Greek Tragedy Monologues for Auditions (in Free Translations)

You want a classical piece that isn’t Shakespeare, and a Greek tragedy keeps calling to you. Medea, Antigone, Electra: the stakes are as high as acting gets, and the speeches are built to be spoken to a crowd. Then you go looking for a copy and hit the problem most monologue lists skip. Which translation are you allowed to use, and where do you get it?

Greek plays reach you through a translator, and a translation is its own copyrighted work. The good news is that several complete, speakable translations are old enough to be in the public domain, and you can read them free on Project Gutenberg and Standard Ebooks.

The short version: check that the notice accepts a Greek piece at all. Then pick a speech that’s a real argument with someone, not a lament to the sky, from a public-domain translation such as Francis Storr’s Sophocles or Gilbert Murray’s Euripides. Read the whole play, time the speech honestly, and play its size through the thought, not the volume, so it fits a small room or a camera.

First, check the notice accepts a Greek speech

“Classical” doesn’t mean the same thing on every notice. Some drama schools define it as English drama of Shakespeare’s era. The Lir Academy in Dublin, for example, asks for a classical speech from Elizabethan or Jacobean drama, and its guide to choosing speeches says earlier classical works, “such as Greek tragedies,” are not suitable. The same guide caps each speech at three minutes.

So read the requirements before you fall in love with a speech. If the notice just says “classical,” or “a speech in heightened language,” a Greek piece is usually fair game. If it names Shakespeare or a period, follow it. Our guide to choosing a classical monologue that isn’t Shakespeare walks through how to read a notice for its hidden test.

Where Greek tragedy is welcome, it shows a panel something specific: that you can carry a big argument in formal language without shouting it or flattening it. That’s the skill to aim at with every speech below.

Which translations are free, and which you have to buy

The plays are ancient, but the English words you’ll speak are not. Every translation has its own copyright, and modern translations are still protected. If you want a recent version, buy the book (or borrow it from a library), and don’t copy it from a PDF someone posted online. We don’t quote any modern translation here.

Older translations are a different story. Cornell University Library’s chart of copyright terms, updated for January 1, 2026, lists works published before 1931 as in the public domain in the United States. Two translators cover most of what you’ll want:

• Francis Storr (Sophocles). His verse translations were published in the Loeb Classical Library in 1912 and 1913, and he died in 1919. Project Gutenberg has his Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone, and Standard Ebooks has his Electra.
• Gilbert Murray (Euripides). His rhymed verse translations came out in the early 1900s. Gutenberg has his Medea and The Trojan Women.

One catch with Murray. He died in 1957, so in the UK, the EU, and many other countries where copyright runs 70 years after the author’s death, his translations stay protected until the end of 2027. Gutenberg’s own license tells readers outside the US that they “will have to check the laws of the country” where they live. Storr has no such catch.

Storr’s translations are also the ones behind our Sophocles play pages, so you can read Antigone, Electra, and Oedipus Rex in full on this site, with each part’s speeches listed.

Seven speeches worth your time

Each excerpt below is copied from the public-domain text named under it, and most are cut from longer speeches: “[…]” marks where we’ve left lines out. The run times are our estimates for the full speech, from our own word count of Storr’s text at 120 to 160 words a minute, the range our monologue timer uses. Pauses push the real time up, so time a full run standing up before you trust any number. For Murray’s speeches we give no estimate: paste the Gutenberg text into the timer.

Antigone: “Yea, for these laws were not ordained of Zeus”

Creon has caught Antigone after she buried her brother against his decree, and asks if she was bold enough to break the law. This is her answer. She isn’t pleading. She’s explaining, to the most powerful man in Thebes, why his law doesn’t count.

Yea, for these laws were not ordained of Zeus,
And she who sits enthroned with gods below,
Justice, enacted not these human laws.
Nor did I deem that thou, a mortal man,
Could’st by a breath annul and override
The immutable unwritten laws of Heaven.
They were not born today nor yesterday;
They die not; and none knoweth whence they sprang.
[…]

Sophocles, Antigone, translated by Francis Storr (Project Gutenberg)

It suits a young woman with a steady center, and it runs about 1:00 to 1:20 in full (162 words). The trap is martyrdom. Play it as a logical case she’s sure she’ll win, and the danger takes care of itself. More on the part is on our Antigone role page.

Creon: “Well, let her know the stubbornest of wills”

After Antigone’s defiance, the chorus calls her “a stubborn daughter of a stubborn sire,” and Creon answers the elders. He’s furious, and he dresses the fury up as policy.

Well, let her know the stubbornest of wills
Are soonest bended, as the hardest iron,
O’er-heated in the fire to brittleness,
Flies soonest into fragments, shivered through.
[…]

Sophocles, Antigone, translated by Francis Storr (Project Gutenberg)

An older actor’s speech, about 1:05 to 1:25 (169 words). The images of iron and a curbed horse are his proof that he’s right. Let him believe every word, and the audience will see the brittleness he’s describing in himself. See our Creon role page for his other big speeches.

Haemon: “Father, the gods implant in mortal men”

Creon’s son is engaged to Antigone. He comes to his father not to rage but to reason, carefully, and it’s one of the best speeches in Greek tragedy for a young man who doesn’t want to shout.

[…]
See how the trees beside a stream in flood
Save, if they yield to force, each spray unharmed,
But by resisting perish root and branch.
[…]

Sophocles, Antigone, translated by Francis Storr (Project Gutenberg)

The full speech is longer, about 2:00 to 2:40 (324 words), so many actors will need a cut. The playable tension is respect versus urgency: every line is polite, and every line is a warning.

Electra: “It shames me, friends, that ye should thus set down”

Early in Sophocles’ play, the women of Mycenae urge Electra to stop her endless mourning. She answers them by laying out what her life is: her father’s murderer on his throne, her mother beside him.

It shames me, friends, that ye should thus set down
To frowardness my too persistent grief.

[…]

Think what a life is mine, to see each day
Aegisthus seated on my father’s throne,
Wearing the royal robes my father wore, […]

Sophocles, Electra, translated by Francis Storr (Standard Ebooks)

In full it’s long, about 2:35 to 3:25 (407 words), so plan a cut from the start. It suits a woman who can hold anger and grief at once. Her famous opening lament is sung and addressed to the sky; this speech is better for an audition because she’s talking to people she wants to convince.

Oedipus: “O wealth and empiry and skill by skill”

The blind prophet Teiresias has told Oedipus that he is the plague on Thebes, and that Creon has nothing to do with it. Oedipus can’t hear it. He decides it’s a plot by Creon, and turns on the old man.

O wealth and empiry and skill by skill
Outwitted in the battlefield of life,
What spite and envy follow in your train!

[…]

This mountebank, this juggling charlatan,
This tricksy beggar-priest, for gain alone
Keen-eyed, but in his proper art stone-blind.
[…]

Sophocles, Oedipus the King, translated by Francis Storr (Project Gutenberg)

About 1:10 to 1:35 in full (190 words), so it fits most limits. It suits an actor who can play status and insult. The irony that he calls a seer “stone-blind” is the audience’s, not his. Play the contempt straight.

Medea: “Women of Corinth, I am come to show”

Jason has left Medea to marry the king’s daughter. She comes out of the house to the women of Corinth, the chorus, and talks to them as women, about what marriage costs.

[…]
Of all things upon earth that bleed and grow,
A herb most bruised is woman. We must pay
Our store of gold, hoarded for that one day,
To buy us some man’s love; and lo, they bring
A master of our flesh! […]

And then, forsooth, ‘tis they that face the call
Of war, while we sit sheltered, hid from all
Peril!—False mocking! Sooner would I stand
Three times to face their battles, shield in hand,
Than bear one child. […]

Euripides, Medea, translated by Gilbert Murray (Project Gutenberg)

The whole speech is long, and you’ll want to cut it to its argument. Murray rhymes in couplets, so keep the rhyme light and let the thought run across the line endings. It suits a woman who can be warm, funny, and dangerous in the same minute: she’s winning the chorus over, not breaking down.

Andromache: “Go, die, my best-beloved, my cherished one”

In The Trojan Women, the herald Talthybius tells Andromache that the Greeks have decided to kill her small son, Astyanax. She speaks to the child.

Go, die, my best-beloved, my cherished one,
In fierce men’s hands, leaving me here alone.
Thy father was too valiant; that is why
They slay thee! […]

Euripides, The Trojan Women, translated by Gilbert Murray (Project Gutenberg)

This is the hardest speech here, and it needs a firm choice about where the child is. Put him in your arms or at your feet, never vaguely in the air. If you want another woman’s voice from the same play, Hecuba, the fallen queen, has long speeches worth reading too.

Play the size through the thought, not the volume

These speeches were written for open-air theaters built into hillsides. Thanos Vovolis and Giorgos Zamboulakis, writing in Didaskalia about the tragic mask, call it “a resonance chamber” and an instrument to project the voice into space. Your audition room has no mask and no hillside. It might be a studio with a panel of three, or a phone on a tripod.

So the scale has to move inside. The director Carey Perloff, describing her rehearsals of Oedipus Tyrannos for Digital Theatre+, talks about finding “the emotional undercurrents hidden beneath a very formal surface,” and starting from the arguments and discoveries in each scene. That’s the job in a small room: a formal surface, a full engine under it.

• Find the argument. Write down, in plain words, what your character wants the listener to do by the end. Antigone wants Creon to admit his law is void. Haemon wants his father to yield.
• Speak to one person. Pick a single listener, the real one in the play, and place them just beside the panel or the lens. Our guide on where to look in a monologue covers how.
• Let the images do the work. Creon’s iron and Haemon’s trees are evidence. Show them to your listener as if they prove your point, and they’ll carry more than any rise in volume.
• Keep still. A big speech in a small space reads bigger when you aren’t wandering. Move on a new thought, not on a new line.
• Land the end of each thought. The last word of a thought is often the one that matters most. Don’t let it drop, and don’t bark it.

On camera, all of this matters more. A shout that would fill a hall can distort on a phone’s microphone and looks wild in a mid shot. For framing and eyelines, see our guide to self-taping a monologue.

Learn the old words exactly

Translations like Storr’s and Murray’s use “thou,” “’tis,” and inverted word order, and that’s where actors paraphrase without noticing. Turn Storr’s “none knoweth” into “no one knows” and you’ve changed the rhythm of the line; drop Murray’s rhyme word and the couplet falls apart. Learn it word for word before you start playing with it.

Write a plain paraphrase of every line first, so you know what “frowardness” and “empiry” mean. Then learn by thought, not by printed line, because the sense often runs past the line ending. Our guide to learning lines in verse covers the method, and you can turn a speech into first-letter prompts with the free line memorizer.

In Offbook you can upload the speech, replace your lines with first-letter cues, then hide them and say it from memory.

If you’re ever cast in one of these plays rather than auditioning with it, you’ll find the chorus is a different kind of learning. Our guide to learning lines for a Greek chorus covers split lines and unison.

Cut it to time without losing the argument

Several of these speeches, like Haemon’s and Electra’s, run past two minutes in full, and many notices ask for less. A Greek speech usually has a clear shape: a claim, the evidence, and a demand. Cut repeated evidence first, keep the claim and the demand, and make sure what’s left still makes sense to someone who hasn’t read the play.

Haemon is a good example. His trees and his sailor make the same point, so you might keep one. Our step-by-step guide to cutting a monologue walks through the process, and the monologue library has more public-domain speeches if none of these is right for you.

Questions actors ask

Is a Greek monologue a good classical audition piece?

It can be, when the notice allows it. Some drama schools, such as The Lir Academy in Dublin, ask specifically for Elizabethan or Jacobean drama and rule Greek tragedy out, so check first. Where “classical” is open, a Greek speech shows you can carry formal, heightened language with real stakes, and it stands out from the usual Shakespeare.

Which translation of Medea or Antigone can I use for free?

For Antigone, Francis Storr’s 1912 translation is free on Project Gutenberg, and our Antigone page uses it. For Medea, Gilbert Murray’s translation is on Project Gutenberg and is in the public domain in the US. Murray died in 1957, so if you live outside the US, check your own country’s copyright term.

Can I use a modern translation in an audition?

Yes, if you get it legally. Modern translations are under copyright, so buy a copy or borrow one from a library, and don’t use a pirated PDF. Tell the panel the translator’s name if they ask, because the words are as much the translator’s as the playwright’s.

Should I do a messenger speech?

Messenger speeches are thrilling to read, but they describe events rather than pursue something from a listener. In an audition, a speech where your character needs something from the person in front of them usually shows more. If you love one, find who your messenger is talking to and what they want that person to do.

Do I need to read the whole play?

Yes. A panel may ask what happens before or after your speech, and the setup changes how you play it. Every play on this page is free to read on Project Gutenberg or Standard Ebooks.