ROSALINE'S MONOLOGUE - AFTER JULIET:

This particular monologue I have from the play is when Rosaline is talking to Juliet's grave.

After Juliet is a play written by Scottish playwright Sharman Macdonald.^[1] It was commissioned for the 1999 NT Shell Connections programme, in which regional youth theatre groups compete to stage short plays by established playwrights.

The basic premise of the play, following on from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is "What happened to the Capulets and Montagues after Romeo and Juliet died". The setting of After Juliet is described as "Verona. Or it could be Edinburgh, Dublin, Birmingham, New York, or Liverpool. It could be 1500, 1900, 2000, or 3000".^[2] The only place that After Juliet cannot be set is Glasgow, as one of the characters, Rhona, is from Glasgow, and away from home.

It continues to be performed by youth groups around the world.

Plot

The play centres on Rosaline, Juliet's cousin and Romeo's ex-flame. Ironically, Rosaline had been in love with Romeo, but was playing hard to get. Tortured by the loss of her love, Rosaline has become a sullen, venomous woman. She actively seeks to be elected the 'Princess of Cats' and run the Capulet family.

Meanwhile, the Capulets and Montagues have obeyed Prince Escalus and called a truce. The treaty quickly descends into a farce as both sides continue to rage against each other. Amid the turmoil more doomed love springs- between Benvolio Montague and Rosaline. Benvolio is warned by Valentine (Mercutio's twin brother) to stay away from her if he knows what's right.

The climax of the play comes during an election to determine whether or not Rosaline or Petruchio (Tybalt's brother) will succeed Tybalt as Prince or Princess of Cats. The election fails to have any results and the fate of the truce is left open ended.

A 2009 youth, stage version of the show featured Valentine as the twin sister of Mercutio; this added an extra storyline where Valentine is in love with Benvolio and is jealous of Rosaline. Benvolio's final scene ends with Valentine running off stage after his rejection.

Rosaline is a capulet and is Juliet's cousin. A tense truce holds between the Capulet's and the Montague's after Romeo and Juliet's death. Benvolio, Romeo's cousin is in love with Rosaline, Juliet's cousin; but Rosaline is bent on revenge. 

Here is the monologue / the full monologue:

Rosaline Monologue
Your spirit haunts me, Juliet 
I see more of you dead 
than I did when you were alive... 
that's a joke, more of you dead. 
Go on laugh. And more of you alive than I wanted to. 
Laugh. Laugh, go on. 
Come on, Juliet. 
We were hardly close as cousins. 
You were too small, too pretty, too rich 
Too thin and too much loved for me to cope with. 
'Spoilt' is the word that springs to mind 
though I don't want to speak ill of the dead. 
(SHE TOUCHES THE FLOWER) 
All a flower does is wither 
It's the memories that stay forever 
So they tell me 
So what do I recall of you? 
Juliet, daddy's princess, rich, 
Mummy's darling, quite a bitch. 
You scratched my face once, from here to here 
I have the scar, I have it yet. 
You can see it quite clearly in the sunlight; 
A silver line 
You wanted my favourite doll 
And of course you got it 
For though I was scarred, you cried. 
And your nurse swooped down 
And took the moppet from me 
Spanked me hard for making you unhappy; 
Gave my doll to you, her dearest baby. 
Later you stole my best friend; 
Wooed her with whisper; 
Told her gossip's secrets; 
Gave her trinkets, sweetmeats. 
Later still, you took my love 
And didn't know you'd done it; 
Then having taken him 
You let him die. 
If you'd swallowed the friar's potion earlier 
You would have wakened. 
And my love would still be alive. 
None of this would have happened. 
I know you, Juliet. 
You hesitated, frightened. 
Didn't take the stuff until the dawn. 
Wakened too late in the tomb. 
In the night I dream of Romeo. 
He's reaching his arms out from the vault. 
The poison has him in its hold. 
He fills my nights with his longing for life. 
Until I am afraid to go to sleep. 
For though I love him still 
I cannot soothe his pain. 
If I could, I would 
But it is not me he's reaching out for. 
So why, Juliet, 
Should I spend my cash on flowers for you? 
are you a saint simply because you were daft enough to die for love? 
Love? 
A passing fancy, 
No more nor less. 
Tomorrow or tomorrow or tomorrow 
you would have tired of him. 
Like your fancy for the doll; 
Once possessed, you left it in the rain; 
yesterday's fancy, mud in its hair, 
Damp stained the dress Id made for her. 
They think you brave to have taken your life 
But you believed in immortality. 
Daddys princess could not die. 
she would be there at her own funeral 
to watch the tears flow 
and hear her praises sung. 
So you haunt me. 
Don't turn away. 
Listen. Listen. 
What is it that youv brought about? 
What trail does your fancy drag behind? 
What punishments lie in your fancys wake? 
Listen Juliet. 
Come here. Come close. 
Press your ear to the earth so I know your listening. 
There's a trial going on. 
Even now in all solemnity. 
Four lives hang on the balance 
forced by your selfish suicide 
To take their chance 
Standing at the mercy of the court. 
They wait to see weather life or death 
is granted them by what we call justice 
It's a strange justice. 
Law meted out by the rich who measure their wisdom by the weight of their gold, 
As if riches bear witness to virtue. 
You and I know they don't. 
So four poor people are brought before the prince 
to see whether they live or die. 
You brought this on them. 
No feud wrought their trials. 
Their misery is tribute to your precocity. 
Married. And at thirteen! 
So. So. Sweet Coz. 
Here. This is the last flower 
You'll get from me. 
Death flowers have the sweetest scent 
That's that bit done. 

I am cropping the monologue to this: 

Your spirit haunts me, Juliet 
I see more of you dead 
than I did when you were alive... 
that's a joke, more of you dead. 
Go on laugh. And more of you alive than I wanted to. 
Laugh. Laugh, go on. 
Come on, Juliet. 
We were hardly close as cousins. 
You were too small, too pretty, too rich 
Too thin and too much loved for me to cope with. 
'Spoilt' is the word that springs to mind 
though I don't want to speak ill of the dead. 
(SHE TOUCHES THE FLOWER) 
All a flower does is wither 
It's the memories that stay forever 
So they tell me 
So what do I recall of you? 
Juliet, daddy's princess, rich, 
Mummy's darling, quite a bitch. 
You scratched my face once, from here to here 
I have the scar, I have it yet. 
You can see it quite clearly in the sunlight; 
A silver line 
You wanted my favourite doll 
And of course you got it 
For though I was scarred, you cried. 
And your nurse swooped down 
And took the moppet from me 
Spanked me hard for making you unhappy; 
Gave my doll to you, her dearest baby. 
Later still, you took my love 
And didn't know you'd done it; 
Then having taken him 
You let him die. 
If you'd swallowed the friar's potion earlier 
You would have wakened. 
And my love would still be alive. 
None of this would have happened. 
I know you, Juliet. 
You hesitated, frightened. 
Didn't take the stuff until the dawn. 
Wakened too late in the tomb. 

So you haunt me. 
Don't turn away. 
Listen. Listen. 

Press your ear to the earth so I know your listening.

Married. And at thirteen! 
Here. This is the last flower 
You'll get from me. 
Death flowers have the sweetest scent 
That's that bit done. 

I chose to do this monologue because I like the words and I like how they have done a follow up from the story of Romeo and Juliet because I always wondered what happened with Rosaline because that is who Romeo loved in the first place and I never saw her so I always wondered what happened with how Rosaline felt. It is really long so I remembered when I showed it a long time ago that I was given advice to cut it down so that is what I have done. 

PAMELA MONOLOGUE - FIVE FINGER EXERCISE:

I have decided to take a monologue from the play 'Five Finger Exercise' by Peter Shaffer. The play was originally written in 1958.

The Harrington family is not a happy one. Mother and housewife Louise (Rosalind Russell) is somewhat self-deluded, while father and business executive Stanley (Jack Hawkins) is disconnected and distant. Their son, Philip (Richard Beymer), is a fey and sensitive teen, and his sister, Pamela (Annette Gorman), is restless and tightly wound. Into this tense mix arrives Walter (Maximilian Schell), a charming tutor, whose presence shakes things up in the troubled household.
The Harrington family is spending the summer at a beach house in Carmel, California. Louise Harrington is a domineering and overly culture-conscious woman who feels she has married beneath herself. Her husband, Stanley, is an intolerant, self-made furniture manufacturer who has allowed his wife complete authority in the upbringing of their two children. Young Philip, a sensitive Harvard student, is confused, semi-emasculated, and uncertain of both himself and his future. Fifteen-year-old Pamela is a frivolous child controlled by her adolescent impulses. Into their lives comes Walter, a young German whom Louise has hired as a tutor for Pamela. He has fled his home because of a brutal Nazi father; lonely, shy, and desperately in need of family love, he serves as the catalyst to unleash the hidden tensions in the family. To Stanley, Walter is one more of Louise's ridiculous affectations; to Philip, he is a much-needed friend and advisor who can save him from his mother's stifling love; to Pamela, he is a symbol of love; and to Louise, he is a potential lover. Walter's efforts to become a member of the family end in a violent domestic crisis. His attentions to Louise are misunderstood by father and son as adulterous; his "rescue" of Pamela when she swims out too far embarrasses and alienates the girl; and his confession to Louise that he regards her as a mother is met with a chilling silence. As a result he is dismissed and ordered to leave. Not knowing how he has failed to win the family's love, he attempts suicide. The drastic action awakens the Harringtons to a sudden realization of their individual selfishness and, once Walter has gone, they make an effort to repair their shattered family life.

I chose this monologue:

I read it out to the class for the first time in front of people the day after I chose it. I chose it because I thought it would be interesting to do a character who is fourteen years old as I am seventeen years old and I usually go for much older characters. I have to read the play as I am a little confused on how to read it. I don't know if Pamela is trying to be creepy or if she finds it funny etc. So I need to read the play. 

My feedback from Olga was even though she considered I have only just picked the play, that I look like me in the monologue and not a different character and also that when I mentioned about 'Snow' in the monologue that they could hear the word 'snow' but she could not see the 'snow' and that other people saw 'leaves' and not snow. 

After all that though, Olga told me that the monologue is nice for me and it suits me and reckons I could play a fourteen year old well. 

Sessions

Olga wanted us to take some of our classical monologues and look at the words and over physicalize them to get more of a feel for what the words mean. I chose the monologue of Emilia from Othello. I never showed it too the class but I feel like it loosened me up a bit because I personally do not understand most of the words in classical monologues because it's obviously not my language so sometimes I read it and think I have read it in a completely different context than what it was written in.

One of our class members showed his one, it came out really funny where he was over acting the words but hearing him doing it that time made me understand it more because he physicalized it so well with the words that it actually made sense for me to listen to and watch. It was also more fun to watch, I find it really hard to get into classical plays as it is not something I usually go for and listen to myself as I haven't grown up with it being my natural language even though of course that was the language used back in the day.

Contrasting Monologues

Olga gave me a monologue to look at for contemporary, but when I spoke to Ella she mentioned that I use it for contrasting instead. This particular monologue is from the play 'A Doll's house'.

A Doll's House (Norwegian: Et dukkehjem; also translated as A Doll House) is a three-act play in prose by Henrik Ibsen. It premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month.

The play is significant for its critical attitude toward 19th-century marriage norms. It aroused great controversy at the time, as it concludes with the protagonist, Nora, leaving her husband and children because she wants to discover herself. Ibsen was inspired by the belief that "a woman cannot be herself in modern society," since it is "an exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint." Its ideas can also be seen as having a wider application: Michael Meyer argued that the play's theme is not women's rights, but rather "the need of every individual to find out the kind of person he or she really is and to strive to become that person." In a speech given to the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights in 1898, Ibsen insisted that he "must disclaim the honor of having consciously worked for the women's rights movement," since he wrote "without any conscious thought of making propaganda," his task having been "the description of humanity."

In 2006, the centennial of Ibsen's death, A Doll's House held the distinction of being the world's most performed play for that year. UNESCO has inscribed Ibsen's autographed manuscripts of A Doll's House on the Memory of the World Register in 2001, in recognition of their historical value.

Olga told me to particularly look at a monologue from the character 'Nora'. 

And I found this:

Nora:
It is perfectly true, Torvald. When I was at home with papa, he told me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not have liked it. He called me his doll-child, and he played with me just as I used to play with my dolls. And when I came to live with you—

I mean that I was simply transferred from papa's hands into yours. You arranged everything according to your own taste, and so I got the same tastes as you--or else I pretended to, I am really not quite sure which--I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other.

When I look back on it, it seems to me as if I had been living here like a poor woman--just from hand to mouth. I have existed merely to perform tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have it so. You and papa have committed a great sin against me. It is your fault that I have made nothing of my life.

You neither think nor talk like the man I could bind myself to. As soon as your fear was over--and it was not fear for what threatened me, but for what might happen to you--when the whole thing was past, as far as you were concerned it was exactly as if nothing at all had happened.

Exactly as before, I was your little skylark, your doll, which you would in future treat with doubly gentle care, because it was so brittle and fragile. Torvald--it was then it dawned upon me that for eight years I had been living here with a strange man, and had borne him three children--. Oh! I can't bear to think of it! I could tear myself into little bits!

'In this definitive scene, the naïve yet often contriving Nora has a startling epiphany. She once believed that her husband was a proverbial knight in shining armor, and that she was an equally devoted wife.

Through a series of emotionally draining events, she realizes that their relationship and their feelings were more make believe than real.

In this monologue from Henrik Ibsen’s play, she opens up to her husband with stunning frankness as she realizes that she has been living in "A Doll’s House."'

Below, are videos posted on youtube of the play "A doll's house" performed by the students at The Balhaven University.

And there is also an audiobook of the play available on YouTube:

VALERIE'S MONOLOGUE FROM THE WEIR

On 28th December I decided to read the monologue hand out that Olga gave me which is from the play called 'The Weir' by Connor McPherson in 1977. It was first produced at the Royal Court theatre upstairs in London on the 4th July 1997.

Plot Summary:

Source from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weir

The play opens in a rural Irish pub with Brendan, the publican and Jack, a car mechanic and garage owner. These two begin to discuss their respective days and are soon joined by Jim. The three then discuss Valerie, a pretty young woman from Dublin who has just rented an old house in the area.

Finbar, a businessman, arrives with Valerie, and the play revolves around reminiscence and the kind of banter which only comes about amongst men who have a shared upbringing. After a few drinks, the group begin telling stories with a supernatural slant, related to their own experience or those of others in the area, and which arise out of the popular preoccupations of Irish folklore: ghosts, fairies and mysterious happenings.

After each man (with the exception of Brendan) has told a story, Valerie tells her own: the reason why she has left Dublin. Valerie's story is melancholy and undoubtedly true, with a ghostly twist which echoes the earlier tales, and shocks the men who become softer, kinder, and more real. There is the hint that the story may lead to salvation and, eventually, a happy ending for two of the characters.
Finbar and Jim leave, and in the last part of the play, Jack's final monologue is a story of personal loss which, he comments, is at least not a ghostly tale but in some ways is nonetheless about a haunting.

The play is as much about lack of close relationships and missed connections as it is about anything else. The weir of the title is the name of the pub, named for a hydroelectric dam on a nearby waterway that is mentioned only in passing as Finbar describes the local attractions to Valerie. It anticipates and symbolises the flow of the stories into and around each other, and how they have all collected together in one place to be recounted together.

Reading the monologue myself:

Before I knew anything about the play I read the monologue out loud, whilst reading it, I noticed slang and it was slang that was used in an Irish accent. So after reading the monologue I decided to read up about it to find out that Valerie does indeed have an Irish accent. So I went on to YouTube and typed the play in to find loads of results including other people doing Valerie's monologue. This one girl I watched read it a lot different than I did but she also had the Irish accent and she did it very well. I watched another girl and she used her natural American accent but she was more reading it out rather than acting it in my opinion.

I thought I wouldn't like this monologue but turns out after reading it, I have grown an interest too it.

I like this monologue because:

• I like the way Valerie speaks
• The story telling in the monologue is interesting
• It's a sad story

I don't like this monologue because:

• I cannot do a fluent Irish accent
• I am worried doing it in an English accent would not make sense
• It is very long, I would have to find a good cut off point

Valerie's character is from Dublin and she is in her thirties.

Classical Monologues

In class we all got given classical monologues too take a look at:

I picked all of them which included:

- Ophelia
- Isabella (Measure for measure)
- Portia (Julius Caesar)
- Emilia (Othello)
- Viola (Twelfth Night)
- Juliet
- Juliet / a different monologue from Juliet

When I read them all out in my own company, I liked 'Emilia' a lot. I do not really have much of an interest in classical theatre anyways, so I think I will find these monologues the hardest to connect with. I think I liked Emilia because it seems more neutral. I do not think it is necessarily 'easy' it is just the one I liked the most out of all the ones that Olga gave us.

The monologue of Emilia is from Othello: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Othello

Othello (The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice) is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in the year 1603, and based on the short story Un Capitano Moro ("A Moorish Captain") by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565. This tightly constructed work revolves around four central characters: Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army; his beloved wife, Desdemona; his loyal lieutenant, Cassio; and his trusted but unfaithful ensign, Iago. Because of its varied and current themes of racism, love, jealousy, betrayal, revenge and repentance, Othello is still often performed in professional and community theatre alike and has been the basis for numerous operatic, film, and literary adaptations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emilia_(Othello)

Emilia is a character in the tragedy Othello by William Shakespeare. The character's origin is traced to the 1565 tale, "Un capitano Moro" from Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio's Gli Hecatommithi. There, the character is described as young and virtuous, is referred to simply as the ensign's wife, and becomes Desdemona's companion in Cyprus. In Shakespeare, she is named Emilia, is the wife of Othello's ensign, Iago, and is an attendant to Othello's wife,Desdemona. While considered a minor character in the drama, she has been portrayed by several notable actresses on film, with one receiving an Academy Award nomination for her performance.
Emilia is a comparatively minor character for much of the play; however, she serves to provide a strong contrast to the romantic and obedient Desdemona, demonstrating that she is both intelligent and distinctly cynical, especially on matters relating to men and marriage - her speech to Desdemona listing the faults and flaws of the male sex in 4.3 is a good example of this (though she does admit that women also have "frailty, as men have"). She also states in the same scene that she would be willing to commit adultery for a sufficiently high price - this shows her cynical and worldly nature in sharp contrast to Desdemona, who seems almost unable to believe that any woman could contemplate such an act.

Race:
There is no consensus over Othello's race. E.A.J. Honigmann, the editor of the Arden Shakespeare edition, concluded that Othello's race is ambiguous. "Renaissance representations of the Moor were vague, varied, inconsistent, and contradictory. As critics have established, the term 'Moor' referred to dark-skinned people in general, used interchangeably with similarly ambiguous terms such as 'African', 'Ethiopian', 'Negro', 'Arab', 'Berber', and even 'Indian' to designate a figure from Africa (or beyond)." Various uses of the word 'black' (for example, "Haply for I am black") are insufficient evidence for any accurate racial classification, Honigmann argues, since 'black' could simply mean 'swarthy' to Elizabethans. Lago twice uses the word 'Barbary' or 'Barbarian' to refer to Othello, seemingly referring to the Barbary coast inhabited by Berbers. Roderigo calls Othello 'the thick lips', which seems to refer to European conceptions of Sub-Saharan African physiognomy, but Honigmann counters that, as these comments are all intended as insults by the characters, they need not be taken literally.

I went onto a website too look at classical monologues and found this one by William Shakespeare:

http://www.monologuearchive.com/s/shakespeare_039.html

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

A monologue from the play by William Shakespeare

    

HELENA: I confess
Here on my knee before high heaven and you,
That before you, and next unto high heaven,
I love your son.
My friends were poor but honest; so's my love.
Be not offended, for it hurts not him
That he is loved of me. I follow him not
By any token of presumptuous suit,
Nor would I have him till I do deserve him;
Yet never know how that desert should be.
I know I love in vain, strive against hope;
Yet in this captious and intensible sieve
I still pour in the waters of my love
And lack not to lose still. Thus, Indian-like,
Religious in mine error, I adore
The sun that looks upon his worshipper
But knows of him no more. My dearest madam,
Let not your hate encounter with my love,
For loving where you do; but if yourself,
Whose agèd honor cites a virtuous youth,
Did ever in so true a flame of liking,
Wish chastely and love dearly, that your Dian
Was both herself and Love, O, then give pity
To her whose state is such that cannot choose
But lend and give where she is sure to lose;
That seeks not to find that her search implies,
But, riddle-like, lives sweetly where she dies.