THE 30-MINUTE SHAKESPEARE
ANTHOLOGY
18 STUDENT SCENES WITH MONOLOGUES
“Nick Newlin’s work as a teaching artist for Folger Education during the past thirteen years has provided students, regardless of their experience with Shakespeare or being on stage, a unique opportunity to tread the boards at the Folger Theatre. Working with students to edit Shakespeare’s plays for performance at the annual Folger Shakespeare Festivals has enabled students to gain new insights into the Bard’s plays, build their skills of comprehension and critical reading, and just plain have fun working collaboratively with their peers.
Folger Education promotes performance-based teaching of Shakespeare’s plays, providing students with an interactive approach to Shakespeare’s plays in which they participate in a close reading of the text through intellectual, physical, and vocal engagement. Newlin’s The 30-Minute Shakespeare series is an invaluable resource for teachers of Shakespeare, and for all who are interested in performing the plays.”
ROBERT YOUNG, PH.D.
DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION
FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY
The 30-Minute Shakespeare Anthology
978-1-935550-36-5
Adaptation, essays, and notes © 2015 Nick Newlin
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, electronic, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
There is no royalty for performing scenes or monologues from The 30-Minute Shakespeare Anthology. Ebook editions are available in all standard formats, and a downloadable PDF edition is available at www.30MinuteShakespeare.com.
Cover design by Sarah Juckniess
Distributed by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
NICOLO WHIMSEY PRESS
Art Director: Sarah Juckniess
Managing Editors: Katherine Little, Leah Gordon
To the memory
of my uncle
Peter H. Sellers
a true Renaissance man
Special thanks to Joanne Flynn, Bill Newlin, Eliza Newlin Carney, William and Louisa Newlin, Michael Tolaydo, Hilary Kacser, Sarah Juckniess, Katherine Little, Eva Zimmerman, Leah Gordon, Tanya Tolchin, Frank Harris, Julie Schaper and all of Consortium, Leo Bowman and the students, faculty, and staff at Banneker Academic High School, Charlie Feeser, Paul Reisman, Robert Young Ph.D., Peggy O’Brien Ph.D., and the Folger Shakespeare Library, especially the wonderful Education Department.
Introduction
As You Like It
The Comedy of Errors
Hamlet
Henry IV, Part 1
Julius Caesar
King Lear
Love’s Labor’s Lost
Macbeth
The Merchant of Venice
The Merry Wives of Windsor
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Much Ado About Nothing
Othello
Romeo and Juliet
The Taming of the Shrew
The Tempest
Twelfth Night
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Performing Shakespeare
Additional Resources
There is something about a Shakespearean monologue that sets it apart from all other speeches. It is not just the iambic pentameter, although no other playwright uses that structure with such brilliance. It is the way the language transports us into the inner life of the speaker, using words so descriptive and colorful as to almost magically bring characters into existence, fully human and breathtakingly dramatic.
This collection contains nine monologues for male characters and nine for female characters. You can act across gender lines, of course: Shakespeare would approve, since male actors generally played the female roles in his time. I saw a wonderful all-male production of Twelfth Night on Broadway in 2014. Female high school students originally performed many of the male characters’ speeches in this book on an Elizabethan stage as part of Folger Education’s annual Secondary School Shakespeare Festival in Washington, D.C.
If you are reciting the monologues for an audition, unless you have a reason for doing otherwise, you may prefer to stick to roles that correspond with your gender. The choice is yours. In some of these monologues, a female character is disguising herself as a male. The dramatic and comedic possibilities for gender bending already exist in the plays—have fun!
This book is designed for students, teachers, and anyone interested in furthering a love for Shakespeare’s poetic language, characters, and stories. It is perfect for a classroom, audition, competition, or performance. Everyone from middle and high school to graduate school and the professional world will benefit from this collection of scenes with featured monologues, all of which I have directed in performance with groups of high school English students at Folger Education’s Secondary School Shakespeare Festival.
Some of these speeches are famous, recognizable as part of Shakespeare’s greatest hits. For freshness and discovery, I have also picked several monologues that are less widely performed. They are all are gems. I hope you and your audiences find the same beauty and drama I experienced when studying and presenting the pieces on stage with young actors.
The Monologue Notes that accompany each speech are designed to provide suggestions on choices you can make to bring the speech to life. Always begin by examining the text closely and determining what the words mean, both literally and in the context of the character’s story. Be sure to decide what they mean to you personally as well. With Shakespeare, we always return to a close reading of the text. Enjoy this process of discovery. Unlocking the magic of Shakespeare’s words leads to a powerful dramatic experience for actor and audience. The choices you make in a monologue are always yours alone, but the text is your ultimate guide. Speak the words with understanding, nuance, dynamics, coloring, and emotion, and the result will be a moving theatrical experience.
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