Sample Monologues

FEMALE MONOLOGUES

COMEDIC:

The Importance of Being Earnest

By Oscar Wilde
Gwendolen: Oh! It is strange he never mentioned to me that he had a ward. How secretive of him! He grows more
interesting hourly. I am not sure, however, that the news inspires me with feelings of unmixed delight. I am very
fond of you, Cecily; I have liked you ever since I met you! But I am bound to state that now that I know that you are
Mr. Worthing’s ward, I cannot help expressing a wish you were – well, just a little older than you seem to be – and
not quite so very alluring in appearance. In fact, if I may speak candidly…Well, to speak with perfect candour,
Cecily, I wish that you were fully forty-two, and more than usually plain for your age. Ernest has a strong upright
nature. He is the very soul of truth and honour. Disloyalty would be as impossible to him as deception. But even
men of the noblest possible moral character are extremely susceptible to the influence of the physical charms of
others. Modern, no less than Ancient History, supplies us with many most painful examples of what I refer to. If it
were not so, indeed, History would be quite unreadable.

The Rehearsal
By Don Zolidis
Morgan: Hi, everyone! You know me! I’m Morgan Hill, and I’ll be playing the part of Miss Sarah Brown, which is
the second most fun part in the play, next to the other lead, Adelaide. I don’t mind, though, because I really like
wearing starchy costumes and having my hair in a bun. And also awesome! I get to kiss Barry in this show, which
I’ve really been looking forward to for a while because that’s totally what I thought I’d be doing with my life at this
point! Not that I’m bitter! I’m not bitter! I love my part! I love singing really high and showing no emotion on stage!
How much fun is it to work for the Salvation Army and ring that bell! Much more fun than flying and using magic, I
can tell you that much! And I think this is the year that Barry learned what deodorant was, so that’s a bonus! And it
looks like some of his pimples are clearing up, double bonus! I can’t wait to do this show!!!! I am a team player.

Bye Bye Birdie

By Michael Stewart
Ursula: Kim MacAfee, what do you mean you’re resigning from the Fan Club! I mean just because Hugo Peabody
gave you his pin doesn’t mean you have to retire from all social life! Going steady is very important but there are
some things more important than very important and the Conrad Birdie Fan Club is one of them. I mean, after all,
where else can we girls gather together to worship that wonderful creature? I mean, do you realize what you’d be
giving up, Kim? You’re giving up the scream? You mean when Conrad Birdie sings, on television, you’re not going
to go “AAAAAA!”…Oh, Kim!

Once Upon a Mattress

By Jay Thompson, Marshall Barer, & Dean Fuller
Queen Aggravain: I want you to get married. How many times have I said to you I want you to get married? Only
this morning I was saying to your father, I said, “Sextimus, I want that boy to get married. It just isn’t normal for a
boy that age to stay single,” I said. “After all, he’s a prince, don’t forget that, and he is next in line for the throne. I
mean, we’re not exactly the oldest people in the world, but on the other hand, we’re not going to live forever and I
would just feel much better, much easier, and much more relaxed in my mind if I knew that that boy were married,
settled, and set.” And that’s absolutely verbatim, exactly what I said to your father this morning. Of course he didn’t
say anything, he never does, but you know him just as well as I do and I don’t have to tell you how impossible he is.
Marriage is a lifetime partnership and I wouldn’t want my little boy to make the same mistake I did and wind up
miserable the way I did. You are a prince, and you must marry someone suitable, someone who’s good enough,
smart enough, and fine enough for my good, nice, sweet, beautiful baby boy. And of course, she has to be a princess,
I mean a real princess. And that is what you want, isn’t it? Someone like me? Of course you do. Oh, if I were only
twenty years younger. Just remember this, you must trust me.
SERIO-COMIC:

What I Did Last Summer

By A.R. Gurney, Jr.
Bonny: You know where this is? This is the out place on the back road where Charlie and Ted and I used to sell
lemonade in the old days. I got a secret note from Charlie, asking me to meet him here, so here I am. I shouldn’t
even be here. My parents would kill me if they knew. They think he’s bad news from the word ‘go.’ My mother
thinks he’s worse than Ted, even. So, I had to lie to them. I told them I was going over to Janice’s to listen to the
“Hit Parade.” Oh God, I’m lying more and more! Is this what it means to be a woman? And why is it we women are
always drawn to such dangerous men? I feel like Juliet, in Shakespeare’s play of the same name. Who says this
whole thing isn’t secretly about me? What a scary place this is, at night. Right around here is where Margie
Matthews met that skunk. And here’s where Harvey’s dachshund named Pickle was run over by the milkman. If I
had any sense, I’d go over to Janice’s after all. Anything, but stand around and wait for a crazy boy who’s run away
from his own home! But I can’t let him down. I’ve got to stay. It’s my duty as a friend and neighbor.

Sophie
By Bryan Willis
Young Sophie: I met a really nice boy last week. I mean really nice. He’s pleasant looking and has beautiful puppy
dog eyes. He was really nice to me and I had a heart to heart with him and touched on subjects I find really
interesting – infinity, stuff like that. He plays guitar and I sang along to his playing and it felt so – right. But I don’t
want to rush it! That’s the thing, I have to be careful. I’ve only known him for about 74 hours. Which is long enough
to know I think he’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Also long enough to know he’s not on the pull. He’s too
genuine and faithful to snog anyone while he fancies this one girl from home. And that’s why I decided on a definite
course of action with this boy. Would you like to hear my plan? I’d like to meet him socially a few times. Forget
Romance. Don’t Tell anyone I Like Him. Then see how things progress. Naturally. Because the other thing is that
he’s so nice to everyone, not just me. So it goes to show he doesn’t fancy me. And for that I’m glad. So if anything
happens it’ll be based on friendship and mutual interests. But I’d value him, his friendship, so much right now. So I
must, at all costs, I must Keep It To Myself.

DRAMATIC:

To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday

By Micheal Brady
Rachel: This was my mother’s hat, kind of her lucky hat. The last time I saw her, I mean before the accident, she
was wearing this hat. She always wore this hat. This was her bike. It’s a long story. We used to come out here, first
thing when she got back from the summer. It was like our place to get reacquainted, have a mother daughter……
She would tell me all about the orangutans and then she’d go develop her pictures. I remember the last time she had
given the orangutans our names. Esther was the bossy one. Paul was the one that made faces all the time. And
Rachel was very, very quiet. I had forgotten that. You know sometimes I think about her, and somehow she’s still
alive.

Finer Noble Gases

By Adam Rapp
Dot: In the library at my junior high they have these huge computer monitors. The size of small refrigerators.
Three-feet high some of them. The most beautiful screen savers you’ll ever see. Mountains. Waterfalls. Pictures of
magic cities. Colors that haven’t even been invented yet. If you stand next to the hard drives and listen real close you
can hear them singing. Like hummingbirds. A gazillion megahertz of ram just whirling away. Sometimes I go real
early in the morning. When nobody’s there. And I just listen. I listen for a while and then for some reason I hug each
monitor. One by one. There’s like fifty of them. I hug each one and I get a little part of that song inside me. It’s the
most beautiful way to start the day. I think those birds on the rhinos are so cool. In the library, there’s this one
African Grassland screen saver with little birds. They ride around on this elephant and eat the bugs off its back.
There’s a lion, too, but he doesn’t do anything. The elephant walks around and drinks water out of the wallows.
That’s where the rhinos play with their kids.

None of the Above

By Jenny Lyn Bader
Jamie: It wasn’t me who broke the vase! OK? I didn’t do it! I didn’t break the vase. Someone else broke it and I
took the blame. So please stop trying to fit me into your little theory of entitlement. Because I do not go smashing up
precious antiques; that is not my idea of a fun time. I have never broken anything in my life. It was my boyfriend!
Roger Auerbach. And I knew if I told them that he broke it they would make it a rule for me not to see him and it
would be really tricky to violate that because they are like really good friends with the Auerbachs. And I thought I
loved him. So I told them I broke it. That’s when they came up with the unique punishment of no allowance for
thirteen years. …He left me the following week for Sheila Martin. The nonentity who called the other day. The new
girl in school. At this point everyone has been at Billington since nursery school and we usually don’t take new
people after seventh grade? So to have a new girl junior year is like a revelation. All of the men just melted. Also,
she’s richer than Donald Trump, and she buys him presents, which of course I had to stop doing when my funding
was cut off. I have to discuss every potential purchase I make with my mother. So this cramps my style a little bit.

MALE MONOLOGUES:

COMEDIC:

The Servant of Two Masters

Translated/adapted by Bonnie J. Monte
Original play by Carlo Goldoni
Truffaldino: Hanging around street corners, waiting for your master, is the most boring task in the world. Not only
am I bored stiff, I’m faint with hunger. We pulled into town at noon – meal time! A half hour went by, then another,
then another and then my stomach started to talk to me. He’s not happy. The first thing most normal people do when
they arrive in a new city is seek lodging and food! Then, they sit and eat the food! Not my master. He’s got me
hauling luggage, stopping at people’s houses to deliver messages, running up stairs and down stairs and now this!
Boredom and starvation. I need to talk to him about the proper care and feeding of servants. I’d be happy to serve
him with love and devotion, but he’s making it very hard. Here’s an inn; I could pop in for a little snack, but with
my luck, that’s just when he’d show up looking for me. Besides, I have no money. I have nothing. I’m dying of
hunger for that devil of a man, and for what? Poor Truffaldino!

Hello, Dolly!
By Michael Stewart
Cornelius: Isn’t the world full of wonderful things? There I sat cooped up in Yonkers for years and years and all
the time wonderful people like Mrs. Molloy were walking around in New York and I didn’t know them at all! I
don’t know whether you can all see from where you’re sitting…well for instance the way her eye and forehead and
cheek come together up here. Can you? I tell you right now a fine woman is the greatest work of God on Earth! You
can talk all you like about Niagara Falls and the Pyramids, they aren’t in it at all. Of course I’ve seen women before
but today I talked to one equal to equal, and they’re different from men! And they’re awfully mysterious, too. I bet
you could know a woman a hundred years without ever being really sure whether she liked you or not. Today I’ve
lost so many things. My job, my future, everything that people think is important, but I don’t care! Even if I have to
dig ditches for the rest of my life, I’ll be a ditch digger who once had a wonderful day.

Feiffer’s People
By Jules Feiffer
Bernard: My trouble is, I’m named Bernard. Who made up my name? Did I make it my name? I don’t feel like a
Bernard. I had hostile parents, and they named me Bernard. Is that my fault? OK, Bernard is fine for other people,
but all my life, when I was out on the street and people called me Bernard, I thought they were speaking to someone
else. I just can’t identify with the name. Inside I’m all different from a “Bernard.” If you knew me on the inside, you
wouldn’t recognize me from knowing me on the outside. You should see me when I’m by myself. The me on the
inside begins to flower and come alive! And then somebody comes along and says “Bernard” and it remembers who
I am and gets crushed. I know I would be different if people would only call me by my outside name- “Spike”.

The Foreigner
By Larry Shue
Ellard Simms: Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a knife. Knife. That’s a knife. Use it to cut things. Cut things.
(Mimes.) Like – ham. If we had some ham. Or bacon or sump’m. I can’t believe you don’t –… (Looks around for
help. There is none.) Or butter. If we had some butter, you could use it to spread it on –… You don’t really need it.
No, you don’t need it. (Demonstrating.) Put it down. Bad. (Charlie now holds a spoon.) Yeah, now that’s your
spoon. Use that to put sugar in your coffee, if you had some sugar, here. And you had some coffee – shoot. I don’t
really know why we got all these things. But your fork – man, I wish somebody else’d help you with this ‘cause I
don’t know anything, but – I think that your fork – your fork’d be the main thing you’d use. ‘Cause you got your
eggs, and you got your grits. Y’see? Eat ‘em with a fork, just like we been doin’. Can – you – say – “fork”? “Faw-
werk”? “Faw-werk.” Two parts. “Faw-werk.”…Right. Put ‘em together. “Faw-werk”…Good! That was great!

SERIO-COMIC:

Class Action
By Brad Slaight
Dennis: My name is Dennis Gandleman. Around this school I am the object of ridicule simply because I have an
extremely high IQ. It’s 176. My father wanted me to enroll in a special school that deals with geniuses like myself,
but Mother was firmly against that. She wanted me to have a normal education, and not be treated as some kind of
freak…..Which is ironic, because that’s exactly what is happening to me here. The whole concept of education is a
paradox: High School is supposed to celebrate education and knowledge, but what it really celebrates is social
groups and popularity. In a perfect world, kids like me would be worshipped because of my scholastic abilities,
instead of someone who can throw a forty-yard touchdown pass. But I am bright. I know something that the others
don’t….That, once we leave High School and enter the real world, all the rules change. What matters is power.
Financial power. Power that comes from making a fortune on cutting-edge computer software. Software that I am
already developing. Some call me a nerd. I call myself ahead of my time. See you on the outside.

Our Town
By Thornton Wilder
George Gibbs: I’m celebrating because I’ve got a friend who tells me all the things that ought to be told me. I’m
glad you spoke to me like you did. But you’ll see. I’m going to change. And Emily, I want to ask you a favor. Emily,
if I go away to State Agricultural College next year, will you write me a letter? The day wouldn’t come when I
wouldn’t want to know everything about our town. Y’know, Emily, whenever I meet a farmer I ask him if he thinks
it’s important to go to Agricultural School to be a good farmer. And some of them say it’s even a waste of time. And
like you say, being gone all that time – in other places, and meeting other people. I guess new people probably aren’t
any better than old ones. Emily, I feel that you’re as good a friend as I’ve got. I don’t need to go and meet the people
in other towns. Emily, I’m going to make up my mind right now – I won’t go. I’ll tell Pa about it tonight.

DRAMATIC:

Gemini
By Albert Innaurato
Hershel: There’s a trolley graveyard about two blocks from here. I could go see the engine any time. The trolley
graveyard is well, like, I guess, beautiful, you know? Really. They’re just there, like old creatures everyone’s
forgotten, some of them rusted out, and some of them on their sides, and one, the old thirty-two, is like standing
straight up as though sayin’, like, I’m going to stand here and be myself, no matter what. I talk to them, Oh, I
shouldn’t have said that. Don’t tell my mother, please? It’s, you know, like people who go to castles and look for,
for, well, like, knights in shining armor, you know? That past was beautiful and somehow, like, pure. The same is
true of the trolleys. I follow the old thirty-two route all the time. It leads right to the graveyard where the thirty-two
is buried, you know? It’s like, well, fate. The tracks are half covered with filth and pitch, new pitch like the city
pours on. It oozes in the summer and people walk on it, but you can see the tracks and you see like it’s true like old
things last, good things last, like you know? The trolleys are all filthy and half covered and rusted out and laughed at
and even though they’re not much use to anybody and kind of ugly like, by most standards, they’re like, they’re well,
I guess, beautiful, you know?

The Outsiders
Adapted by Christopher Sergel
From the book by S.E. Hinton
Ponyboy: Mr. Syme – this is Ponyboy. I didn’t realize it was so late. I forgot. I’m calling about the theme
assignment for English. How long can it be? (Repeating what he hears.) Not less than five pages. But can it be
longer? Longer than five pages? (Repeating.) As long as I want. (His problem. Apologetically.) It’s all in my head –
if I can sort it out. First I have to sort it out. (Listens. Then nods in agreement.) As soon as I get it together. No later
than that. Thanks, Mr. Syme. (As he hangs up, he’s already trying to handle this.) The place to begin – I’d gone to a
movie. When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of that movie house, I had only two things on
my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. I wish I looked like Paul Newman. He looks tough and I don’t. The other
thing – it’s a long walk home with no company. But I usually lone it anyway. I like to watch movies undisturbed so I
can get into them and live with the actors. I’m different that way. I mean my second oldest brother, Soda, never
cracks a boot at all, and my oldest brother, Darry, works too hard to be interested in a story or drawing a picture – so
I’m not like them. And nobody in our gang digs movies and books the way I do. So I lone it.