How to Self-Tape a Shakespeare Monologue: Framing, Eyeline, and Verse on Camera

You’ve chosen the speech, you’ve learned it, and it works in the rehearsal room. Then you set up the phone, press record, and watch the playback. The voice that filled the studio now sounds like shouting. The gestures look huge. And you have no idea where your eyes were supposed to be while you talked to the gods, the audience, or a man who isn’t there.

Shakespeare was written for big rooms and open-air stages. A self-tape is a small rectangle with a microphone a few feet from your mouth. Drama schools and festivals, RADA among them, now often ask for a taped classical speech, and the actors who do well on them aren’t the ones who shrink the speech. They’re the ones who keep its size in the thinking and take it out of the volume.

The short version: follow the brief first. If it is silent, shoot landscape with a looser frame than a TV tape, waist to the top of your head. Give a soliloquy real places to land just beside the lens, not the lens itself. Speak to the microphone, not the back row, and keep the energy running to the end of each verse line. Then watch it back twice: once with the picture off, once with the sound off.

Read the brief before you set up anything

Classical briefs differ in ways that matter. RADA’s self-tape guide asks applicants to start in a long shot for a one-minute introduction (name, postcode, which pieces and why), keep the classical speech to two minutes at most, and move closer for a mid shot if possible. It also asks for one file, ideally filmed as one continuous shot.

Festivals set their own clocks. A past Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival audition call asked for a classical monologue of no more than two minutes. RADA and that Notre Dame call both set two minutes, but read your own call: limits, number of pieces, and slate instructions vary. Our guide to auditioning for a Shakespeare festival covers how festivals cast a season and what their calls usually ask for.

Time the speech out loud before you tape, at the pace you’ll actually play it. Verse runs longer on its feet than it does in your head. Time it with a stopwatch, and you’ll know whether you need to cut.

Frame it looser than a TV tape

A TV self-tape is often a close shot, around chest up. A classical speech often needs a little more of you. The argument of a Shakespeare speech lives partly in the body: the turn of the shoulders on a new thought, the hand that lands on “But what of that?” A frame that crops at the chest loses it.

RADA’s guide defines the two shots it asks for. A long shot shows your full body with a little room above your head. A mid shot runs from your waist to the top of your head, again with a little room at the top. The University of Rochester theatre program’s self-tape tips ask to see you from the torso up, “or full body if that’s better for the piece,” and warn against being right on top of the camera.

• Shoot landscape. RADA puts it plainly: “think TV, not TikTok.”
• Default to waist up when the brief doesn’t say. It’s close enough to see your eyes think and loose enough to see the speech move.
• Mark your floor. If you move on a thought change, put a piece of tape where you stop so you don’t walk out of focus or out of frame.
• Keep the background plain and the light in front of you. Our self-tape lighting tips cover the setups that work with a window and a lamp.

One move is enough. A speech that travels across the room on camera reads as restless, not alive. Plant yourself, and let the thoughts move instead.

Decide who the soliloquy is talking to

This is where classical tapes often go wrong. In a theater, a soliloquy has an audience right there. On tape, there’s a phone and a wall. You need to decide, before you shoot, who your character is speaking to, because your eyes will tell casting whether you know.

Shakespeare’s soliloquies are often spoken straight to the house. UC Berkeley’s Shakespeare program points to the Globe’s filmed Falstaff honour speech as an example: Roger Allam addresses the audience directly and earns their sympathy for the character. Actor and Shakespeare teacher Rob Myles makes the same case in his ten things that will save you when playing Shakespeare: “A soliloquy is not a vocalized inner monologue.” His advice is to ask the speech’s questions of the other characters, or of the audience.

Falstaff’s speech shows why. It’s a string of questions waiting for an answer:

Can honour set to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is honour? a word.

Played to the floor, that’s a man muttering. Played to an audience, every “no” is a little joke shared with people he’s trying to win over.

Where that audience goes on tape

Briefs disagree about the lens, so check yours. RADA asks applicants not to look straight down the camera and to look slightly to the side instead, as though speaking to another character. Rochester’s tips say to look straight at the camera or right over it. Acting Magazine’s guide to where to look when self-taping says that for monologues addressing an unseen character or the audience, you look slightly off camera, an inch or two from the lens, and save the lens itself for scripts that call for direct address.

When the brief doesn’t say, use the off-lens default and give the audience more than one face:

1. Pick three points just around the lens: one on each side and one just above. Stick a small mark on each if it helps.
2. Decide who sits at each point. A sympathetic listener, a skeptic, the one you most need to convince.
3. Move to a new point only when the thought changes, never in the middle of one. The move is part of the argument.
4. If the speech is to a person in the scene (Portia’s “The quality of mercy” is spoken to Shylock), give that person one point and keep them there.

Our guide on where to look in a monologue goes deeper on placing an imagined listener, and our monologue self-tape guide covers slating straight to the lens and then finding your eyeline.

Play to the microphone, not the back row

Trained classical actors are told to fill the space. On tape, the space is a few feet across. Spotlight’s lighting and sound guide for self-tapes, by its audio-visual specialist Nicholas Peel, says that without an external microphone, the performer should be close to the camera so the voice is loud enough, and that a plugged-in mic should sit close to the performer. Either way, the microphone is near you. Your theater voice, aimed at it, will sound like shouting and can distort on the loudest lines.

Rochester’s tips say “Project! We need to hear you clearly.” Both things are true. Casting needs every word, and they don’t need to be blasted. The fix is to project the thought, not the decibels. Myles puts it simply: “energy isn’t volume.”

• Do a level test with your loudest line. Record the biggest moment in the speech, play it back on headphones, and listen for crackle or harshness. If you hear it, step back a little or bring the level of that moment down while keeping its intensity.
• Keep the consonants. Verse lives on its consonants. On camera you can drop the volume and still land every final “t” and “d,” which is what makes the words clear.
• Let the quiet lines be quiet. A microphone hears a near-whisper. That’s a range you don’t have in a big theater, and it’s yours on tape.

Our guide to self-tape sound covers rooms, echo, and clip-on mics in more detail.

Keep the verse alive in a small frame

When actors scale down for the camera, the verse is usually what suffers. They drop the energy at the end of every line, mumble the antithesis, and turn a sharp argument into a mood. The camera doesn’t need less verse. It needs the verse played as thinking.

In a Folger Shakespeare & Beyond article drawn from her Shakespeare Unlimited podcast interview, Laura Wayth, author of The Shakespeare Audition, urges actors to learn to read the verse so they understand the rhythm of each line and the role punctuation plays, and says one piece of text should vocally build on another. On tape, that building is what keeps a two-minute speech from going flat. Each line has to push the argument one step further than the last.

Myles warns that pausing on every line ending breaks up the thoughts. Use a line ending as a springboard for a breath when a thought is too long for one, and otherwise carry the energy through to the next line. Helena’s speech in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a good one to test this on, because it’s built from contrasts:

Things base and vile, holding no quantity,

Love can transpose to form and dignity:

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;

And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind:

Base and vile against form and dignity. Eyes against mind. On a stage you might hit those pairs hard. On camera, you only need to mean the difference: the slight lift on “eyes,” the small turn on “but with the mind.” The audience hears the argument because you’re making it, not because you’re pointing at it. If you want to rehearse the whole speech, it’s on our page for “How happy some o’er other some can be!”

Know it cold so your eyes can stay up

Nothing kills a classical tape faster than eyes that drift down mid-line while you search for the next word. On camera, every search shows. You need the speech so secure that you can spend all your attention on the listener you placed beside the lens.

Shakespeare is unforgiving here, because a single swapped word can break the meter or the rhyme. One way to test yourself is to reduce each line to its first letters and see whether you can still say it whole. Helena’s line about the eyes and the mind becomes:

L l n w t e, b w t m;

Our free first-letter memorizer turns any speech into cues like that. For the final check before you tape, upload the speech to Offbook and hide your lines, or hide the whole script, and say it from memory. Strict line detection holds you close to the text, which suits verse, where a paraphrase is easy to hear.

Run it in the space where you’ll tape, at taping volume, with your eyes on your marks. A speech you’ve only rehearsed at full theater voice will feel unfamiliar the first time you play it to a phone. On a phone, Offbook can also play the speech back to you aloud while you’re out, so the words keep settling between sessions. For the deeper technique, see our guides to learning lines in verse and performing Shakespeare monologues.

Watch it back twice: once for sound, once for picture

RADA’s guide asks you to set up the shot, test a couple of lines, watch it back, and then shoot, and also to avoid recording too many times. That last part matters with Shakespeare. Take ten and take one are often not as good as take two or three, and verse gets mechanical when you’ve said it twenty times in an hour.

1. Shoot a test of the opening and the loudest line. Check the frame, the light, and the level before you spend a full take.
2. Listen with the picture off. Can you understand every word? Does the argument build, or does every line land the same way?
3. Watch with the sound off. Do your eyes move only on thought changes? Do they ever drop to the floor? Is any gesture bigger than the frame can hold?
4. Shoot two or three full takes, then stop. Pick the one where you were thinking, not the one where you were cleanest.

For speeches that suit a tape, browse our Shakespeare monologues collection.

Questions actors ask

Should I look into the camera for a Shakespeare soliloquy?

Only if the brief allows it. Some drama schools, including RADA, ask you not to look straight down the lens. When the brief is silent, place the audience at a few points just beside the lens and move between them on thought changes. You keep the sense of direct address without staring into the camera.

How close should the camera be for a classical monologue?

Follow the brief first. If it gives no frame, waist to the top of your head with a little headroom is a safe default: close enough to see you think, loose enough to see the speech move. A tight chest-up shot can crop the movement of the speech, and Rochester’s tips ask you not to stand right on top of the camera.

Do I need to slate for a Shakespeare self-tape?

Usually, in the form the brief asks for. RADA wants a one-minute introduction with your name, postcode, and why you chose your pieces. Other briefs ask for less; do what yours says. Slate the way the brief asks; if it says nothing, slate to the lens, then find your first eyeline point. Our guide on how to slate for a self-tape has more on slates.

How do I keep verse from sounding flat when I bring the volume down?

Keep the energy in the thinking. Carry each line through to its end, land the consonants, and let the contrasts in the speech do the work. Then listen back with the picture off: if every line sounds the same, the argument has stopped building.