Shakespeare Monologues | Male
Shakespeare monologues for men.
Below there is a selection of male shakespeare monologues, these can be used for auditions or drama exams. If you scroll down you can download the whole section.
Male Monologue’s
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL
Comic Monologue
PAROLLES:
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?
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
Dramatic Monologue
ANTONY:
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!
AS YOU LIKE IT
Dramatic Monologue
JAQUES:
All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms. Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like a snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like a furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
CORIOLANUS
Comic Monologue
MENENIUS:
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 Monologue
CORIOLANUS:
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.
CYMBELINE
Dramatic Monologue
POSTHUMUS:
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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