Comedic Monologues From Greek Comedy: Aristophanes Speeches for Auditions

The notice wants a classical comedic piece, you’ve done your Shakespeare clown, and you’d like something the panel hasn’t heard three times today. Greek comedy is sitting right there.

There’s a catch. Almost all the Old Comedy that survives is Aristophanes’, and his plays are stuffed with jokes about Athenian politicians who’ve been dead for 2,400 years. Pull a speech straight off the page and half of it lands on unknown names. But cut it the right way, and underneath is exactly what an audition wants: a character who is certain, who wants something badly, and who is funny because of it.

The short version: use a translation you’re allowed to read, check that the school counts Greek comedy as classical, pick a speech where the character is arguing with someone in the room (or, like Strepsiades below, confiding in the audience), and trim the topical jokes down to the ones that still play. Below are five speeches from Lysistrata, The Assemblywomen, The Clouds, and The Frogs, each with the setup, the want, a short excerpt, and an estimated run time. Every excerpt is copied from the Athenian Society translation and checked against Project Gutenberg.

Does Greek comedy count as a classical monologue?

At many schools, yes. Ithaca College’s Acting for Stage and Screen BFA requirements ask for two contrasting monologues, each 60 to 90 seconds, and say classical monologues should have heightened language. Its examples of heightened language name Aristophanes alongside Shakespeare, Molière, and Christopher Marlowe, as well as modern writers such as August Wilson.

Other programs define classical by date and style. 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, and adds that your classical piece “doesn’t have to come from Shakespeare.” Aristophanes, writing in Athens in the 400s B.C., fits that description comfortably.

The one thing to confirm is comedy, and the exact wording. If a notice asks for classical verse, a prose translation may not fit, so check before you commit. When the wording is ambiguous, send a one-line email. Our guide to classical monologues that aren’t Shakespeare sorts out the common phrasings, and our list of Greek tragedy monologues covers the serious side of the same source.

Use a translation you’re allowed to read for free

Aristophanes’ Greek is long in the public domain, but each English translation is its own work. The U.S. Copyright Office’s Circular 14 explains that “common derivative works include translations” of preexisting works, and a translation carries its own copyright for what the translator added. So an old translation can be free to print and learn while a sparkling new one is not.

The free one these speeches come from is the prose translation published by the Athenian Society. Project Gutenberg hosts it in two volumes, The Eleven Comedies, Volume 1 (which holds Lysistrata and The Clouds) and Volume 2 (which holds The Frogs and The Ecclesiazusae, usually called The Assemblywomen in English), and marks both public domain in the USA. The edition doesn’t name its translator. If you prefer a modern verse translation by a named translator, buy or borrow the published script and credit the translator if the panel asks.

This is prose, not verse: easy to speak, easy to rush. Aristophanes wrote in meter, so you supply the shape yourself. Play it like heightened, argued speech, not like chat.

Speeches for women

A note on times: we counted the words in each speech in the Athenian Society text and divided by 150 words a minute, a conversational pace. Your own pace may be quicker or slower, so treat every time as an estimate and check it against your own run with a timer.

Lysistrata, “First we wash the yarn” (Lysistrata)

In Lysistrata, the women of Greece have seized the treasury to force the men to end the war. A city Magistrate arrives to stop them and sneers at the idea of settling a war with yarn and spools. Lysistrata tells him that if he had common sense, he’d run politics the way women handle wool, and he asks her how.

Her answer is the speech, delivered patiently, as if to a slow child: First we wash the yarn to separate the grease and filth; do the same with all bad citizens, sort them out and drive them forth with rods, and on through carding, winding, and weaving the city a good stout tunic.

What she wants: to win the argument in front of everyone, and to make the Magistrate look like the fool. It runs about 131 words, roughly 52 seconds. Start on “First we wash the yarn,” since the Magistrate cuts in just before it.

Praxagora, “I assert that the direction of affairs must be handed over to the women” (The Assemblywomen)

The Athenian Society’s introduction sums up The Ecclesiazusae (392 B.C.): the women of the city disguise themselves as men and slip into the Public Assembly to take it over. Praxagora rehearses the plan with them, false beards and all, and after watching the others keep slipping up, takes the chaplet and gives the speech herself.

The scene around this speech is bawdy; the cut itself is clean, so stop at ‘perfect happiness.’ She declares that the direction of affairs must be handed over to the women, then argues they should run the state because they never change anything: First of all they wash all their wool in warm water, according to the ancient practice; you will never see them changing their method.

What she wants: to prove she can out-talk any man on the Pnyx, and to convince the room that the plan will work. The joke builds as her list of women’s unchanging habits gets longer and cheekier, ending Take my advice and you will live in perfect happiness. From “I assert that the direction of affairs must be handed over to the women” to “perfect happiness,” leaving out the one-line cheer from another woman, it runs about 263 words, roughly a minute and 45 seconds.

For a shorter cut, start at “First of all” (by then it’s clear “they” means the women) and end on “perfect happiness”: about 227 words, roughly a minute and 31 seconds.

Speeches for men

Strepsiades, “Great gods! will these nights never end?” (The Clouds)

The Clouds opens on Strepsiades, a farmer who married above himself and now lies awake, buried in the debts his horse-mad son has run up. Great gods! will these nights never end? will daylight never come? he begins, and soon he’s groaning over these debts, which are devouring me, thanks to this fine cavalier, meaning his chariot-mad son.

What he wants: a night’s sleep, and a way out of ruin, which he’ll soon look for by enrolling in Socrates’ school to learn how to argue his creditors away. There’s no listener on stage: his son is asleep, so he’s confiding in the audience. The opening alone runs about 157 words to the point where his debts fall due, roughly a minute.

The whole stretch runs well over three minutes, with the son’s sleep-talk and a slave cutting in between, so it isn’t one speech; build your piece from the opening and, if you want more, his complaint about his marriage. Play the exhaustion straight and let the complaints get the laugh.

Euripides, “when I received tragedy from your hands” (The Frogs)

The Frogs ends in a contest in the underworld between two dead playwrights, old grand Aeschylus and clever modern Euripides, for the throne of tragedy. Euripides brags about how he fixed the art: when I received tragedy from your hands, it was quite bloated with enormous, ponderous words, and I began by lightening it of its heavy baggage… He goes on about his subtle arguments and his clear openings until Aeschylus cuts in with a jab.

What he wants: to win, and to be admired for his cleverness, which is exactly what makes him funny. This is a speech about craft, performed by an actor, in front of a panel judging craft, so the wink is built in. His first speech, from “Oh! I have not made horses…” to “the origin of the piece,” runs about 118 words, roughly 47 seconds. That opening line plays off an earlier jibe about a horse-cock creature in Aeschylus, so for a cold audience start at “when I received tragedy” instead: about 93 words, roughly 37 seconds. Play the vanity full strength and don’t apologize for it.

Aeschylus, “Note how useful ... the poets of noble thought have been!” (The Frogs)

Aeschylus answers Euripides from the opposite corner: the old poet who believes art should make citizens braver and better. Dionysus has just joked about cheering at Aeschylus’ The Persae, and Aeschylus launches in: Note how useful, even from remotest times, the poets of noble thought have been! He runs through Orpheus, Musaeus, and Hesiod before asking, does not divine Homer owe his immortal glory to his noble teachings?

What he wants: to crush the upstart and defend a whole way of making art. The comedy is in the self-importance, a man so grand he can’t hear how pompous he sounds. From “Note how useful” to the end, it’s about 77 words, roughly 31 seconds.

Cut the topical jokes, keep the want

Old Comedy worked like a satirical newspaper. The Athenian Society’s introductions date these plays and name their real targets: The Clouds (423 B.C.) “satirizes Socrates, the ‘Sophists,’ and the ‘New Education,’” and The Frogs (405 B.C.) is “an onslaught on Euripides the Tragedian.” Scattered through every speech are named Athenians the first audience knew and we don’t.

That’s the real work of adapting one of these for audition: deciding which proper names stay and which go. A name the panel knows, like Socrates, can stay. A name that’s only a punchline for a forgotten politician is dead weight; cut the clause and the speech reads cleaner. When in doubt, read the line aloud to someone who doesn’t know the play and watch where they go blank.

A few habits help, the same ones that serve any comic monologue. Place the listener clearly, because most speeches here are aimed at a listener: the Magistrate, the women playing the Assembly, a rival playwright. Find the line where the character shifts tactic. And keep the argument moving, so the prose doesn’t flatten into a list. Our guide on how to perform a comedic monologue has more on timing, and the method for trimming a speech by thought is in our guide on how to cut a monologue. The free monologue timer checks the length at different paces once you’ve made your cut.

Learn the speech inside the scene

Most of these answer someone. Lysistrata answers the Magistrate’s sneer, Praxagora answers the fumbling rehearsal before hers, Euripides answers Aeschylus. Learn the cue line as carefully as the speech. For the yarn speech and the two Frogs speeches, read the scene around them aloud a few times before you go word-perfect, so you know what you’re replying to and why the jokes land where they do; for Praxagora, work from the cut alone.

In Offbook, upload the scene in a public-domain translation, pick your part, and realistic voices read every other character, then wait while you say your lines. When the speech starts to stick, hide your own lines while everyone else’s stay on screen, as the video below shows, or swap your words for first-letter cues for a final test.

Our free first-letter memorizer does that cue step with any speech you paste in, no account needed. Our breakdown of The Birds shows every role’s lines, words, and scenes, so you can see how a full Aristophanes comedy divides its parts. And our comedic monologue library has more pieces to pair with one of these.

Questions actors ask

Are there comedic classical monologues that aren’t Shakespeare?

Yes. Aristophanes’ Greek comedies, Molière, Restoration comedy, and Sheridan all give you heightened comic language without a Shakespeare clown. Our list of classical monologues that aren’t Shakespeare covers the full range.

What is a good Aristophanes monologue for an audition?

For women, Lysistrata’s yarn speech to the Magistrate is under a minute of clean, argued comedy, and Praxagora’s rehearsal speech gives you a longer one. For men, Euripides’ brag in The Frogs puts a certain, funny character directly in front of a listener, and Strepsiades’ sleepless opening in The Clouds lets you talk straight to the audience. Pick the one whose want you can play without explaining the plot.

Is there a Lysistrata monologue I can use?

Yes. The yarn speech to the Magistrate, starting “First we wash the yarn,” is comic and runs under a minute. It’s in the public-domain Athenian Society translation on Project Gutenberg.

Can I rehearse a Greek comedy monologue on my phone?

Rehearse on your laptop with the full script on a big screen, and listen to your scenes on your phone anywhere. With Offbook, playing the scene back on the way to the audition keeps the cue lines in your ear.