be seen to bear a woman's face?

Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible;

Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless.

Bid'st thou me rage? Why, now thou hast thy wish.

Wouldst have me weep? Why, now thou hast thy will.

For raging wind blows up incessant showers,

And when the rage allays the rain begins.

These tears are my sweet Rutland's obsequies,

And every drop cries vengeance for his death

'Gainst thee, fell Clifford, and thee, false Frenchwoman.

...................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Henry VIII - 1 Monologue

BUCKINGHAM:

Nay, Sir Nicholas,

Let it alone; my state now will but mock me.

When I came hither I was Lord High Constable

And Duke of Buckingham; now poor Edward Bohun.

Yet I am richer than my base accusers,

That never knew what truth meant: I now seal it;

And with that blood will make 'em one day groan for't.

My noble father, Henry of Buckingham,

Who first raised head against usurping Richard,

Flying for succor to his servant Banister,

Being distressed, was by that wretch betrayed,

And without trial fell; God's peace be with him!

Henry the Seventh succeeding, truly pitying

My father's loss, like a most royal prince

Restored me to my honors; and out of ruins

Made my name once more noble. Now his son,

Henry the Eighth, life, honor, name, and all

That made me happy, at one stroke has taken

For ever from the world. I had my trial,

And must needs say a noble one; which makes me

A little happier than my wretched father.

Yet thus far we are one in fortunes: both

Fell by our servants, by those men we loved most--

A most unnatural and faithless service.

Heaven has an end in all; yet you that hear me,

This from a dying man receive as certain:

Where you are liberal of your loves and counsels

Be sure you be not loose; for those you make friends

And give your hearts to, when they once perceive

The least rub in your fortunes, fall away

Like water from ye, never found again

But where they mean to sink ye. All good people,

Pray for me! I must now forsake ye; the last hour

Of my long weary life is come upon me.

Farewell!

....................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Love's Labor's Lost - 2 monologues

BEROWNE:(comic)

And I, forsooth, in love!

I, that have been love's whip,

A very beadle to a humorous sigh,

A critic, nay, a night-watch constable,

A domineering pedant o'er the boy,

Than whom no mortal so magnificent.

This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy,

This signor-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid,

Regent of love-rimes, lord of folded arms,

The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans,

Liege of all loiterers and malcontents,

Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces,

Sole imperator and great general

Of trotting paritors -- O my little heart!

And I to be a corporal of his field,

And wear his colors like a tumbler's hoop!

What? I love, I sue, I seek a wife!

A woman that is like a German clock,

Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,

And never going aright, being a watch,

But being watched that it may still go right!

Nay, to be perjured, which is worst of all;

And, among three, to love the worst of all;

A whitely wanton with a velvet brow,

With two pitch balls stuck in her face for eyes.

Ay, and, by heaven, one that will do the deed,

Though Argus were her eunuch and her guard.

And I to sigh for her, to watch for her,

To pray for her! Go to, it is a plague

That Cupid will impose for my neglect

Of his almighty dreadful little might.

Well, I will love, write, sigh, pray, sue, groan:

Some men must love my lady, and some Joan.

...

BEROWNE:(dramatic)

Have at you, then, affection's men-at-arms!

Consider what you first did swear unto:

To fast, to study, and to see no woman--

Flat treason 'gainst the kingly state of youth.

Say, can you fast? Your stomachs are too young,

And abstinence engenders maladies.

O, we have made a vow to study, lords,

And in that vow we have forsworn our books;

For when would you, my liege, or you, or you,

In leaden contemplation have found out

Such fiery numbers as the prompting eyes

Of beauty's tutors have enriched you with?

Others slow arts entirely keep the brain,

And therefore, finding the barren practisers,

Scarce show a harvest of their heavy toil;

But love, first learnèd in a lady's eyes,

Lives not alone immurèd in the brain,

But, with the motion of all elements,

Courses as swift as thought in every power,

And gives to every power a double power,

Above their functions and their offices.

It adds a precious seeing to the eye:

A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind.

A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound,

When the suspicious head of theft is stopped.

Love's feeling is more soft and sensible

Than are the tender horns of cockled snails.

Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste.

For valor, is not Love a Hercules,

Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?

Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical

As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair.

And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods

Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.

Never durst poet touch a pen to write

Until his ink were temp'red with Love's sighs;

O, then his lines would ravish savage ears

And plant in tyrants mild humility.

From women's eyes this doctrine I derive.

They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;

They are the books, the arts, the academes,

That show, contain, and nourish all the world;

Else none at all in aught proves excellent.

Then fools you were these women to forswear,

Or, keeping what is sworn, you will prove fools.

For wisdom's sake, a word that all men love,

Or for love's sake, a word that loves all men,

Or for men's sake, the authors of these women,

Or women's sake, by whom we men are men,

Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,

Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.

It is religion to be thus forsworn,

For charity itself fulfils the law

And who can sever love from charity?

.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Mecbeth - 1 Monologue

MACBETH:(dramatic)

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee!

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? or art thou but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation

Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain?

I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.

Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going,

And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fools o' th' other senses,

Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still,

And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,

Which was not so before. There's no such thing.

It is the bloody business which informs

Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half-world

Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse

The curtained sleep. Witchcraft celebrates

Pale Hecate's offerings; and withered murder,

Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl 's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,

With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design

Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,

Hear not my steps which way they walk, for fear

Thy very stones prate of my whereabout

And take the present horror from the time,

Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives;

Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.

[A bell rings.]

I go, and it is done. The bell invites me.

Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell

That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.

.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Measure For Measure - 1 Monologue

ANGELO:(dramatic)

What's this? what's this? is this her fault or mine?

The tempter, or the tempted, who sins most?

Ha!

Not she, nor doth she tempt; but it is I

That, lying by the violet in the sun,

Do as the carrion does, not as the flower,

Corrupt with virtuous season. Can it be

That modesty may more betray our sense

Than woman's lightness? Having wasteground enough,

Shall we desire to raze the sanctuary

And pitch our evils there? O fie, fie, fie!

What dost thou? or what are thou, Angelo?

Dost thou desire her foully for those things

That make her good? O, let her brother live:

Thieves for their robbery have authority

When judges steal themselves. What, do I love her,

That I desire to hear her speak again,

And feast upon her eyes? what is't I dream on?

O cunning enemy that, to catch a saint,

With saints dost bait thy hook: most dangerous

Is that temptation that doth goad us on

To sin in loving virtue. Never could the strumpet

With all her double vigor, art and nature,

Once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid

Subdues me quite. Ever till now,

When men were fond, I smiled and wondered how.

.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................

The Merchant Of Venice - 2 Monologues

LAUNCELOT:(comic)

Certainly my conscience will serve me to run from this Jew my master. The fiend is at mine elbow and tempts me, saying to me, 'Gobbo, Launcelot Gobbo, good Launcelot,' or 'good Gobbo,' or 'good Launcelot Gobbo -- use your legs, take the start, run away.' My conscience says, 'No. Take heed, honest Launcelot; take heed, honest Gobbo,' or as aforesaid, 'honest Launcelot Gobbo -- do not run; scorn running with thy heels.' Well, the most courageous fiend bids me pack. 'Fia!' says the fiend; 'away!' says the fiend. 'For the heavens, rouse up a brave mind,' says the fiend, 'and run.' Well, my conscience hanging about the neck of my heart says very wisely to me, 'My honest friend Launcelot, being an honest man's son' -- or rather 'an honest woman's son,' for indeed my father did something smack, something grow to; he had a kind of taste -- Well, my conscience says, 'Launcelot, budge not.' 'Budge,' says the fiend. 'Budge not,' says my conscience. 'Conscience,' say I, 'you counsel well.' 'Fiend,' say I, 'you counsel well.' To be ruled by my conscience, I should stay with the Jew my master who, God bless the mark, is a kind of devil; and to run away from the Jew, I should be ruled by the fiend who, saving your reverence, is the devil himself. Certainly the Jew is the very devil incarnation; And in my conscience, my conscience is but a kind of hard conscience to offer to counsel me to stay with the Jew. The fiend gives the more friendly counsel. I will run, fiend; my heels are at your commandment; I will run.
...

MOROCCO:(comic)

[Examining three caskets: one gold, one silver, one lead.]

Some god direct my judgment! Let me see--

I will survey th' inscriptions back again.

What says this leaden casket?

'Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.'

Must give -- for what? for lead! hazard for lead?

This casket threatens; men that hazard all

Do it in hope of fair advantages.

A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross;

I'll then nor give nor hazard aught for lead.

What says the silver with her virgin hue?

'Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.'

As much as he deserves? Pause there, Morocco,

And weigh thy value with an even hand:

If thou be'st rated by thy estimation,

Thou dost deserve enough; and yet enough

May not extend so far as to the lady;

And yet to be afeard of my deserving

Were but a weak disabling of myself.

As much as I deserve? Why that's the lady!

I do in birth deserve her, and in fortunes,

In graces, and in qualities of breeding;

But more than these, in love I do deserve.

What if I strayed no farther, but chose here?

Let's see once more this saying graved in gold:

'Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.'

Why that's the lady! All the world desires her;

From the four corners of the earth they come

To kiss this shrine, this mortal breathing saint.

The Hyrcanian deserts and the vasty wilds

Of wide Arabia are as thoroughfares now

For princes to come view fair Portia.

The watery kingdom, whose ambitious head

Spits in the face of heaven, is no bar

To stop the foreign spirits, but they come

As o'er a brook to see fair Portia.

One of these three contains her heavenly picture.

Is't like that lead contains her? 'Twere damnation

To think so base a thought; it were too gross

To rib her cerecloth in the obscure grave.

Or shall I think in silver she's immured,

Being ten times undervalued to tried gold?

O sinful thought! Never so rich a gem

Was set in worse than gold. They have in England

A coin that bears the figure of an angel

Stamped in gold -- but that's insculped upon;

But here an angel in a golden bed

Lies all within. Deliver me the key.

Here do I choose, and thrive I as I may!

...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................

The Merry Wives Of Windsor - 1 Monologue

FORD:(dramatic/comic)

What a damned Epicurean rascal is this! My heart is ready to crack with impatience. Who says this is improvident jealousy? My wife hath sent to him, the hour is fixed, the match is made. Would any man have thought this? See the hell of having a false woman! My bed shall be abused, my coffers ransacked, my reputation gnawn at; and I shall not only receive this villainous wrong, but stand under the adoption of abominable terms, and by him that does me this wrong. Terms! names! Amaimon sounds well; Lucifer, well; Barbason, well; yet they are devils' additions, the names of fiends. But Cuckold! Wittol! -- Cuckold! the devil himself hath not such a name. Page is an ass, a secure ass. He will trust his wife; he will not be jealous. -- I will rather trust a Fleming with my butter, Parson Hugh the Welshman with my cheese, an Irishman with my aqua vitae bottle, or a thief to walk my ambling gelding, than my wife with herself. Then she plots, then she ruminates, then she devises -- and what they think in their hearts they may effect. God be praised for my jealousy. Eleven o'clock the hour. I will prevent this, detect my wife, be revenged on Falstaff, and laugh at Page. I will about it; better three hours too soon than a minute too late. Fie, fie, fie! cuckold! cuckold! cuckold!

...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM - 1 Monologue

PUCK:(comic)

My mistress with a monster is in love.

Near to her close and consecrated bower,

While she was in her dull and sleeping hour,

A crew of patches, rude mechanicals,

That work for bread upon Athenian stalls,

Were met together to rehearse a play,

Intended for great Theseus' nuptial day.

The shallowest thickskin of that barren sort,

Who Pyramus presented in their sport,

Forsook his scene and entered in a brake.

When I did him at this advantage take,

An ass's nole I fixèd on his head.

Anon his Thisby must be answerèd,

And forth my mimic comes. When they him spy,

As wild geese that the creeping fowler eye,

Or russet-pated choughs, many in sort,

Rising and cawing at the gun's report,

Sever themselves and madly sweep the sky;

So at his sight away his fellows fly,

And at our stamp here o'er and o'er one falls;

He murder cries and help from Athens calls.

Their sense thus weak, lost with their fears thus strong,

Made senseless things begin to do them wrong,

For briers and thorns at their apparel snatch:

Some, sleeves -- some, hats; from yielders all things catch.

I led them on in this distracted fear

And left sweet Pyramus translated there,

When in that moment (so it came to pass)

Titania waked, and straightway loved an ass.

...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING - 3 Monologues

BENEDICK:(comic)

O, she misused me past the endurance of a block! An oak but with one green leaf on it would have answered her; my very visor began to assume life and scold with her. She told me, not thinking I had been myself, that I was the Prince's jester, that I was duller than a great thaw; huddling jest upon jest with such impossible conveyance upon me that I stood like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting at me. She speaks poniards, and every word stabs. If her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were no living near her; she would infect the North Star. I would not marry her though she were endowed with all that Adam had left him before he transgressed. She would have made Hercules have turned spit, yea, and have cleft his club to make the fire too. Come, talk not of her. You shall find her the infernal Ate in good apparel. I would to God some scholar would conjure her, for certainly, while she is here, a man may live as quiet in hell as in a sanctuary; and people sin upon purpose, because they would go thither; so indeed all disquiet, horror, and perturbation follows her.

...

BENEDICK:(comic)

This can be no trick. The conference was sadly borne; they have the truth of this from Hero; they seem to pity the lady. It seems her affections have their full bent. Love me? Why, it must be requited. I hear how I am censured. They say I will bear myself proudly if I perceive the love come from her. They say too that she will rather die than give any sign of affection. I did never think to marry. I must not seem proud. Happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending. They say the lady is fair-- 'tis a truth, I can bear them witness; and virtuous-- 'tis so, I cannot reprove it; and wise, but for loving me-- by my troth, it is no addition to her wit, nor no great argument of her folly, for I will be horribly in love with her. I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me because I have railed so long against marriage. But doth not the appetite alter? A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age. Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humor? No, the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married. Here comes Beatrice. By this day, she's a fair lady! I do spy some marks of love in her.
...

LEONATO:(dramatic)

I pray thee cease thy counsel,

Which falls into mine ears as profitless

As water in a sieve. Give not me counsel,

Nor let no comforter delight mine ear

But such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine.

Bring me a father that so loved his child,

Whose joy of her is overwhelmed like mine,

And bid him speak of patience.

Measure his woe the length and breadth of mine,

And let it answer every strain for strain,

As thus for thus, and such a grief for such,

In every lineament, branch, shape, and form.

If such a one will smile and stroke his beard,

Bid sorrow wag, cry 'hem' when he should groan,

Patch grief with proverbs, make misfortune drunk

With candle-wasters -- bring him yet to me,

And I of him will gather patience.

But there is no such man; for, brother, men

Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief

Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,

Their counsel turns to passion, which before

Would give preceptial medicine to rage,

Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,

Charm ache with air and agony with words.

No, no! 'Tis all men's office to speak patience

To those that wring under the load of sorrow,

But no man's virtue nor sufficiency

To be so moral when he shall endure

The like himself. Therefore give me no counsel.

My griefs cry louder than advertisement.

...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................

OTHELLO - 1 Monologue

OTHELLO: (dramatic)

Her father loved me, oft invited me;

Still questioned me the story of my life

From year to year -- the battles, sieges, fortunes

That I have passed.

I ran it through, even from my boyish days

To th' very moment that he bade me tell it.

Wherein I spoke of most diastrous chances,

Of moving accidents by flood and field;

Of hairbreadth scapes i' the' imminent deadly breach;

Of being taken by the insolent foe

And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence

And portance in my travels' history;

Wherein of anters vast and deserts idle,

Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,

It was my hint to speak -- such was the process;

And of the Cannibals that each other eat,

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear

Would Desdemona seriously incline;

But still the house affairs would draw her thence;

Which ever she could with haste dispatch,

She'ld come again, and with a greedy ear

Devour up my discourse. Which I observing,

Took once a pliant hour, and found good means

To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart

That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,

Whereof by parcels she had something heard,

But not intentively. I did consent,

And often did beguile her of her tears

When I did speak of some distressful stroke

That my youth suffered. My story being done,

She gave me for my pains a world of sighs.

She swore, i' faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange;

'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful.

She wished she had not heard it; yet she wished

That heaven had made her such a man. She thanked me;

And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,

I should but teach him how to tell my story,

And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake.

She loved me for the dangers I had passed,

And I loved her that she did pity them.

This only is the witchcraft I have used.

Here comes the lady. Let her witness it

...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................

RICHARD III - 3 Monologues

RICHARD:(dramatic)

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this son of York;

And all the clouds that lowered upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,

Our bruisèd arms hung up for monuments,

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front,

And now, instead of mounting barbèd steeds

To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,

He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks

Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;

I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;

I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature,

Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me as I halt by them--

Why I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to see my shadow in the sun

And descant on mine own deformity.

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determinèd to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,

By drunk prophecies, libels, and dreams,

To set my brother Clarence and the king

In deadly hate the one against the other;

And if King Edward be as true and just

As I am subtle, false, and treacherous,

This day should Clarence closely be mewed up

About a prophecy which says that G

Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul -- here Clarence comes!

...

CLARENCE: (dramatic)

O, I have passed a miserable night,

So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights,

That, as I am a Christian faithful man,

I would not spend another such night

Though 'twere to buy a world of happy days--

So full of dismal terror was the time.

Methoughts that I had broken from the Tower

And was embarked to cross the Bergundy,

And in my company my brother Gloucester,

Who from my cabin tempted me to walk

Upon the hatches: thence we looked toward England

And cited up a thousand heavy times,

During the wars of York and Lancaster,

That had befall'n us. As we paced along

Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,

Methought that Gloucester stumblèd, and in falling

Struck me (that thought to stay him) overboard

Into the tumbling billows of the main.

O Lord! methought what pain it was to drown!

What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears!

What sights of ugly death within mine eyes!

Methoughts I saw a thousand fearful wracks;

A thousand men that fishes gnawed upon;

Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,

Inestimable stones, unvaluèd jewels,

All scatt'red in the bottom of the sea:

Some lay in dead men's skulls, and in the holes

Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept

(As 'twere in scorn of eyes) reflecting gems,

That wooed the slimy bottom of the deep

And mocked the dead bones that lay scatt'red by.

I passed (methought) the melancholy flood,

With that sour ferryman which poets write of,

Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.

The first that there did greet my stranger soul

Was my great father-in-law, renownèd Warwick,

Who spake aloud, 'What scourge for perjury

Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?'

And so he vanished. Then came wand'ring by

A shadow like an angel, with bright hair

Dabbled in blood, and he shrieked aloud,

'Clarence is come -- false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,

That stabbed me in the field by Tewkesbury:

Seize on him, Furies, take him unto torment!'

With that (methoughts) a legion of foul fiends

Environed me, and howlèd in mine ears

Such hideous cries that with the very noise

I, trembling, waked, and for a season after

Could not believe but that I was in hell,

Such terrible impression made my dream.

...

RICHARD:(dramatic)

Look what is done cannot be now amended:

Men shall deal unadvisedly sometimes,

Which after-hours gives leisure to repent.

If I did take the kingdom from your sons,

To make amends I'll give it to your daughter;

If I have killed the issue of your womb,

To quicken your increase I will beget

Mine issue of your blood upon your daughter.

A grandam's name is little less in love

Than is the doting title of a mother;

They are as children but one step below,

Even of your metal, of your very blood,

Of all one pain, save for a night of groans

Endured of her for whom you bid like sorrow:

Your children were vexation to your youth,

But mine shall be a comfort to your age.

The loss you have is but a son being king,

And by that loss your daughter is made queen.

I cannot make you what amends I would;

Therefore accept such kindness as I can.

Dorset your son, that with a fearful soul

Leads discontented steps in foreign soil,

This fair alliance quickly shall call home

To high promotions and great dignity.

The king, that calls your beauteous daughter wife,

Familiarly shall call thy Dorset brother:

Again shall you be mother to a king,

And all the ruins of distressful times

Repaired with double riches of content.

What! we have many goodly days to see:

The liquid drops of tears that you have shed

Shall come again, transformed to orient pearl,

Advantaging their love with interest

Of ten times double gain of happiness.

Go then, my mother; to thy daughter go;

Make bold her bashful years with your experience;

Prepare her ears to hear a wooer's tale;

Put in her tender heart th' aspiring flame

Of golden sovereignty; acquaint the princess

With the sweet silent hours of marriage joys;

And when this arm of mine hath chastisèd

The petty rebel, dull-brained Buckingham,

Bound with triumphant garlands will I come

And lead thy daughter to a conqueror's bed;

To whom I will retail my conquest won,

And she shall be sole victoress, Caesar's Caesar.

...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................

ROMEO AND JULIET - 3 Monologues

MERCUTIO:(comic)

O, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you.

She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes

In shape no bigger than an agate stone

On the forefinger of an alderman,

Drawn with a team of little atomies

Over men's noses as they lie asleep;

Her wagon spokes made of long spinners' legs,

The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;

Her traces, of the smallest spider web;

Her collars, of the moonshine's wat'ry beams;

Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film;

Her wagoner, a small grey-coated gnat,

Not half so big as a round little worm

Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid;

Her chariot is an empty hazelnut,

Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,

Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.

And in this state she gallops night by night

Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;

O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on curtsies straight;

O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees;

O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream,

Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,

Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.

Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,

And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;

And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail

Tickling a parson's nose as 'a lies asleep,

Then dreams he of another benefice.

Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,

And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,

Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,

Of healths five fathom deep; and then anon

Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,

And being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two

And sleeps again. This is that very Mab

That plats the manes of horses in the night

And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,

Which once untangled much misfortune bodes.

This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,

That presses them and learns them first to bear,

Making them women of good carriage.

This is she!

...

ROMEO:(dramatic)

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,

Who is already sick and pale with grief

That thou her maid art far more fair than she.

Be not her maid, since she is envious.

Her vestal livery is but sick and green,

And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off.

It is my lady; O, it is my love!

O that she knew she were!

She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?

Her eye discourses; I will answer it.

I am too bold; 'tis not to me she speaks.

Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,

Having some business, do entreat her eyes

To twinkle in their spheres till they return.

What if her eyes were there, they in her head?

The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars

As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven

Would through the airy region stream so bright

That birds would sing and think it were not night.

See how she leans her cheek upon her hand!

O that I were a glove upon that hand,

That I might touch that cheek!

...

FRIAR:(dramatic)

Hold thy desperate hand.

Art thou a man? Thy form cries out thou art;

Thy tears are womanish, thy wild acts denote

The unreasonable fury of a beast.

Unseemly woman is a seeming man!

And ill-beseeming beast in seeming both!

Thou hast amazed me. By my holy order,

I thought thy disposition better tempered.

Hast thou slain Tybalt? Wilt thou slay thyself?

And slay thy lady that in thy life lives,

By doing damnèd hate upon thyself?

Why railest thou on thy birth, the heaven, and earth?

Since birth and heaven and earth, all three do meet

In thee at once; which thou at once wouldst lose.

Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit,

Which, like a userer, abound'st in all,

And uses none in that true sense indeed

Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit.

Thy noble shape is but a form of wax,

Digressing from the valor of a man;

Thy dear love sworn but hollow perjury,

Killing that love which thou hast vowed to cherish;

Thy wit, that ornament to shape and love,

Misshapen in the conduct of them both,

Like powder in a skilless soldier's flask,

Is set afire by thine own ignorance,

And thou dismemb'red with thine own defense.

What, rouse thee, man! Thy Juliet is alive,

For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead.

There art thou happy. Tybalt would kill thee,

But thou slewest Tybalt. There are thou happy too.

The law, that threat'ned death, becomes thy friend

And turns it to exile. There art thou happy.

A pack of blessings light upon thy back;

Happiness courts thee in her best array;

But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench,

Thou pout'st upon thy fortune and thy love.

Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.

Go get thee to thy love, as was decreed,

Ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her.

But look thou stay not till the watch be set,

For then thou canst not pass to Mantua,

Where thou shalt live till we can find a time

To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends,

Beg pardon of the Prince, and call thee back

With twenty hundred thousand times more joy

Than thou went'st forth in lamentation.

Go before, nurse. Commend me to thy lady,

And bid her hasten all the house to bed,

Which heavy sorrow makes them apt unto.

Romeo is coming.

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THE TEMPEST - 1 Monologue

TRINCULO:(comic)

Here's neither bush nor shrub to bear off any weather at all, and another storm brewing: I hear it sing i' th' wind. Yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor. If it should thunder as it did before, I know not where to hide my head. Yond same cloud cannot choose but fall by pailfuls. What have we here? a man or a fish? dead or alive? A fish: he smells like a fish; a very ancient and fishlike smell; a kind of not of the newest poor-John. A strange fish! Were I in England now, as once I was, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of silver. There would this monster make a man: any strange beast there makes a man. When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian. Legged like a man! and his fins like arms! Warm, o' my troth! I do now let loose my opinion, hold it no longer: this is no fish, but an islander, that hath lately suffered by a thunderbold. [Thunder.] Alas, the storm is come again! My best way is to creep under his gaverdine: there is no other shelter hereabout. Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. I will here shroud till the dregs of the storm be past.

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TIMON OF ATHENS - 1 Monologue

TIMON: (dramatic)

Let me look back upon thee. O thou wall

That girdles in those wolves, dive in the earth

And fence not Athens! Matrons, turn incontinent!

Obedience fail in children! Slaves and fools,

Pluck the grave wrinkled senate from the bench

And minister in their steads! To general filths

Convert o' th' instant, green virginity!

Do't in your parents' eyes! Bankrupts, hold fast;

Rather than render back, out with your knives

And cut your trusters' throats! Bound servants, steal:

Large-handed robbers your grave masters are

And pill by law. Maid, to thy master's bed:

Thy mistress is o' th' brothel. Son of sixteen,

Pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire;

With it beat out his brains! Piety and fear,

Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth,

Domestic awe, night-rest and neighborhood,

Instruction, manners, mysteries and trades,

Degrees, observances, customs and laws,

Decline to your confounding contraries,

And yet confusion live! Plagues incident to men,

Your potent and infectious fevers heap

On Athens, ripe for stroke! Thou cold sciatica,

Cripple our senators, that their limbs may halt

As lamely as their manners! Lust and liberty

Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth,

That 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive

And drown themselves in riot! Itches, blains,

Sow all th' Athenian bosoms, and their crop

Be general leprosy! Breath infect breath,

That their society, as their friendship, may

Be merely poison! Nothing I'll bear from thee

But nakedness, thou detestable town;

Take thou that too, with multiplying bans!

Timon will to the woods, where he shall find

Th' unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.

The gods confound -- hear me, you good gods all --

Th' Athenians both within and out that wall;

And grant, as Timon grows, his hate may grow

To the whole race of mankind, high and low!

Amen.

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TITUS ANDRONICUS - 1 Monologue

TITUS:(dramatic)

Come, come, Lavinia; look, thy foes are bound.

Sirs, stop their mouths, let them not speak to me,

But let them hear what fearful words I utter.

O villains, Chiron and Demetrius!

Here stands the spring whom you have stained with mud,

This goodly summer with your winter mixed.

You killed her husband, and for that vile fault

Two of her brothers were condemned to death,

My hand cut off and made a merry jest;

Both her sweet hands, her tongue, and that more dear

Than hands our tongue, her spotless chastity,

Inhuman traitors, you constrained and forced.

What would you say if I should let you speak?

Villains, for shame you could not beg for grace.

Hark, wretches, how I mean to martyr you.

This one hand yet is left to cut your throats

Whiles that Lavinia 'tween her stumps doth hold

The basin that receives your guilty blood.

You know your mother means to feast with me,

And calls herself Revenge, and thinks me mad.

Hark, villains, I will grind your bones to dust,

And with your blood and it I'll make a paste,

And of the paste a coffin I will rear,

And make two pasties of your shameful heads,

And bid that strumpet, your unhallowed dam,

Like to the earth, swallow her own increase.

This is the feast that I have bid her to,

And this the banquet she shall surfeit on;

For worse than Philomel you used my daughter,

And worse than Progne I will be revenged.

And now prepare your throats. Lavinia, come,

Receive the blood; and when that they are dead,

Let me go grind their bones to powder small

And with this hateful liquor temper it;

And in that paste let their vile heads be baked.

Come, come, be every one officious

To make this banquet, which I wish may prove

More stern and bloody than the Centaur's feast.

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TROILUS AND CRESSIDA - 1 Monologue

ULYSSES:(dramatic)

Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,

Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes.

Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devoured

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

As done. Perseverance, dear my lord,

Keeps honor bright; to have done, is to hang

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mock'ry. Take the instant way;

For honor travels in a strait so narrow

Where one but goes abreast. Keep, then, the path;

For emulation hath a thousand sons

That one by one pursue. If you give way,

Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,

Like to an ent'red tide they all rush by

And leave you hindmost;

[Or, like a gallant horse fall'n in first rank,

Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,

O'errun and trampled on.] Then what they do in present,

Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours;

For time is like fashionable host,

That slightly shakes his parting guest by th' hand,

And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly,

Grasps in the comer. The welcome ever smiles,

And farewell goes out sighing. Let not virtue seek

Remuneration for the thing it was. For beauty, wit,

High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service,

Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all

To envious and calumniating time.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,

That all with one consent praise new-born gawds,

Though they are made and moulded of things past,

And give to dust that is a little gilt

More laud than gilt o'er-dusted.

The present eye praises the present object.

Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,

That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;

Since things in motion sooner catch the eye

That what not stirs. The cry went once on thee,

And still it might, and yet it may again,

If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive

And case thy reputation in thy tent;

Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late,

Made emulous missions 'mongst the gods themselves

And drave great Mars to faction.

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TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA v- 3 Monologues

LAUNCE:(comic)

Nay, 'twill be this hour ere I have done weeping. All the kind of the Launces have this very fault. I have received my proportion, like the prodigious son, and am going with Sir Proteus to the Imperial's court. I think Crab, my dog, be the sourest-natured dog that lives. My mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands, and all our house in a great perplexity, yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear. He is a stone, a very pebble stone, and has no more pity in him than a dog. A Jew would have wept to have seen our parting. Why, my grandam, having no eyes, look you, wept herself blind at my parting. Nay, I'll show you the manner of it. This shoe is my father. No, this left shoe is my father. No, no, this left shoe is my mother. Nay, that cannot be so neither. Yes, it is so, it is so -- it hath the worser sole. This shoe with the hole in it is my mother, and this my father. A vengeance on't! There 'tis. Now, sir, this staff is my sister, for, look you, she is as white as a lily and as small as a wand. This hat is Nan, our maid. I am the dog. No, the dog is himself, and I am the dog -- O, the dog is me, and I am myself. Ay, so, so. Now come I to my father: 'Father, your blessing.' Now should not the shoe speak a word for weeping. Now should I kiss my father -- well, he weeps on. Now come I to my mother. O, that she could speak now like a wood woman! Well, I kiss her -- why, there 'tis: here's my mother's breath up and down. Now come I to my sister; mark the moan she makes. Now the dog all this while sheds not a tear nor speaks a word!

...

PROTEUS:(comic)

To leave my Julia, shall I be forsworn;

To love fair Silvia, shall I be forsworn;

To wrong my friend, I shall be much forsworn;

And ev'n that pow'r which gave me first my oath

Provokes me to this threefold perjury.

Love bade me swear, and Love bids me forswear.

O sweet-suggesting Love, if thou hast sinned,

Teach me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it.

At first I did adore a twinkling star,

But now I worship a celestial sun.

Unheedful vows may heedfully be broken,

And he wants wit that wants resolvèd will

To learn his wit t' exchange the bad for better.

Fie, fie, unreverend tongue, to call her bad,

Whose sovereignty so oft thou hast preferred

With twenty thousand soul-confirming oaths!

I cannot leave to love, and yet I do;

But there I leave to love where I should love.

Julia I lose and Valentine I lose.

If I keep them, I needs must lose myself;

If I lose them, thus find I by their loss:

For Valentine, myself; for Julia, Silvia.

I to myself am dearer than a friend,

For love is still most precious in itself,

And Silvia -- witness heaven that made her fair! --

Shows Julia but a swarthy Ethiope.

I will forget that Julia is alive,

Rememb'ring that my love to her is dead,

And Valentine I'll hold an enemy,

Aiming at Silvia as a sweeter friend.

I cannot now prove constant to myself

Without some treachery used to Valentine.

This night he meaneth with a corded ladder

To climb celestial Silvia's chamber window,

Myself in counsel, his competitor.

Now presently I'll give her father notice

Of their disguising and pretended flight,

Who, all enraged, will banish Valentine;

For Thurio, he intends, shall wed his daughter.

But, Valentine being gone, I'll quickly cross

By some sly trick blunt Thurio's dull proceeding.

Love, lend me wings to make my purpose swift,

As thou hast lent me wit to plot this drift.

...

LAUNCE:(comic)

When a man's servant shall play the cur with him, look you, it goes hard: one that I brought up of a puppy, one that I saved from drowning when three or four of his blind brothers and sisters went to it. I have taught him, even as one would say precisely, 'Thus I would teach a dog.' I was sent to deliver him as a present to Mistress Silvia from my master, and I came no sooner into the dining chamber but he steps me to her trencher and steals her capon's leg. O, 'tis a foul thing when a cur cannot keep himself in all companies! I would have, as one should say, one that takes upon him to be a dog indeed, to be, as it were, a dog at all things. If I had not had more wit than he, to take a fault upon me that he did, I think verily he had been hanged for't. Sure as I live, he had suffered for't. You shall judge. He thrusts me himself into the company of three or four gentleman-like dogs under the Duke's table. He had not been there -- bless the mark -- a pissing-while but all the chamber smelt him. 'Out with the dog,' says one. 'What cur is that?' says another. 'Whip him out,' says the third. 'Hang him up,' says the Duke. I, having been acquainted with the smell before, knew it was Crab, and goes me to the fellow that whips the dogs. 'Friend,' quoth I, 'you mean to whip the dog?' 'Ay, marry, do I,' quoth he. 'You do him the more wrong,' quoth I; ''twas I did the thing you wot of.' He makes me no more ado, but whips me out of the chamber. How many masters would do this for his servant? Nay, I'll be sworn, I have sat in the stocks for puddings he hath stol'n, otherwise he had been executed. I have stood in the pillory for geese he hath killed, otherwise he had suffered for't. Thou think'st not of this now. Nay, I remember the trick you served me when I took my leave of Madam Silvia. Did not I bid thee still mark me and do as I do? When didst thou see me heave up my leg and make water against a gentlewoman's farthingale? Didst thou ever see me do such a trick?
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William-Shakespeare-Monologues

Below are monologues for men by William Shakespeare.

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