How to Choose a Classical Monologue That Isn’t Shakespeare

The notice asks for “one classical and one contemporary monologue, two minutes each.” You already have a contemporary piece you love. For the classical one, your hand goes straight to the same Shakespeare speeches everyone else is reaching for, and you wonder whether there is anything else you’re allowed to bring.

There is. Shakespeare is the typical choice, but unless the notice names him, he isn’t the only one. The plays of his contemporaries, the Greeks, Molière, the Spanish Golden Age, and Restoration comedy are all classical repertoire. The trick is knowing which of them answers the question the notice is really asking.

The short version: read the notice for its hidden test (a date, verse, or Shakespeare by name). If it only says “classical,” pick a speech in heightened language, ideally verse, from a play written before the 1800s, with a character you could be cast as. Read the whole play, choose a translation you can speak, and learn it so precisely that the language sounds like your own thought.

What “classical” means on an audition notice

There is no single rule, and that is the first thing to know. The University of Washington School of Drama’s auditioning glossary says that for auditions, “classical” usually means something written before the 19th century, often in poetic or heightened language. It adds that your classical piece doesn’t have to be Shakespeare unless the notice says so.

Other programs draw the line elsewhere. Ithaca College’s Acting for Stage and Screen BFA requirements describe classical monologues as typically written before 1950 and say they should have heightened language. Its examples of heightened language go well beyond Shakespeare: Molière, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Kyd, and Aristophanes, alongside contemporary writers such as August Wilson, Tony Kushner, and Suzan-Lori Parks.

So “classical” is less about a date than about a skill. The panel wants to see you handle language that is bigger, denser, and more shaped than everyday speech, and still make it sound like a person who needs to say it. Any play that gives you that, and fits the notice’s wording, is in play.

Read the notice for the hidden test

Before you pick a play, read the wording of the notice twice. The biggest risk in a non-Shakespeare choice is missing one word. Here is how the common phrasings translate:

• “A classical monologue” with nothing else: anything from the classical repertoire in heightened language. This is where a non-Shakespeare piece is most welcome.
• “A classical monologue in verse”: the speech itself must be in verse. Most Restoration comedy and much of Molière in prose translation won’t qualify.
• “Shakespeare or another Elizabethan or Jacobean playwright”: Marlowe, Kyd, Webster, Jonson, and Middleton are in; the Greeks, Molière, and Restoration plays are out.
• “A Shakespeare monologue”: bring Shakespeare. Nothing else answers the question.
• “Two classical pieces”: you can often bring one Shakespeare and one from elsewhere, which shows range without risk.

Juilliard’s Actor Training Program is a good example of a notice with several hidden tests at once. Its 2020-21 monologue FAQ asks for two classical pieces: at least one must be Shakespeare, at least one must be in verse, and the other may come from the Greeks or any pre-20th-century writer whose text is poetic or heightened. A Restoration prose speech could fill the second slot only if the Shakespeare speech is already the verse one.

Acting Coach Scotland’s list of common drama school audition mistakes calls choosing a prose speech instead of a verse speech the most obvious mistake. When in doubt, choose verse. It satisfies a notice that asks for it and is rarely a wrong choice for one that doesn’t.

How each tradition reads to a panel

Each corner of the classical repertoire tests something slightly different. Pick the one that shows what you do best, then make sure it still answers the notice.

Shakespeare’s contemporaries

Marlowe, Kyd, Webster, Jonson, and Middleton wrote for the same stages as Shakespeare, much of it in the same blank verse. To a panel, a speech from The Duchess of Malfi or Doctor Faustus shows the same core skills as a Shakespeare speech, with the bonus that the panel is less likely to have heard it all morning. This is the safest swap when the notice says “classical” or “Elizabethan or Jacobean.”

The language can be even more extreme than Shakespeare’s. Webster’s world is full of dark images and sudden plainness, like this moment as the Duchess faces her executioners:

What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut
With diamonds? or to be smothered
With cassia? or to be shot to death with pearls?
I know death hath ten thousand several doors
For men to take their exits;

John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi, Act 4, from the Project Gutenberg text.

Three extravagant questions about luxurious deaths, then a calm, plain statement about doors. That swing between the ornate and the simple is what a panel wants to hear you handle. You can see who speaks most in the play, and where the longest speeches fall, on our Duchess of Malfi page.

Greek tragedy

Greek tragedy gives you enormous stakes and speeches that are often addressed straight out, to a chorus or to the gods. That makes it strong for showing size and clarity. Juilliard’s FAQ names the Greeks directly as allowed classical material.

The catch is translation. You will be speaking a translator’s English, and translations vary from stiff to very speakable. Gilbert Murray’s 1906 Medea, for example, is in rhymed couplets (“Of all things upon earth that bleed and grow, / A herb most bruised is woman”), which gives you verse to work with but needs a light touch on the rhymes. Read several translations of the same speech out loud and pick the one whose sentences you can breathe through.

Molière and French classical comedy

Many of Molière’s best-known comedies, including Tartuffe, The Misanthrope, and The School for Wives, are in rhymed verse in French; others are in prose. In English, it also depends on the translation: some are in rhymed couplets, some in unrhymed verse, some in prose. Curtis Hidden Page’s translation of Tartuffe, which is on our Tartuffe page, is in unrhymed verse. If the notice asks for verse, check your translation’s layout on the page, not just the title.

A Molière speech shows comic precision: argument, timing, and a character so certain they’re right that they become funny. It pairs well with a serious contemporary piece.

The Spanish Golden Age

Calderón and Lope de Vega are less often heard in audition rooms, which is part of their appeal. Segismundo’s speech at the end of Act 2 of Life Is a Dream is a good example of what they offer: a man who has just been told his whole day was a dream, reasoning his way to the end of the act. In Denis Florence MacCarthy’s old translation (where he is Sigismund), the whole speech runs in short rhymed lines, building to “What is life? ‘Tis but a madness. / What is life? A thing that seems” before it ends on “And even dreams themselves are dreams.” The short lines move fast and test your breath and your thought.

Restoration comedy

Congreve, Wycherley, and their circle wrote witty, fast, mostly prose comedy. Millamant in The Way of the World setting her terms for marriage (“I’ll be solicited to the very last; nay, and afterwards”) is a gift for a strong comic actor. Use Restoration when the notice says “classical” with no verse requirement, or as a contrast to a verse speech you’re already bringing. You can see Millamant’s share of the play and its longest speeches on our Way of the World page.

Public-domain speeches to start from

These are starting points, not a finished list. Each is from a play you can read free in a public-domain text, and each quotation below was checked against the Project Gutenberg edition.

• Faustus to Helen, near the end of Doctor Faustus (Marlowe): “Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships.” Blank verse, and one of the most famous speeches in English drama. Our Doctor Faustus page shows the play’s longest speeches.
• Hieronimo grieving his murdered son, The Spanish Tragedy (Kyd), Act 3: “Oh eies! no eies but fountains fraught with teares.” The Gutenberg text keeps the old spelling, so work from a modern-spelling edition.
• The Duchess facing her executioners, The Duchess of Malfi (Webster), Act 4: “I know death hath ten thousand several doors.” Blank verse with sudden plain lines.
• Medea to the women of Corinth, Medea (Euripides, translated by Gilbert Murray): “Of all things upon earth that bleed and grow.” Rhymed verse.
• Segismundo, Life Is a Dream (Calderón, translated by Denis Florence MacCarthy), end of Act 2: “What is life? ‘Tis but a madness.” Short rhymed lines.
• Millamant’s terms, The Way of the World (Congreve), Act 4: “I’ll be solicited to the very last.” Prose comedy.

A note on famous speeches like Faustus’s: they’re fine to use. Nick Hern Books’ advice is not to be afraid of popular speeches, because originality isn’t a major requirement for a classical piece. The trade-off is simply that a well-known speech gives the panel a clear comparison, so choose it because it suits you and you can make it your own, not because it’s famous or because it isn’t.

Check the whole play before you commit

Juilliard’s FAQ warns against picking speeches from monologue books without reading the full play, because you need to know the character’s circumstances, who they are talking to, and why. That matters even more with a lesser-known classical play, where the panel may ask you about it and you can’t lean on what everyone already knows.

Before you commit, check four things:

• You can say in one sentence who you’re talking to and what you want from them.
• The speech makes sense on its own, without the scene before it explained.
• You could plausibly be cast in the role now, not in twenty years.
• It fits the time limit with a real pause or two, not just at reading speed.

Nick Hern Books’ advice on drama school speeches calls Shakespeare the safe bet and notes that some schools ask for Shakespeare by name, so going elsewhere is a choice, not a default. Make it because the speech suits you, not just because it is unusual. To trim a long speech to time, see our guide to cutting a monologue, and check the length with our free monologue timer.

Learn it so the language sounds like yours

Heightened text is less forgiving than modern dialogue. Swap one word and the line can lose its rhythm, its rhyme, or its image. Acting Coach Scotland makes the same point from the other side: if it’s heightened language, it needs a heightened performance. That’s one more reason to learn it word for word before you start playing with it.

Start by writing a plain paraphrase of every line, so you know what each image means. Then learn it in thoughts, not lines: in verse, a thought often runs across the line ending and lands mid-line. Our guide to learning lines in verse covers this step by step.

Then test yourself from memory rather than rereading. Offbook helps with exactly that: upload the speech, swap it for first-letter cues (keeping the punctuation if you like), then hide it and speak it from memory. Seeing only the first letter of each word forces you to recall the exact wording, which suits verse, where a swapped word breaks the meter.

Once the words are secure, put the speech on its feet and time it at full performance energy, because a heightened speech nearly always runs longer standing up than it did at your desk.

Questions actors ask

Does Restoration comedy count as a classical monologue?

Usually, yes. Restoration comedies were written around the late 1600s, well inside most definitions of classical. The catch is that most Restoration comedy is prose, so it won’t meet a notice that asks for verse. Use it when the notice simply says “classical,” or as a second, contrasting classical piece.

What are good classical monologues that aren’t Shakespeare?

Good places to start are Marlowe (Doctor Faustus), Kyd (The Spanish Tragedy), Webster (The Duchess of Malfi), the Greek tragedians in translation, Molière, Calderón’s Life Is a Dream, and Congreve’s The Way of the World. Pick a character you could be cast as and a speech that makes sense on its own.

Can I use Molière or a Greek tragedy for a classical audition?

Usually, if the notice says “classical” without narrowing it. Not if it asks for Shakespeare or for Elizabethan or Jacobean drama. For both, choose your translation carefully, and if verse is required, make sure your translation is actually in verse.

Should my classical monologue be in verse?

If the notice says so, yes. If it doesn’t, verse is still the safer choice, because it shows the skill a classical piece is meant to test. A prose speech in heightened language can work when the notice clearly allows it.

Is it risky to skip Shakespeare entirely?

Only when the notice asks for him or when the program’s tradition clearly centers on him, such as a Shakespeare festival. Otherwise a well-chosen speech from his contemporaries shows the same skills. If you’re asked for two classical pieces, one Shakespeare and one from elsewhere is a strong pairing.