- Pretty Little Liars (TV)
Spencer:
I knew who I was when they found me. I knew my friends and family would be worried, but I just wanted to fold up and stop. I didn’t want to think anymore! Yea, well I wasn’t Spencer Hastings for almost a full day, and no one else showed up for the job; I guess I’m stuck with it. I’m sorry this can’t be very
entertaining. There are people here with real problems. Yeah, just like me I guess. I um…I fell down in the woods when I was running. I fell and I looked at the ground. I saw my hand and my sleeve and the little button on my sleeve and I said to myself, “Ok if this is the last thing I see, I can handle it.” But it wasn’t! It wasn’t the last thing I ever saw. I just kept going. How does someone just keep going after the worst has already happened?! What do you have to change inside to survive?! Who do you have to become?! - Misfits (TV)
Nathan:
She’s got you thinking this is how you’re supposed to be, well it’s not! We’re young! We’re supposed to drink too much! We’re supposed to have bad attitudes and shag each other’s brains out. We are designed to party! THIS IS IT! Yeah, so a few of us will overdose or go mental. But Charles Darwin said
you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. And that’s what it’s all about. Breaking eggs! And by eggs I do mean getting smashed on a cocktail of drugs. If you could see yourselves! It breaks my heart – you’re wearing cardigans! We had it all! We fucked up bigger and better than any generation
that came before us! WE WERE SO BEAUTIFUL! We’re screw ups. I’m a screw up. And I’m glad to be a screw-up until my late twenties, maybe even my early thirties. And I will shag my own mother before I let her, or anyone else take that away from me! - Daybreak (TV)
Josh:
Why didn’t you fight for me to stay with you? Did you not want to be with me? Am I not worth being with? Don’t worry, I know why you’re not answering. It’s not because you don’t love me. It’s because I wasn’t here. This never happened. I didn’t come on this hunting trip. I stayed in LA. And you went alone.
Forty four years of tradition. And I broke it…to hurt you. And then you died. Uh… I understand why I’m here now. I get why I pushed Angelica, and Wesley, and Sam away. So I wouldn’t hurt them. And so they wouldn’t hurt me. The same way that you hurt me. I just… I don’t get why you didn’t want me to be with you. You know? Maybe you didn’t like being a dad. Maybe you know you were dying. Maybe you just didn’t want me to see you get sick. I guess… kids never really get to know their parents. You should know that you did a good job. Yeah, I can fish, and hunt, and rig solar panels, and purify water from my
own urine. Which is grosser than it sounds. I survived because of you. I love you. - Silver Linings Playbook (FILM)
Pat:
It’s not at all like me and Nikki. What are you talking about? We’re in love and we’re married. It’s completely different. We have a very unconventional chemistry, it makes people feel awkward, but not me. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever been with. It’s electric between us, okay? Yeah, we wanna change each other, but that’s normal, couples wanna do that, I want her to stop dressing like she dresses, I want her to stop acting so superior to me, okay? And she wanted me to lose weight and stop my mood swings, both of which I’ve done. I mean, people fight. Couples fight. We would fight, we wouldn’t talk for a couple weeks. That’s normal. She always wanted the best for me. She wanted me to be passionate and compassionate. And that’s a good thing. You know? I just, look, I’m my best self today, and I think she’s her best self today, and our love’s gonna be f— amazing. - American Beauty (FILM)
Lester:
I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn’t a second at all. It stretches on forever, like an ocean of time. For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout Camp, watching falling stars. And yellow leaves from the maple trees that
lined our street. Or my grandmother’s hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper. And the first time I saw my cousin Tony’s brand-new Firebird. And Janie, and Janie. And Carolyn. I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me, but it’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the
world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain, and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little
life. You have no idea what I’m talking about, I’m sure. But don’t worry. You will someday. - “FENCES”
Male Dramatic Contemporary Monologue
I live here too! I ain’t scared of you. I was walking by you to go into the house cause you sitting on the steps drunk, singing to yourself. I ain’t got to say excuse me to you. You don’t count around here anymore.
Now why don’t you just get out of my way.
You talking about what you did for me…what’d you ever give me? You ain’t never gave me nothing. You ain’t never done nothing but hold me back. Afraid I was gonna be better than you? All you ever did was try and make me scared of you. I used to tremble every time you called my name. Every time I heard your footsteps in the house. Wondering all the time…what’s Papa gonna say if I do this?…What’s he gonna say if I do that?…What’s he gonna say if I turn on the radio? And Mama, too…she tries…but she’s scared of you…after what you did to her.
What you gonna do…give me a whupping? You can’t whup me no more. You’re too old. You’re just an old man.
You crazy. You know that? You just a crazy old man…talking about I got the devil in me. Come on…put me out. I ain’t scared of you. Come on! Come on, put me out. What’s the matter? You so bad…put me out! Come on! Come on!
7. A Bright Room Called Day By Tony Kushner
Baz:
Yesterday I was on my way to buy oranges. I eat them constantly in the winter, even though they cost so much, because they prevent colds. On my way to the grocer’s I passed a crowd in front of an office building; I asked what was going on and they showed me that a man had jumped from the highest floor and was dead. They had covered the man with tarpaper but his feet were sticking out at angles that told you something was very wrong. There was a pink pool of red blood mixed with white snow. I left.
At the grocer’s I felt guilty and embarrassed buying these fat oranges for myself only minutes after this man had died. I knew why he had jumped. I thought of him opening the window, high up, and the cold air…
On my way home I reimagined the whole thing, because I felt a little sick at heart. The dead man was sitting up in the snow, and now the tarpaper covered his feet. As I passed by I gave him one of my oranges. He took it. He stared at the orange, as though holding it could give him back some of the warmth he’d lost. All day, when I closed my eyes, I could see him that way, Sitting in the snow, holding the orange, and comforted. Still bloody, still dead, but… comforted.
8. Eigengrau By Penelope Skinner
Tim stands on the end of Eastbourne Pier. Seagulls caw. Somewhere in the background, the jangle of the arcade machines. And below, the wash of the sea on the stony beach.
Tim:
It is cold.
Tim holds a large porcelain jar. He unscrews the lid and goes to remove it.
I came into the living room and you were sitting on the sofa having a fag and you’d made a cake and the tea was in the pot and I walked over to you and I looked at you and I said I knew it. I new you weren’t really dead.
I knew you wouldn’t leave me.
And then I woke up.
He looks at the urn and shivers.
Bit cold though. Isn’t it?
I remember one day I banged my head in the garden
I must’ve been about five
and Paulfrom next door was laughing at me for crying and I came in the kitchen and you were there and you said it’s OK Timmy. Don’t cry. And you got the butter you were making cakes with and started putting it on my head and I remember even then I was thinking
butter?
Is that what you do for a bump on the head? But there was your fingers all soft on my head where it hurt and
it didn’t matter so much because
you made it better. And then one day
and I feel like
I’m just so
sorry if you ever felt scared or
alone or if I didn’t say the right things I just kept thinking you’d get well again. Like some miracle would
I don’t now. Because I did ask. I did hope. I did pray. All the time. But it didn’t work. Did it? And
What I mean is
Thank you for how you loved me. And I’m not forgetting you. I’ll never forget you. Ever. I couldn’t. You know? I just
I wish I could be in your room one more time with the telly on Coronation Street and you in your chair smoking a fag and I could say this
properly
like I should have at the time but
Rose says if I say it now. You’ll hear. Somehow. She says you’ll hear. Can you hear?
Nan?
Are you there?
Beat
If you’re out there?
Give me a sign!
Any sign!
Just tell me you’re there!
He shuts his eyes. Waits.
Nothing happens.
He reaches into the urn and pulls out a handful of ash.
Contained in the ash are cigarette ends. He stares in wonder and holds his hand up to the sky.
9. TOM – THE GLASS MENAGERIE By Tennessee Williams
TOM:
I didn’t go to the moon, I went much further – for time is the longest
distance between two places
Not long after that I was fired for writing a poem on the lid of a shoe box.
I left Saint Louis. I descended the steps of this fire-escape for a last time
and followed, from then on, in my father’s footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space – I travelled around a great deal. The cities
swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly coloured but
torn away from the branches.
I would have stopped but I was pursued by something. It always came upon
me unawares, taking me altogether by surprise. Perhaps it was a familiar
bit of music. Perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass
Perhaps I am walking along a street at night, in some strange city, before I
have found companions. I pass the lighted window of a shop where perfume
is sold. The window is filled with pieces of coloured glass, tiny transparent
bottles in delicate colours, like bits of a shattered rainbow.
Then all at once my sister touches my shoulder. I turn around and look into
her eyes… Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more
faithful than I intended to be!
I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or bar, I buy a
drink, I speak to the nearest stranger – anything that can blow your candles
out!
[LAURA bends over the candles.]
For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blowout your candles, Laura –
and so good-bye… .
[She blows the candles out.]
10. ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD By Tom Stoppard
Rosencrantz:
Do you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it? Nor do I, really. . . . It’s silly to be depressed by it. I mean one thinks of it like being alive in a box, one keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead . . . which should make a difference . . . shouldn’t it? I mean, you’d never know you were in a box, would you? It would be just like being asleep in a box. Not that I’d like to sleep in a box, mind you, not without any air – you’d wake up dead, for a start and then where would you be? Apart from inside a box. That’s the bit I don’t like, frankly. That’s why I don’t think of it . . . . Because you’d be helpless, wouldn’t you? Stuffed in a box like that, I mean you’d be in there for ever. Even taking into account the fact that you’re dead, really . . . ask yourself, if I asked you straight off-I’m going to stuff you in this box now, would you rather be alive or dead? Naturally, you’d prefer to be alive. Life in a box is better than no life at all. I expect. You’d have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking-well, at least I’m not dead! In a minute someone’s going to bang on the lid and tell me to come out. “Hey you, whatsyername! Come out of there!”
11. The Seagull By Anton Chekhov
Treplev:
(pulling petals off a flower)
She loves me – she loves me not…She loves me – she loves me not… Loves me,
loves me not. (laughs) There you are – she doesn’t love me. Well, of course she doesn’t. She wants to live and love and dress in light colours, and there am I, twenty-five years old, perpetually reminding her that she’s stopped being young. When I’m not there she’s thirty-two – when I am she’s forty-three; and that’s why she hates me. Then again I don’t acknowledge the theatre. She loves the theatre – she thinks she’s serving humanity and the sacred cause of art, whereas in my view the modern theatre is an anthology of stereotypes and received ideas. When the curtain goes up, and there, in a room with three walls lit by artificial lighting because it’s always evening, these great artists, these high priests in the temple of art, demonstrate how people eat and drink, how they love and walk about and wear their suits; when out of these banal scenes and trite words they attempt to extract a moral – some small and simple moral with a hundred household uses; when under a thousand different disguises they keep serving me up the same old thing, the same old thing, the same old thing – then I run and don’t stop running, just as Maupassant ran from the sight of the Eiffel Tower, that weighed on his brain with its sheer vulgarity. What we need are new artistic forms. And if we don’t get new forms it would be better if we had nothing at all.
12. Arrest Us for What? Wearing Big Pants?
I’m skating on the sidewalk and this guy tears out of his shop like I’m the Unabomber or something and actually tries to shove me off the pavement.
“Get a job, you punk!”
Who’s he think he is? Get a job. I’m not doing anything to you. As far as I can see, this isn’t your sidewalk. I’ve been here all day and I haven’t crashed into one person.
Maybe if he worried less about skaters scaring off his precious customers and more about not selling garbage his store wouldn’t be going under. Maybe if he checked his blood pressure once in a while he might live longer. I know one thing: The next time he tries to push me off his stoop, he’s gonna wish he kept his hands to himself.
Get a job. Get one yourself. You’ll need one when your lease comes due and your landlord kicks you out so he can open a yogurt bar or something. This is the same guy who threatened to call the cops on us last week. I wish he HAD called them. What are the cops going to do–arrest us? For what? For wearing big pants? There’s no law against skateboards.
Call me a punk. I wish he did call the cops. I wonder what the penalty is for a grown man assaulting a juvenile. Not that anyone would’ve come anyway. The cops are too busy rolling bums and eating donuts to mess around with “skatepunks” who might actually fight back. Skatepunks! What’s that about? Just because we skate, does that make us juvenile delinquents? I have a B average in school, I don’t smoke or drink, and I never cut class in my life. I don’t even sneak into the movies. They don’t like the way we dress, so they assume we’re criminals or something.
My Dad has pictures of himself in the sixties, with long hair and beads and stuff. He looks like a freak! And he’s PROUD of it! They’re all proud of it. Compared to them we look normal.
- Mean Girls (FILM)
Regina George:
Why were you talking to Janis Ian?
She’s so pathetic. Let me tell you something about Janis Ian. (as if this is shocking) I was best friends with her in middle school. I know, right? It’s so embarrassing, I don’t even… whatever. Then, in eighth grade, I started going out with my first boyfriend, Kyle, who was totally gorgeous but he moved to
Indiana, and Janis was, like weirdly jealous of him. Like, if I blew her off to hang out with Kyle she would be like, “Why didn’t you call me back!?” And I would be, like, “Why are you so obsessed with me?” So then my birthday was an all-girls pool party and I was like, I can’t invite you, Janis, because I think
you’re a lesbian. I mean, I couldn’t have a lesbian there. Girls were going to be in their bathing suits. I mean, right? Then her mom called my mom and was, like, yelling at her. It was so retarded and then in the fall when we started high school all her hair was cut off and she was totally weird and now I think
she does heroin. - The Lovely Bones (FILM)
Salmon:
I was slipping away. Life was leaving me. But I wasn’t afraid. There was something I was meant to do. Somewhere I was meant to be. I was in the great blue horizon, between heaven and earth. The days were unchanging. And every night I dreamed the same dream. The smell of damp earth. The scream
that no one heard! I would hear them calling, the voices of the dead. I wanted to follow them, so I could find a way out, but they would always lead me back to that same door. And I was afraid. I knew that if I went in there I might never come back out again. Nobody – nobody notices when we leave. I mean the moment we really choose to go. At best you might feel a whisper, or a wave of a whisper,undulating down. My name is Salmon. Like the fish. I was fourteen years old when I was murdered on December 6th 1973. I was here for a moment, and then I was gone. I wish you all, a long, and, happy life. - 10 Things I Hate about You (FILM)
Kat:
I hate the way you talk to me and the way you cut your hair. I hate the way you drive my car. I hate it when you stare; I hate your big dumb combat boots and the way you read my mind. I hate you so much it makes me sick; it even makes me rhyme. I hate the way you’re always right. I hate it when you lie. I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse when you make me cry. I hate it that you’re not around. And the fact that you didn’t call. But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you, not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all. - La La Land (FILM)
Mia:
Because I’ve been to a million auditions and the same thing happens every time. Where I get interrupted because someone wants to get a sandwich. Or I’m crying and they start laughing. Or there’s people sitting in the waiting room, and they’re, they’re like me but prettier and better at the…because maybe I’m not good enough. Maybe I’m one of those people that has always wanted to do it, but it’s like a pipe dream for me. You know, and then you, you said it. You change your dreams and then you grow up. Maybe I’m one of those people and I’m not supposed to. And I can go back to school and I can find something else that I’m supposed to do. Cause I left to do that. And it’s been six years and I
don’t wanna do it anymore. - 13 Reasons Why (TV)
Hannah:
I came here to say that I don’t think we should see each other anymore. I don’t think we should see each other anymore, and it makes me feel stupid and pathetic to get a picture of your dick that I know was meant for someone else, and you didn’t even bother to explain, because I made you think that you
don’t have to explain. So… I’m not asking anything. I’m really not asking you for anything. I have never asked you for anything. I don’t even want anything, okay? I respect your right to see and do whoever you want, and I don’t even want a boyfriend. I just want someone who wants to hang out all the time,
and thinks I’m the best person in the world, and wants to have sex with only me. And it makes me feel very stupid to tell you this, because it makes me sound like a girl who wants to, like, go to brunch. And I really don’t wanna go to brunch, and I don’t want you to like, sit on the couch while I shop, or like, even meet my friends. I don’t even want that okay. But I also don’t wanna share a sex partner with a girl who seems to have asked for a picture of your dick. And also, I don’t want a picture of your dick because I live very near you, so if you wanted me to look at your dick, I could just come over and look at your
dick. And I don’t really see you hearing me, and I don’t really see you changing. So.. I just summed it up for you. And I’m sorry that I didn’t figure it out sooner, and you must think I’m even stupider than you thought I was already. But consider it a testament to your charms, because you might not know this,
but you’re very, very charming and I really care about you. And I don’t want to anymore, because it feels too shitty for me. So I’m gonna leave. - Blink By Phil Porter
Sophie:
I regret giving my dad’s stuff away. Stuff like his old green coat, which I didn’t like when he was alive, but I miss it now. But everything’s gone from the charity shop so I start buying new stuff. Not like for like, just stuff that reminds me of him. Second-hand stuff off the internet mostly. It feels good getting post every day. And seeing my name in a stranger’s handwriting feels good too. But when I open the packets, the stuff I’ve bought tends to seem quite random. Like a hundred vintage marbles. Or a machine for shaving the fuzz off jumpers. So I keep these things in a box in the corner.
I start buying crystals and stones with supposedly magical powers. I bite my nails and when my nails are gone I bite the skin from my fingertips. I trim my fringe with a pair of nail scissors. I stop answering the phone and find it hard to fall asleep. I order food online and generally eat standing up.
The box of random items stares at me accusingly from the corner of the room. I only bought the stuff to replace the other stuff. Some of it was actually quite expensive….but it reminds me of him.
7. DNA By Dennis Kelly
LEAH:
A Field. Leah and Phil…Phil is eating an ice cream, Leah desperate to get a response.
What are you thinking? (no answer)
No, don’t tell me, sorry, that’s a stupid, that’s such a stupid – You can tell me, you know. You can talk to me. I won’t judge you, whatever it is. Whatever you’re, you know, I won’t, I won’t…
Is it me? Not that I’m – I mean it wouldn’t matter if you weren’t or were, actually, so- Are you thinking about me? (no answer)
What, good things? Phil? Or…I mean is it a negative, are you thinking a negative thing about – Not that I’m bothered. I’m not bothered, Phil, I’m not, it doesn’t, I don’t care. You know. I don’t…
What, like I talk too much? Is that it? That I talk too much, you, sitting there in absolute silence thinking ‘Leah talks too much, I wish she’d shut up once in a while’ is that it, is that what you’re, because don’t, you know, judge, you know, because alright, I do. There, I’m admitting, I am admitting, I talk too much, so shoot me. So kill me, Phil, call the police, lock me up, I talk too much, what a crime, what a sin,
what an absolute catastrophe. Stupid, evil, ridiculous, because you’re not perfect actually, Phil. Okay? There. I’ve said it, you’re not…
You’re a bit…You’re… (Pause. She sits)
I could walk out of here, there are friends, I’ve got friends, I mean alright, I haven’t got friends, not exactly, I haven’t, but I could, if I wanted, if I wanted, given the right, given the perfect, you know, circumstances. So, don’t because you haven’t either, I mean it’s not like you’re, you know, Mr, you know, Popular, you know, you haven’t, you know, but that’s different, isn’t it, I mean, it is, it is, don’t say it isn’t really, don’t, you’ll just embarrass us both because it is different, it’s different because it doesn’t matter to you. Does it? Sitting there.
8. Girls Like That By Evan Placey
SCARLETT: (Presentation notes in hand.)
You have asked us to research the history of women in our family. Which was not especially easy as my mother is not a sentimental. No photos or nothing. But through a combination of some old shoeboxes of stuff at my nan’s house, and newspapers and books found in the British Library in London where I have spent the last couple days FYI, I can tell you all the following:
My mother is one of only five female FTSE 100 chief executives. She did this, I imagine, by donning shoulder pads and body-checking any man who got in her way. Her mother, my nan, was a teacher. Which doesn’t tell me much about history. But when she was about my age, in the sixties, she marched with other women to make abortion legal. Which was like, a big deal. And she wore her hair in braids sometimes. And she had lots of sex. And no one judged her for it. Except maybe her mother. Were she alive. Because she, my great-grandmother, died when British European Airways flight 411 crashed on approach to Manchester from Amsterdam. This is ironic because from 1944 to ’45 my grandmother worked as a pilot during the war delivering planes that needed to be fixed. Which, is like, not that an exciting job to have. She wasn’t dropping bombs or anything. But it was a big deal, because she was doing a man’s job. And men were bastards and didn’t like girls like my great-grandma doing their jobs. And her mum… well she was a long time ago so I didn’t find out much but her name’s mentioned in an article in the Daily Mail from 1928 because she went to a scandalous pool party. I’m not sure why it was so scandalous. But the man who wrote it from the Daily Mail did not like that girls were dancing to Negro music and drinking cocktails in swimsuits. Which shows that some things don’t change since the Daily Mail still does not like girls drinking and having fun but it does like photos of girls in swimsuits. So maybe things do change.
I have basically learned that in my family history there were always boys who were arseholes who made things shit for the girls in my family. But things have moved on for my generation. Because for me, it is not so much that boys are arseholes – they are – but more that the girls have become the arseholes the boys used to be. (Puts away notes.)
I used to ask myself every night why?
Why?
What did I ever do to you?
And then I would imagine twenty-five years from now coming to a school reunion and I’d be there in my Armani suit with my beautiful husband and my beautiful handbag and my beautiful children and when you all said: ‘Scarlett! Scarlett!’ I’d say: ‘I’m sorry. I don’t recognise you. I don’t recognise any of you.’ And then I’d leave.
But as I sat on the packed Tube in London, no one recognised me. No one pointed, no one whispered. And I realised you are all nothing. There is a big bad world out there where St Helen’s means nothing. There is a big bad world that is just ready to swallow you up. But when it swallows up you lot, it will vomit you back up. Because you are indigestible girls. That’s the kind of girls you are. You are food poisoning. And the world will know you are girls like that. And you will be all alone. Together, but alone. Do you see?
And I will forget you. I have forgotten you. Because I am not a St Helen’s girl. But you will not forget me. After all, you have my photo to remember me by.
9. Angels in America – Perestoika
HARPER:
Night flight to San Francisco. Chase the moon across America. God! It’s been years since I was on a plane!
When we hit 35,000 feet we’ll have reached the tropopause. The great belt of calm air. As close as I’ll ever get to the ozone.
I dreamed we were there. The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air, and attained the outer rim, the ozone, which was ragged and torn, patches of it threadbare as old cheesecloth, and that was frightening…
But I saw something that only I could see, because of my astonishing ability to see such things:
Souls were rising, from the earth far below, souls of the dead, of people who had perished, from famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up, like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning. And the souls of these departed joined hands, clasped ankles, and formed a web, a great net of souls, and the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them and was repaired.
Nothing’s lost forever. In this world, there’s a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we’ve left behind, and dreaming ahead.
At least I think that’s so.
10. HOLD ME By Jules Feiffer
Katy:
I talk too much. I’m quite bright, so it’s interesting, but nevertheless, I talk too much. You see, already I’m saying much more than I should say. Men hate it for a woman to blurt out, ‘I’m bright.’ They think she’s really saying, I’m brighter than you are.’ As a matter of fact, that is what I am saying. I’m brighter than even the brightest men I know. That’s why it’s a mistake to talk too much. Men fall behind and feel challenged and grow hostile. So when I’m very attracted to a man I make a point to talk more slowly than I would to one of my woman friends. And because I guide him along from insight to insight, he ends up being terribly impressed with his own brilliance. And with mine for being able to keep up with him. And he tells me I’m the first woman he’s ever met who’s as interesting as one of his boy friends. That’s love.
11. The Crucible By Arthur Miller
Mary Warren:
I never knew it before. I never knew anything before. When she come into the court I say to myself, I must not accuse this woman, for she sleeps in ditches, and is so very old and poor. But then- then she sit there, denying and denying, and I feel a misty coldness climbin’ up my back, and the skin on my skull begin to creep, and I feel a clamp around my neck and I cannot breathe air; and then (entranced) I hear a voice, a screamin’ voice, and it were my voice
and all at once I remembered everything she done to me!
(Like one awakened to a marvelous secret insight)
So many times, Mr. Proctor, she come to this very door, beggin’ bread and a cup of cider-and mark this: whenever I turned her away empty, she mumbled. But what does she mumble? You must remember, Goody Proctor. Last month-a Monday, I think–she walked away, and I thought my guts would burst for two days after. Do you remember it?
And so I told that to Judge Hathorne, and he asks her so. “Sarah Good,” says he, “what curse do you mumble that this girl must fall sick after turning you away?” And then she replies (mimicking an old crone) “Why, your excellence, no curse at all. I only say my commandments; I hope I may say my commandments,” says she! Then Judge Hathorne say, “Recite for us your commandments!” (Leaning avidly toward them) And of all the ten she could not say a single one. She never knew no commandments, and they had her in a flat lie!
12. Funny Girl By Styne, Merrill & Lennart
FANNY:
Suppose all ya ever had for breakfast was onion rolls. Then one day, in walks (gasp) a bagel! You’d say, ‘Ugh, what’s that?’ Until you tried it! That’s my problem – I’m a bagel on a plate full of onion rolls. Nobody recognizes me!
Listen, I got 36 expressions. Sweet as pie and tough as leather. And that’s six expressions more than all those…Barrymores put together. Instead of just kicking me, why don’t they give me a lift?
Well, it must be a plot, ’cause they’re scared that I got…such a gift! ‘Cause I’m the greatest star, I am by far, but no one knows it.
Wait – they’re gonna hear a voice, a silver flute. They’ll cheer each toot, hey, she’s terrific!, when I expose it. Now can’t you see to look at me that I’m a natural Camille, and as Camille, I just feel, I’ve so much to offer.
Kid, I know I’d be divine because I’m a natural cougher (coughs) – some ain’t got it, not a lump. I’m a great big clump of talent!
Laugh, they’ll bend in half. Did you ever hear the story about the travelling salesman? A thousand jokes, stick around for the jokes. A thousand faces. I reiterate. When you’re gifted, then you’re gifted. These are facts, I’ve got no axe to grind. Ay! What are ya, blind? In all of the world so far, I’m the greatest star! No autographs, please.
What? You think beautiful girls are gonna stay in style forever? I should say not! Any minute now they’re gonna be out! FINISHED! Then it’ll be my turn!
13. ‘Wild Honey’ by Michael Frayn
ANNA PETROVNA:
How can you say that? How can you lie to me, on such a night as this, beneath such a sky? Tell your lies in autumn, if you must, in the gloom and the mud, but not now, not here. You’re being watched! Look up, you absurd man! A thousand eyes, all shining with indignation! You must be good and true, just as all this is good and true. Don’t break this silence with your little words!
There’s no man in the world I could ever love as I love you. There’s no woman in the world you could ever love as you love me. Let’s take that love; and all the rest, that so torments you – we’ll leave that to others to worry about. Are you really such a terrible Don Juan? You look so handsome in the moonlight! Such a solemn face! It’s a woman who’s come to call, not a wild animal!
All right – if you really hate it all so much I’ll go away again. Is that what you want? I’ll go away, and everything will be just as it was before. Yes…? (she laughs) Idiot! Take it! Snatch it! Seize it! What more do you want? Be human! You funny creature! A woman loves you – a woman you love – fine summer weather. What could be simpler than that? You don’t realise how hard life is for me. And yet life is what I long for. Everything is alive, nothing is ever still. We’re surrounded by life. We must live, too, Misha! Leave all the problems for tomorrow. Tonight, on this night of nights, we’ll simply live!
