Favourite dramatic monologues?

[theparsonski]

I've decided to audition for the National Youth Theatre in February, and I'm going to need two monologues from plays to perform. Just for fun, what are your favourite monologues? They can be from films/TV shows/plays etc. If you can post the monologue itself (providing it's not too long), and also put what it is from, and perhaps why you like it, then that would be awesome. If not, then also fine.

I guess I'll start.

I love the monologue from The Godfather, the one in the opening scene, where Don Corleone is talking to one of the guests at his daughter's wedding. The last line of the monologue is fantastic.

I believe in America. America has made my fortune. And I raised my daughter in the American fashion. I gave her freedom, but -- I taught her never to dishonor her family. She found a boyfriend; not an Italian. She went to the movies with him; she stayed out late. I didn't protest. Two months ago, he took her for a drive, with another boyfriend. They made her drink whiskey. And then they tried to take advantage of her. She resisted. She kept her honor. So they beat her, like an animal. When I went to the hospital, her nose was a'broken. Her jaw was a'shattered, held together by wire. She couldn't even weep because of the pain. But I wept. Why did I weep? She was the light of my life -- beautiful girl. Now she will never be beautiful again. (Bonasera breaks down) Sorry...I -- I went to the police, like a good American. These two boys were brought to trial. The judge sentenced them to three years in prison-- suspended sentence. Suspended sentence! They went free that very day! I stood in the courtroom like a fool. And those two bastards, they smiled at me. Then I said to my wife, "for justice, we must go to Don Corleone."

Love it.

Honourable mentions also have to go to Brad Pitt's monologue from Inglourious Basterds, the one about "killin' Nazis", and Robin Williams' monologue from Good Will Hunting ("You've never held your best friend's head in your lap and watched him gasp his last breath, looking to you for help.").

So yeah, those are mine. What are yours?

 

[Daystar Clarion]

From the end of the Shawshank Redemption

Spoiler

I find I'm so excited that I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel. A free man at a start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.

After such an emotional ride, and given the context of the film, the above monologue just makes me so happy.

 

[Berithil]

There's alot of good monologues, but the one off the top of my head is the Doctor's monologue about Galifrey.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

How about a little "There Will Be Blood"?

"Those areas, they've been drilled...Yes, it's called drainage, Eli. See, I own everything around it, so, of course, I get what's underneath it...Do you understand, Eli? That's more to the point. Do you understand? I drink your water. I drink it up every day. I drink the blood of Lamb from Bandy's tract...Because you're not the chosen brother, Eli. 'Twas Paul who was chosen. He found me and told me about your land. You're just a fool...I did what your brother couldn't...I broke you and beat you. It was Paul told me about you. He's the prophet. He's the smart one. He knew what was there and he found me to take it out of the ground. Know what the funny thing is? Listen, listen, listen. I paid him $10,000 cash in hand. Just like that. He has his own company now. Prosperous little business. Three wells producing, $5,000 a week. Stop crying, you sniveling ass. Stop your nonsense. You're just the afterbirth, Eli...that slithered out on your mother's filth...They should have put you in a glass jar on the mantelpiece. Where were you when Paul was suckling at his mother's teat? Where were you? Who was nursing you, poor Eli? One of Bandy's sows? That land has been had. Nothing you can do about it. It's gone. It's had. You lose....Drainage! Drainage, Eli, you boy. Drained dry. I'm so sorry. Here, if you have a milkshake, and I have a milkshake, and I have a straw. There it is, that's the straw, you see?
(Holds a finger up) Watch it.
(Walks back a few steps) Now my straw reaches acroo-oo- oo-oss the room, and starts to drink your milkshake. I... drink... your... milkshake!
(Slurping sound) I drink it up!"

Eli Responds: "Don't bully me, Daniel!"

"Did you think your song and dance and your superstition would help you, Eli? I am the Third Revelation! I am who the Lord has chosen. Because I'm smarter than you. I'm older...I'm not a false prophet, you sniveling boy! I am the Third Revelation! I am the Third Revelation! I told you I would eat you...I told you I would eat you up!"

 

[SckizoBoy]

The ones I write... >_> ... <_< ...

Can't be arsed to post them here because they're written with grammar that would better suit 18th century literature and there isn't the faintest bit of humour in them at all... I'unno, that's the way you guys roll, in'it...? -_-

 

[Erja_Perttu]

In my reckoning, this is THE best dramatic monologue.


This other one is just a personal favourite

Spoiler: Aragorn's speech from Return of the king

 

[DevilWithaHalo]

Hmm... pretty much anything Bill the Butcher says in 'Gangs of New York' qualifies for me.

<youtube=UdhxL9r9hkg>

Most discernable lines from Bane in 'The Dark Knight Rises'.

<youtube=tzK97Aaj_U8>

Obviously most things from the Joker in 'The Dark Knight' along with that.

<youtube=Jfh24uYCofg>

Should be enough to get you started.

 

[Slitzkin]

Quite a lot of swearing. Quite. And perhaps too long, I'm not sure what your time limit is.

Spoiler

(Monty walks into the bathroom. He looks in the mirror. In the bottom corner, someone's written Fuck You!)

Monty: Yeah, fuck you, too.

Monty's Reflection: Fuck me? Fuck you! Fuck you and this whole city and everyone in it.
Fuck the panhandlers, grubbing for money, and smiling at me behind my back.
Fuck squeegee men dirtying up the clean windshield of my car. Get a fucking job!
Fuck the Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry steaming out their pores and stinking up my day. Terrorists in fucking training. Slow the fuck down!
Fuck the Chelsea boys with their waxed chests and pumped up biceps. Going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jingling their dicks on my Channel 35.
Fuck the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speaky English?
Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafés, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth. Wheelin' and dealin' and schemin'. Go back where you fucking came from!
Fuck the black-hatted Chassidim, strolling up and down 47th street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff. Selling South African apartheid diamonds!
Fuck the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas, Gordon Gecko wannabe mother fuckers, figuring out new ways to rob hard working people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for fucking life! You think Bush and Cheney didn't know about that shit? Give me a fucking break! Tyco! Imclone! Adelphia! Worldcom!
Fuck the Puerto Ricans. 20 to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls, worst fuckin' parade in the city. And don't even get me started on the Dom-in-i-cans, because they make the Puerto Ricans look good.
Fuck the Bensonhurst Italians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits, and their St. Anthony medallions. Swinging their, Jason Giambi, Louisville slugger, baseball bats, trying to audition for the Sopranos.
Fuck the Upper East Side wives with their Hermés scarves and their fifty-dollar Balducci artichokes. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched, all taut and shiny. You're not fooling anybody, sweetheart!
Fuck the uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don't want to play defense, they take fives steps on every lay-up to the hoop. And then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended one hundred and thirty seven years ago. Move the fuck on!
Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust!
Fuck the priests who put their hands down some innocent child's pants. Fuck the church that protects them, delivering us into evil. And while you're at it, fuck JC! He got off easy! A day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity! Try seven years in fuckin Otisville, Jay!
Fuck Osama Bin Laden, Alqueda, and backward-ass, cave-dwelling, fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your seventy-two whores roasting in a jet-fueled fire in hell. You towel headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal, Irish ass!
Fuck Jacob Elinski, whining malcontent.
Fuck Francis Xavier Slaughtery, my best friend, judging me while he stares at my girlfriend's ass.
Fuck Naturel Rivera. I gave her my trust and she stabbed me in the back. Sold me up the river. Fucking *****.
Fuck my father with his endless grief, standing behind that bar. Sipping on club soda, selling whiskey to firemen and cheering the Bronx Bombers.
Fuck this whole city and everyone in it. From the row houses of Astoria to the penthouses on Park Avenue. From the projects in the Bronx to the lofts in Soho. From the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park slope to the split levels in Staten Island. Let an earthquake crumble it. Let the fires rage. Let it burn to fuckin ash then let the waters rise and submerge this whole, rat-infested place.

Monty: No. No, fuck you, Montgomery Brogan. You had it all and then you threw it away, you dumb fuck!

(He takes a breath and tries to rub away the words.)

 

[tippy2k2]

I'm not sure if it would work well for your audition thingy since it kind of requires another person but...

Spoiler: Big Bioshock Spoilers! For Gods sake, don not watch this if you intend to play Bioshock! This is, in my mind, the I see dead people of gaming and will ruin the story

A man chooses, a slave obeys

Now it might be the fact that it's such a great moment in gaming so it's being given more clout than it deserves but this is one of my favorite lines that has ever been spoken.

 

[Final First]

Why has no one suggested Death Note yet?

Spoiler: Light's speech. Beware of Spoilers!

This is one of my favourite speeches, even if it's a little corny.

 

[shogunblade]

I quite love beautiful spoken line scenes, but for the life of me, there are very few I can spring up from memory and many I can pull from Youtube, so I might end up doing that.

Okay, from memory:

Spoiler: Metal Gear Solid: Playstation Version - Deepthroat

Snake: Fox, Why? What do you want from me?
Deepthroat: I am a prisoner of death, only you can free me.
Snake: Fox, stay out of this. What about Naomi? She's hell bent on Taking Revenge for you.
Deepthroat (Mornfully): Naomi.
Snake: You're the only one who can stop her.
Deepthroat: No...I can't.
Snake: Why?
Deepthroat: Because I'm the one who killed her parents. I was young then, and couldn't bring myself to kill her too. I felt so bad that I decided to take her with me. I raised her as if she were my own blood, to soothe my guilty conscience. Even now, she thinks of me as her brother. From the outside, we may have seemed like a happy brother and sister, but every time I looked at her, I saw her parents' eyes staring back at me... Tell her it was me, That I was the one who did it.
(After a scene) Deepthroat: Now... In front of you, I can finally die. After Zanzibar... I was taken from the battle, neither truly alive, nor truly dead. An undying shadow in a world of lights...But soon...soon, it will finally end... We're not tools of the Government or anyone else. Fighting was the only thing...the ONLY thing I was good at. But...at least I always fought for what I believed in. Snake, Farewell.

That quote went through a bit of revision, but it's fairly intact from the way I remembered it.

The only other quote I actually apply to my life regularly, or at least I should (If you don't mind a little bit of language) is from Clerks, near the end of the movie, so if you haven't seen it, I kind of recommend you should first.

Spoiler: Clerks Monologue

One's a little less like a monologue then a very overly dramatic soap opera scene, but it's still one of my favorite lines. As for Randall's Monologue in Clerks, it's just a very well done speech, and I can think of a few people I can apply lines to in my personal life (myself included).

 

[Quaxar]

Friends, Romans, Escapists, lend me your ear!
I quite like the Antonius speech from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Infact, it is my most favourite Shakespeare speech, even above Hamlet and such.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest -
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men -
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

Or if you want to get more fun, try the beginning of Stephen Fry's <url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin!_or_Tobacco_and_Boys>play he wrote back in 1994 at Cambridge:
<youtube=d6d495SDepU>

 

[saintdane05]

<quote=Julius Ceaser>

Then none have I offended. I have done no more to
Caesar than you shall do to Brutus. The question of
his death is enrolled in the Capitol; his glory not
extenuated, wherein he was worthy, nor his offences
enforced, for which he suffered death.



Here comes his body, mourned by Mark Antony: who,
though he had no hand in his death, shall receive
the benefit of his dying, a place in the
commonwealth; as which of you shall not? With this
I depart,--that, as I slew my best lover for the
good of Rome, I have the same dagger for myself,
when it shall please my country to need my death.

Good countrymen, let me depart alone,
And, for my sake, stay here with Antony:
Do grace to Caesar's corpse, and grace his speech
Tending to Caesar's glories; which Mark Antony,
By our permission, is allow'd to make.
I do entreat you, not a man depart,
Save I alone, till Antony have spoke.


Another, from the kick ass anime Black Lagoon


<quote=Black Lagoon>

"Rock, if you think about it, other than this, what do we really value in life? God? Love? Don't make me laugh. When I was a brat, crawling around in that shithole city, it seemed God and Love were always sold out when I went looking. Before I knew better, I clung to God and prayed to Him every single night ? yeah, I believed in God right up until that night the cops beat the hell out of me for no reason at all. All they saw when they looked at me was another little ghetto rat. With no power and no God, what's left for a poor little Chinese ***** to rely on? It's money, of course, and guns. Fuckin' A. With these two things, the world's a great place."
? Revy

 

[kyuzo3567]

Snip

Can we post from books?

 

[Soviet Heavy]

I've always loved Anton Ego's speech from Ratatouille

 

[Aariana]

From the end of the Shawshank Redemption

Spoiler

I find I'm so excited that I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel. A free man at a start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.

After such an emotional ride, and given the context of the film, the above monologue just makes me so happy.

I'm gonna have to second this. It's just...chills, man. Loved that movie. Loved that book. I can still hear his voice and I'm still affected by it. Amazing stuff, there.

 

[major_chaos]

I can't believe no one beat me to this:

gives me chills every time. Also servers as a nice summary of Hellsing in general: violent, OTT, and awsome.

 

[Juan Regular]

I always loved the funeral monologue in Synecdoche, NY by Charlie Kaufman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9PzSNy3xj0
"Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so fucking sad, and the truth is I've felt so fucking hurt for so fucking long and for just as long I've been pretending I'm OK, just to get along, just for, I don't know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own. Well, fuck everybody. Amen. "