1.

A MONOLOGUE The Dramatic Lovers Madam, all minds are not gifted with the necessary qualities which the delicacy of those fine sciences called abstruse require. There are some so material that they cannot conceive what others understand most easily. There is nothing more agreeable, Madam, than all the great promises of these sublime sciences. To transform everything into gold; to cause people to live for ever; to cure with words; to make ourselves loved by whomsoever we please; to know all the secrets of futurity; to bring down from heaven, according to one's will, on metals, impressions of happiness; to command demons, to raise invisible armies and invulnerable soldiers--all this is delightful, no doubt; and there are people who experience no difficulty whatever in believing all this to be possible; it is the easiest thing for them to conceive. But for me, I acknowledge that my coarse, gross mind can hardly understand and refuses to believe it; that, in fact, it thinks it all too good ever to be true. All those beautiful arguments of sympathy, magnetic power, and occult virtue, are so subtle and delicate that they escape my material understanding; and, without speaking of anything else, it has never been in my power to conceive how there is to be found in the heavens even the smallest particulars of the fortune of the least of men. What relation, what connection, what reciprocity, can there be between us and globes so immeasurably distant from our earth? And how, besides, can this sublime science have come to man? What god revealed it? Or what experience can have been formed from the observation of that immense number of stars which have never as yet been seen twice in the same order?
NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from The Dramatic Works of Molire, Vol. III. Ed. Charles Heron Wall. London: George Bell & Sons, 1891.

2. RENTON's MONO IN TRAINSPOTTING Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family, Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers.Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends.Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose D.I.Y and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life. I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who need reasons when you've got heroin? People think it's all about misery and desperation and death and all that shite, which is not to be ignored, but what they forget Spud is shooting up for the pleasure of it. Otherwise we wouldn't do it. After all, we're not fucking stupid. At least, we're not that fucking stupid. Take the best orgasm you ever

had, multiply it by a thousand and you're still nowhere near it. When you're on junk you have only one worry: scoring. When you're off it you are suddenly obliged to worry about all sorts of other shite. Got no money: can't get pished. Got money: drinking too much. Can't get a bird: no chance of a ride. Got a bird: too much hassle. You have to worry about bills, about food, about some football team that never fucking wins, about human relationships and all the things that really don't matter when you've got a sincere and truthful junk habit. The only drawback, or at least the principal drawback, is that you have to endure all manner of cunts telling you that 3. William Shakespeare - To be, or not to be (from Hamlet Act III). 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 heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. 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, The 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 the 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 undiscover'd 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 enterprises of great pith 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 remember'd.

4. You,ve got male WRITER: I began like I always do by free associating... Letting the subconscious flow unhindered by any real thought. I asked myself whats the first think you think about when you think about the male experience... Exactly... The female experience. Women, I pondered... Ah yes... Women... Women... Women... I let the word roll around on my tongue savoring the sweet, succulent taste that quickly turned bitter and astringent. Women, I muttered... Women... Pain.... Pain and loneliness... Women and pain and loneliness. Loneliness, pain and women... Pain, loneliness, women... rejection. Loneliness, pain, women, rejection... Writing. Pain, women, loneliness, rejection, writing... plays. That was it. The old subconscious came through again. If there was one thing with which I had experience up the wazoo it was rejection. I had my subject and it had only taken me two minutes tops... Sixty seconds later I had my title... Writing Plays, One Males Experience With Pain, Loneliness And Rejection. All I really needed was some conflict, a few lines of dialogue and the money would start rolling in. The way I saw it, the stage lights would come up on a male... Then I thought. Thats not enough. No... The lights should come up on an experienced male... No... On a pained, lonely and rejected male. Sets up the character... Lets the audience know what to expect. If I had gone through the first stages of the creative process like a man possessed, I charged into the script itself like a man re-possessed. His name was going to be... It had to be the right name... A name says a lot about a character. It paints a picture of him... I needed a name that painted a picture of pain, loneliness and rejection. Then it hit me right between the eyes like a brick thrown from close range at a man who was becoming tiresome and annoying... This is a monologue, I whispered to myself, in case someone was eavesdropping. One character. No one else is there to say his name. He doesnt need a name... He doesnt have a name. Hes the character with no name... 5. Tarfuffe Moliere

Dorina: Her case is nothing, though, beside her son's!

To see him, you would say he's ten times worse! His conduct in our late unpleasantness [1] Had won him much esteem, and proved his courage In service of his king; but now he's like A man besotted, since he's been so taken With this Tartuffe. He calls him brother, loves him A hundred times as much as mother, son, Daughter, and wife. He tells him all his secrets And lets him guide his acts, and rule his conscience. He fondles and embraces him; a sweetheart Could not, I think, be loved more tenderly; At table he must have the seat of honour, While with delight our master sees him eat As much as six men could; we must give up The choicest tidbits to him; if he belches, ('tis a servant speaking) [2]

Master exclaims: "God bless you!"--Oh, he dotes Upon him! he's his universe, his hero; He's lost in constant admiration, quotes him On all occasions, takes his trifling acts For wonders, and his words for oracles. The fellow knows his dupe, and makes the most on't, He fools him with a hundred masks of virtue, Gets money from him all the time by canting, And takes upon himself to carp at us. Even his silly coxcomb of a lackey Makes it his business to instruct us too; He comes with rolling eyes to preach at us, And throws away our ribbons, rouge, and patches. The wretch, the other day, tore up a kerchief That he had found, pressed in the 'Golden Legend', Calling it a horrid crime for us to mingle The devil's finery with holy things. 6. THE WELL OF THE SAINTS
A monologue from the play by John Millington Synge NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from The Well of the Saints. John Millington Synge. Boston: John W. Luce, 1911.

MARTIN DOUL: The devil mend Mary Doul for putting lies on me, and letting on she was grand. The devil mend the old Saint for letting me see it was lies. The devil mend Timmy the smith for killing me with hard work, and keeping me with an empty, windy stomach in me, in the day and in the night. Ten thousand devils mend the soul of Molly Byrne and the bad, wicked souls is hidden in all the women of the world. [He rocks himself, with his hand over his face.] It's lonesome I'll be from this day, and if living people is a bad lot, yet Mary Doul, herself, and she a dirty, wrinkled-looking hag, was better maybe to be sitting along with than no one at all. I'll be getting my death now, I'm thinking, sitting alone in the cold air, hearing the night coming, and the blackbirds flying round in the briars crying to themselves, the time you'll hear one cart getting off a long way in the east, and another cart getting off a long way in the west, and a dog barking maybe, and a little wind turning the sticks. [He listens and sighs heavily.] I'll be destroyed sitting alone and losing my senses this time the way I'm after losing my sight, for it'd make any person afeard to be sitting up hearing the sound of his breath-- [He moves his feet on the stones.] --and the noise of his feet, when it's a power of queer things do be stirring, little sticks breaking, and the grass moving till you'd take your dying oath on sun and moon a thing was breathing on the stones. [He listens for a moment, then starts up nervously, and gropes about for

his stick.] I'll be going now, I'm thinking, but I'm not sure what place my stick's in ... [He cries out.] There's a thing with a cold, living face on it sitting up at my side. [He turns to run away, but misses his path and stumbles against the wall.] My road is lost on me now! Oh, merciful God, set my foot on the path this day, and I'll be saying prayers morning and night, and not straining my ear after young girls, or doing any bad thing till I die-7.