Monologue Help

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MAGGIE CUTLER. Now listen to me, Whiteside. I know you. Lay off, I know what a devil you can be. I’ve seen you do it to other people, but don’t you dare do it to me. Don’t drug yourself into the idea that all you’re thinking of is my happiness. You’re thinking of yourself a little bit, too, and all those months of breaking in somebody new. I’ve seen you in a passion before when your life has been disrupted, and you couldn’t dine in Calcutta on July twelfth with Boo-Boo. Well, that’s too bad, but there it is. I’m going to marry Bert if he’ll have me, and don’t you dare try any of your tricks. I’m on to every one of them. So lay off. That’s my message to you, Big Lord Fauntleroy.

MRS. TILFORD. You came here demanding explanations. It was I who asked them from you. You attack me, you attack Mary. I’ve told you I didn’t mean you any harm. I still don’t. You claim that it isn’t true; it may be natural that you should say that, but I know that it is true. No matter what you say, you know very well that I wouldn’t have acted until I was sure. All I wanted was to get those children away. That has been done. There will be nothing else. And there won’t be any talk about it or about you--I’ll see to that. You have been in my house long enough. Get out.

MARY. You can’t call me a liar, Rosalie Wells. That’s a kind of dare and I won’t take a dare. (She starts for arch. Rosalie blocks her way.) I guess I’ll go tell Grandma, anyway. Then she can call the police and they’ll come for you and, you’ll get tried in court. (She slowly backs Rosalie to behind R. end of L. love seat. While she speaks, she pulls Rosalie’s glasses down on her nose and pulls her hair.) And you’ll go to one of those prisons, and you’ll get older and older, and when you’re good and old they’ll let you out, but you won’t have any place to go and you’ll beg on the streets---

MRS. MORTAR. (Reminiscently.) It was I who saved Delia Lampert's life the time she had that heart attack in Buffalo, right on stage without losing a line. Poor Delia!  She married Robert Laffonne in London after he found there was no soap with me.  Not nine months later he left her and ran away with Eve Cloun,  who had made a great hit playing the Infant Phenomenon when she was forty-seven, the British don't care about age.  Delia's heart attack came afterwards--

MARTHA. How about asking Joe to say something to her? She’d listen to him. We don’t get anywhere with Mary and we’d might as well admit it. She’s had more attention than any three kids put together. I am so bored with hearing myself say, “Mary, can I help you?” “Mary, are you worried about something?” Something goes on in that kid, and we didn’t know anymore about it then we knew the first day she came. She causes trouble here. She’s bad for the other girls. I don’t know how or why, but it’s wrong, and we must do something about it.

MICHAEL. Yes. This hamster makes the most godawful racket all night, then spends the whole day fast asleep! Henry was in a lot of pain last night; he was being driven crazy by the noise that the hamster was making. And, to tell you the truth, I've been wanting to get rid of it for a long time, so I said to myself, OK, that's it, I took it and put it in the street. I thought they loved drains and gutters and all that, but I guess not, it just sat there paralyzed on the sidewalk. Well, they're not domestic animals, they're not wild animals, I don't really know where their natural habitat is. Dump them in the woods, they're probably just as unhappy, so I don't know where you're supposed to put them.

ALAN. Madam, our son is a savage. To hope for any kind of spontaneous repentance would be fanciful. Right, I'm sorry, I have to get back to the office. You stay, Annette, you'll tell me what you've decided, I'm no use whichever way you cut it. Women always think you need a man, you need a father, as if they'd be any help at all. Men are a dead weight, they're clumsy and maladjusted, oh, you can see the F train, that's great!

ALAN. Veronica, are we ever interested in anything but ourselves? Of course we'd all like to believe in the possibility of improvement. Of which we could be the architect and which would be in no way selfserving. Does such a thing exist? In life, some people drag their feet, it's their strategy, others refuse to acknowledge the passing of time, and drive themselves demented, what difference does it make? People struggle until they're dead. Education, the miseries of the world . . . You're writing a book about Darfur, fine, I can understand you saying to yourself, OK, I'm going to choose a massacre, what else does history consist of, and I'm going to write about it. You do what you can to save yourself.

MICHAEL. Children consume our lives and then destroy them. Children drag us towards disaster; it's unavoidable. When you see those laughing couples casting off into the sea of matrimony, you say to yourself, they have no idea, poor things, they just have no idea, they’re happy. No one tells you anything when you start out. I have an old school buddy who's just about to have a child with his new girlfriend. I said to him, a child, at our age, are you insane? The ten or twelve good years we have left before cancer or a stroke, and you're going to screw yourself up with some brat? 

ALAN. I'll do what I like, Annette, if I feel like accepting a cigar, I'll accept a cigar. If I'm not smoking, it's because I don't want to upset Veronica, who's already completely lost it. She's right, stop snivelling, when a woman cries, a man is immediately provoked to the worst excesses. Added to which, Michael's point of view is, I'm sorry to say, entirely sound. (His cell phone vibrates.) . . . Yes, Serge … Go ahead … Put New York, the date . . . and the exact time …

NATALYA: Olga. (pause.) It’s essential for us to come to an understanding. You’re at the academy all day. While I am at the house. (pause.) You have your teaching. I have my domestic duties. If I say something touching the help… (pause.) If I say something treating of the help…then I know what I’m speaking of. Do you understand me? And I want her gone. I want her to be out of here. By tomorrow night. OUT of here. I’m here all day, and I say so. That hag. She’s a thief…she’s …I know what she is. You don’t. YOU AREN’T HERE. And I won’t have you, I will not stand for this behavior on your part. Do you…(pause.) You know…really…I think if you don’t move downstairs we are likely always to be quarreling. Don’t you think? It’s not right.

BABE: After I shot Zackery, I put the gun down on the piano bench, and then I went out into the kitchen and made up a pitcher of lemonade. I was dying of thirst. My mouth was just as dry as a bone. I made it just the way I like it, with lots of sugar and lots of lemon- about ten lemons in all.Then I added two trays of ice and stirred it up with my wooded stirring spoon. Then I drank three glasses, one right after the other. They were large glasses- about this tall. Then suddenly my stomach kind of swole all up. I guess what caused it was all that sour lemon Then what I did was? I wiped my mouth off with the back of my hand, like this? I did it to clear off all those little beads of water that had settled there. Then I called out to Zackery. I said, "Zackery, I've made some lemonade. Can you use a glass?" But he didn't answer. So I poured him a glass anyway and I took it out to him. And there he was, lying on the rug. And he was looking up at me trying to speak words. I said "What?? Lemonade?? You don't want it? Would you like a Coke instead?"Then I got the idea- he was telling me to call on the phone for medical help. So I got on the phone and called up the hospital. I gave my name and address and I told them my husband was shot and he was lying on the rug and there was plenty of blood. I guess that's gonna look kinda bad. Me fixing that lemonade before I called the hospital. I tell you, I think the reason I made up the lemonade, I mean besides the fact that my mouth was bone dry, was that I was afraid to call the authorities. I was afraid. I - I really think I was afraid they would see that I had tried to shoot Zackery, in fact that I had shot him, and they would accuse me of possible murder and send me away to jail. I mean, in fact, that's what did happen. That's what is happening - 'cause here I am just about ready to go right off to the Parchment Prison Farm. Yes, here I am just practically on the brink of utter doom. Why, I feel so all alone.

OLGA: Know Mrs. Stephen Haines? I guess Mrs. Fowler’s told you about her! Mrs. Fowler feels awfully sorry for her. You would if you knew this Crystal Allen. Yes, you know, the girl who’s living with Mr. Haines. Oh, I thought you knew. Didn’t Mrs. Fowler--? Then you will be interested. You see, Crystal Allen is a friend of mine. She’s really a terrible man-trap. She’s behind the perfume counter at Sak’s. So was I before I got fi-- left. That’s how she met him. It was a couple of month ago. Us girls weren’t busy. It was an awful rainy day, I remember. So, this gentleman walks up to the counter. He was the serious type, nice-looking, but kind of thin on top. Well, Crystal nabs him. “I want some perfume,” he says. “My I awsk what type of women for?” Crystal says, very ritzy. That didn’t mean a thing. She was going to sell him our feature, Summer Rain, anyway. “Is she young?” Crystal says. “No,” he says, sort of embarrassed. “Is she the glamorous type?” Crystal says. “No, thank God,” he says. “Thank God?” Crystal says, and bats her eyes. She’s got those eyes which run up and down a man like a searchlight. Well, she puts perfume on her palm and in the crook of her arm for him to smell. So he got to smelling around, and I guess he liked it. Because we heard him tell her his name, which one of the girls recognized from Igor Cassini’s column -- Gee, you’re nervous -- Well, it was after that I left. I wouldn’t of thought no more about it. But a couple of weeks ago I stopped by where Crystal lives to say hello. And the landlady says she’d moved to the kind of house where she could entertain her gentleman friend -- “What gentleman friend?” I says. “Why, that Mr. Haines that she’d had up in her room all hours of the night,” the landlady says -- (is cut off by the person she’s being a manicurist for drawing back her hand.) Did I hurt?

KAREN: (Softly) Ah, what happens between people, happens, and after a while it doesn’t matter how it started. But there it is. (Turns U.S.) I’m here, You’re there. We’re in a room we’ve been in so many times before. Nothing seems changed. My hands looks just the same, my face is just the same, even my dress is old. I’m nothing too much: I’m like everybody else, the way I always was. I can have the things that other people have. I can have you, and children, and I can take care of them, and I can go to market, and read a book, and people will talk to me--Only I can’t. I can’t. And I don’t even know why. (Turns L.) Go home, darling.

Hi. I was googling Shakespeare, and I found some amazing stuff. [He begins reading from the phone. Each time he pages to a new screen there is an audible ‘beep.’] William Shakespeare. William Shakespeare was born un 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, War-wick-shire. [Beep.] The third of eight children, he was the eldest son of John Shakespeare, a locally prominent merchant, and Mary Arden, daughter of a Roman. [Beep.] Catholic member of the landed gentry. In 1582 he married a farmer’s daughter Anne Hathaway. [In the original script he looks at someone else and he says a line of dialogue; here you can just substitute in confusion for a moment then get back to the monologue.] [Beep.] Shakespeare arrived in London in 1588. [Beep.] There he dictated to his secretary, Rudolf Hess, the work Mein Kampf, in which he set forth his program for the restoration of Germany to a dominant position in Europe. After reoccupying the Rhineland zone between Austria, the Sudetenland, and the remainder of Czechoslovakia, [Beep.] Shakespeare invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, thus precipitating World War II. I never knew that before.