Classical Monologues for Men

Marina Calderone

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781780010816
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Recitazione e provini

The Good Audition Guides: Helping you select and perform the audition piece that is best suited to your performing skills

Each Good Audition Guide contains a range of fresh monologues, all prefaced with a summary of the vital information you need to place the piece in context and to perform it to maximum effect in your own unique way.

Each volume also carries a user-friendly introduction on the whole process of auditioning.

Classical Monologues for Men contains 50 monologues drawn from classical plays throughout the ages and ranging across all of Western Theatre:

• Classical Greek and Roman
• Elizabethan and Jacobean
• French and Spanish Golden Age
• Restoration and Eighteenth Century
• Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

'sound practical advice for anyone attending an audition... so many of these extracts simply cry out to be performed... a source of inspiration for teachers and students alike... a must' Teaching Drama

Medea

Euripides (431 BC), trans. David Wiles

WHO

Jason, late 20s plus.

WHERE

Corinth: an open space.

TO WHOM

Medea, his ex-wife.

WHEN

A distant and mythical past.

WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED Jason is married to Medea – they have two small sons. She is high born, from Colchis: she followed Jason as he came through there looking for the Golden Fleece. They recently escaped the Island of Iolkos after Medea tricked the daughters of King Pelias into killing their father and were thankfully embraced as political refugees by the Corinthians. However, Jason has fallen in love with the daughter of King Creon of Corinth, and he has left his family to be with her. They are getting married the following morning. Medea is devastated and humiliated; she is beside herself with grief and loss and has just been given twenty-four hours to leave Corinth, with her sons. The King is scared of her – she has a fearsome reputation as a meddler with witchcraft. Jason has just heard of the edict deporting her, and is furious, as he now loses contact with his sons. He blames her volatility. Here he confronts her.

WHAT HE WANTS / OBJECTIVES TO PLAY

•	To portray himself as a rational man, attempting to do the best thing for his family – including Medea.
•	To belittle the sacrifices Medea has made to be with him.
•	To rise above her madness and ranting without losing his dignity.
•	To get her to leave the children behind – ultimately for her own benefit.
•	To get her to respond with obedience by talking to her like a child and patronising her.

NOTE ON TEXT This translation is currently unpublished but readers are encouraged to find alternative versions in order to read the full play. A very readable and faithful translation by Kenneth McLeish and Frederic Raphael is published in Nick Hern Books’ Drama Classics series.

Jason

Your outburst has meant being thrown out of the country.

I don’t mind personally.

You are free to tell everyone that Jason is the scum of the earth.

But to go insulting the government!

You’ve really got off lightly with deportation.

I have been trying to soothe the King’s feelings,

Asking for you to stay.

But you stupidly persisted, you and your treasonous utterances.

So you’ll be deported.

Nevertheless I am not lacking in concern,

And have come to see to your interests, Medea.

So that you and the children will not be short of money or in need.

Exile is a troublesome business.

You may hate me,

But it’s not in me to think badly of you [ . . . ]

It was an erotic entanglement that obliged you to protect me,

And I’ll spare you the graphic details.

Thank you for services rendered.

But as for saving my life,

I think you got from me more than you gave.

Now the evidence.

To start with, I brought you from outlandish parts

To live in Greece, and learn about morality,

How to resolve problems by law and not by physical force.

Greece recognised your intelligence and gave you due credit.

If you’d lived at the end of the earth, no one would know of you.

I would have no interest in personal wealth

Or a voice more musical than Orpheus,

If I didn’t have recognition.

That concludes my side of the story.

Remember you started this conversation.

As for your attack on my marriage into royalty,

Let me demonstrate – (a) that it’s intelligent,

(b) that it’s sensible, and (c) that it’s

Doing you and my children a favour.

Please don’t interrupt.

When I came here from Iolkos,

Given all the difficulties of my situation,

What greater piece of luck could I have had

As a refugee, than to marry the king’s daughter?

It wasn’t, as you intimate, through physical dissatisfaction with yourself

That I became smitten with a second woman,

Nor a desire with someone for increased fertility – we’ve

enough children, I’ve no complaints –

But, and this is the central point,

In order that we could live better and want for nothing,

Aware as I am that friends turn their back on paupers.

I want to bring up my children as they’re entitled,

And to father some more, who’ll be brothers to yours,

And to draw families together for their mutual advantage.

What benefit are children to you?

I could assist those now with us through the addition of more.

Isn’t this sound thinking?

You wouldn’t deny it, if it weren’t for the sexual aspect.

You women are completely satisfied,

But if the physical side goes wrong,

That’s the end of the entente cordiale.

GLOSSARY

Orpheus – the fabled musician whose songs lured birds from the trees

Entente cordiale friendly understanding

Hecuba

Euripides (c. 424 BC), trans. Frank McGuinness

WHO

Polydorus, ghost of the dead son of Hecuba.

WHERE

The shoreline of the ocean, Greece.

TO WHOM

The audience.

WHEN

Set around 400 BC.

WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED Hecuba and her daughter, Polyxena, together with large numbers of Trojan women, are prisoners of war after the Greeks’ victory at the first Great War between the east and west. Hecuba’s son had been left with a friend for protection, but as we hear in his speech, that friend has murdered him for his knowledge of the money hidden by his father Priam.

WHAT HE WANTS / OBJECTIVES TO PLAY

•	To lull the audience into what sounds like a story b...