Shaw Monologues for Women: Ten Speeches From Joan to Liza, Plus Three Alternates

You want a classic speech that isn’t Shakespeare, and you want a woman who argues. Not a woman who weeps over a letter or waits by a window, but one who walks into a room, makes a case, and wins it or loses it in front of you. That’s Shaw’s territory. He gave his heroines long, thinking speeches, the kind usually given to men.

Then the practical questions start. Is Shaw classical or contemporary on this notice? Which plays can you read and copy for free? And which speech isn’t already being done by three other people in the hallway?

The short version: read how the notice defines its categories before you pick Shaw, learn from a public-domain edition, and choose a speech where you can say in one sentence what she’s trying to win. Below are ten speeches for women from seven plays, each with the setup, the want, a short excerpt, and a run time. Every excerpt is copied from the text in our play library, which uses Standard Ebooks’ public-domain editions.

Check where the notice puts Shaw

Shaw sits on a border, and schools draw it in different places. Juilliard’s 2020–21 monologue FAQ defines contemporary selections as coming from writers working in the 20th and 21st centuries, roughly from Chekhov and Ibsen to the present day. Its classical pieces come from Shakespeare, the Greeks, and other pre-20th-century writers whose text is poetic or heightened. The FAQ never names Shaw. He most naturally falls on the contemporary side, but his earliest plays, including Candida and Mrs. Warren’s Profession, date from the 1890s, before the 20th century began. If you’re unsure, ask.

RADA draws the line somewhere else entirely. Its 2026 BA Acting admissions procedure asks for two self-tape speeches: a classical one from Shakespeare or an Elizabethan or Jacobean playwright, and a contemporary one written after 1960. Shaw fits neither. Only at the final full workshop day does RADA ask for a new speech of your choice from any era, and that’s where a Shaw speech could go.

Plenty of notices just say “a speech from a published play,” and then Shaw is a strong choice. If a notice asks for “classical” without defining it, ask whether Shaw counts. If the wording is unclear in any other way, send the school a one-line email. It costs less than learning the wrong speech.

Use a text you’re allowed to copy

Shaw died in 1950, and his plays are now free to read in many places. In the United States, published works pass into the public domain by year, and the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain’s Public Domain Day 2026 page notes that works from 1930 opened up this January. Saint Joan, the newest play here, was first staged by the Theatre Guild in New York in December 1923, according to its Wikipedia entry. Everything else on this list is older.

In the United Kingdom and Ireland, where copyright runs for the author’s life plus 70 years, Shaw’s works entered the public domain in 2021; Wikipedia’s list for that year includes him. Other countries differ. Standard Ebooks puts it carefully on its edition of Saint Joan: the ebook is thought to be free of copyright in the US but may still be under copyright elsewhere, so readers outside the US should check their local laws.

Two practical rules follow. Learn from one edition and stay with it, because punctuation in Shaw carries meaning and editions vary. And if you live outside the US, check the edition’s own copyright notice before you copy or share it.

Ten speeches for women

A note on times: where our monologue library has a page for the speech, the time comes from that page. For the others, we counted the words in the library text and divided by 150 words a minute, a conversational pace. Treat every time as a starting point and check it with your own run.

Joan, “You promised me my life; but you lied” (Saint Joan, Scene 6)

At her trial, Joan has just signed a recantation to escape the fire. Then she learns what it buys her: prison for life, on bread and water. She tears it up and tells her judges why. It opens Yes: they told me you were fools, and its second sentence is the accusation: You promised me my life; but you lied. From there it builds through two long lists of what she’d lose, ending with a verdict on the court itself.

What she wants: to make the judges understand that they’ve offered her something worse than death. Our page for “You promised me my life” says the whole speech runs a little under two minutes at a conversational pace and marks cut points near 60 and 90 seconds. The danger is shouting it from the first line. Let the lists climb.

Joan, “I am alone on earth” (Saint Joan, Scene 5)

After the coronation at Rheims, the Archbishop, the new king, and Dunois all warn Joan that if she fights on and is captured, no one will save her. Dunois tells her to heed it. She answers: Yes: I am alone on earth: I have always been alone. By the end she has turned the threat into a vow: In His strength I will dare, and dare, and dare, until I die.

What she wants: to show them their warning can’t frighten her. At about 300 words it runs close to two minutes. The turn comes when she compares her loneliness to God’s and finds strength in it, so play the first half as hurt and the second as discovery.

Barbara, “I was happy in the Salvation Army for a moment” (Major Barbara, Act 3, Scene 2)

Barbara has left the Salvation Army after it took money from her father, an arms manufacturer, and from a whisky distiller, Bodger. Now, at her father’s works, she tells Cusins why walking away isn’t possible: I was happy in the Salvation Army for a moment. She ends on the hard truth she’s found: Turning our backs on Bodger and Undershaft is turning our backs on life.

What she wants: to face the truth out loud, with the one person she trusts. At about 150 words it runs a minute, which makes it useful for a short slot. A few lines later she has a longer, fiercer speech, starting I should have given you up and married the man who accepted it. It runs about a minute and a half and builds to triumph: I have got rid of the bribe of bread. I have got rid of the bribe of heaven.

Lady Britomart, “I really cannot bear an immoral man” (Major Barbara, Act 1)

Lady Britomart tells her grown son Stephen why she separated from his father. It wasn’t that Andrew did wrong things, she explains, but that he said them and thought them. She is entirely serious, and the speech is very funny because of it: nothing can bridge over moral disagreement.

What she wants: to set her son straight, once and for all. It runs a little over a minute. This is a gift for an actor who can play certainty, and for anyone who needs a comic piece that still has a real want under it.

Candida, “this other boy here—my boy” (Candida, Act 3)

Her husband, the Reverend James Morell, and the young poet Eugene Marchbanks have each asked Candida to choose between them. She says she gives herself to the weaker of the two, and then explains to Eugene which one that is. She asks him to look at this other boy here—my boy—spoiled from his cradle. She describes the life she runs around her husband: I build a castle of comfort and indulgence and love for him.

What she wants: to make both men see what she does, gently and without mercy. At about 320 words it runs just over two minutes, so you may need to trim a few of the “Ask” sentences in the middle. The speech breaks off as she stops herself, which makes a clean ending.

Mrs. Warren, “Liz didn’t, I can tell you” (Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Act 2)

In the cottage where Vivie is staying, she challenges her mother about her past, and Kitty Warren tells her the story of herself and her sister Liz. It begins Liz didn’t, I can tell you: she had more spirit. and runs through the jobs open to a poor girl, including the bar at Waterloo station: fourteen hours a day serving drinks and washing glasses.

What she wants: to make her educated daughter understand, and maybe to be forgiven. It runs about a minute and a half, and it’s one of a run of long speeches in the scene, so you can choose the stretch that suits you. Mrs. Warren is a rich comic and dramatic part at once. Don’t apologize for her.

Vivie, “Mother: you don’t at all know the sort of person I am” (Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Act 4)

By Act 4, Vivie has learned the rest of the truth and taken work in London. Her mother comes to persuade her to accept her money and the life it buys. Vivie refuses, coolly: Mother: you don’t at all know the sort of person I am. At the center of it is one plain sentence: But I don’t want to be worthless.

What she wants: to end the argument without cruelty. It runs about a minute and a half. Vivie is clear-eyed and dry, and the challenge is to keep the feeling under the logic. Paired with Mrs. Warren’s speech, these two make a strong contrast if you’re preparing two pieces.

Liza, “Wring away. What do I care?” (Pygmalion, Act 5)

At his mother’s house, Liza tells Higgins she’ll teach phonetics as an assistant to his rival, Professor Nepean. He threatens to wring her neck. She laughs at him: Wring away. What do I care? She has just found the one thing he can’t take back: You can’t take away the knowledge you gave me.

What she wants: to beat him, and she does. It runs about a minute. Earlier in the same act there’s a quieter, shorter option, under 45 seconds, where she tells Pickering she can’t go back to her old life: I am a child in your country. One is victory; the other is loss. Pick the one that shows what the panel hasn’t seen.

Hypatia, “Girls withering into ladies” (Misalliance)

Hypatia Tarleton is rich, bored, and engaged to Lord Summerhays’s son, Bentley. Talking to Lord Summerhays, she describes what waits for a nice young woman stuck at home: Girls withering into ladies. Ladies withering into old maids. Then it boils over: Oh, home! home! parents! family! duty! how I loathe them!

What she wants: to make him see why she’d rather be wicked than good and dull. At about 45 seconds, it’s ideal for a one-minute call. For a longer piece, an earlier speech to the same man, beginning Oh, lots., runs about two minutes and tells the comic story of how she tried to charm him for his son’s sake.

Lady Utterword, “Oh, this house, this house!” (Heartbreak House, Act 1)

Ariadne Utterword comes home to her father’s house after twenty-three years away. Her sister isn’t there, her father has wandered off, and the old nurse still calls her “miss.” She complains to Ellie, a young visitor: Oh, this house, this house! She tells her own history in one line, I married at nineteen to escape from it., and works herself into wounded dignity.

What she wants: to be received as the important woman she has become. It runs a little under two minutes. It’s comedy built on real hurt, and it suits an actor around forty who can be grand and a little ridiculous at once.

Play the argument, not the mood

Shaw’s women think on their feet. Acting coach Nick Field puts it simply in his guide to Shaw’s intellectual characters in auditions: Think of the monologue as a debate. Map how she builds her case, notice where she uses humor as a shield or a weapon, and look for the personal stakes underneath the logic.

To that, we’d add three habits of our own. First, know who she’s trying to convince, and put that person in one clear place, just off the panel or the lens. Second, treat Shaw’s colons and semicolons as the joints of the argument; each new clause is a new point, not a breath. Third, find the turn, the line where the argument changes direction. Joan finds strength in loneliness; Barbara finds a new mission; Liza finds she’s free.

Pace matters too. Shaw’s dialogue is dense, so give the panel time to take in each idea, but keep the energy up; the character needs the next point now. Juilliard’s FAQ also asks you to read the whole play, so you know her circumstances and who she’s talking to and why. With Shaw, that includes the stage directions, which often tell you exactly what she’s thinking.

Cut by thought, and time it out loud

Juilliard and RADA both ask for about two minutes (RADA: no longer than two); Juilliard says slightly under or a few seconds over is fine. Several speeches here run close to that. To cut, start on a full sentence and end on one, and keep the turn and the last line. In Candida’s speech, some of the repeated “Ask” sentences can go; in Joan’s Scene 5 speech, the father and the sheep can go if you’re pressed.

Our guide on how to cut a monologue walks through it step by step, and our free monologue timer checks the length at different paces (the times above use 150 words a minute). If you need a second, contrasting piece, our list of monologues for women covers other periods and tones, and our guide to Oscar Wilde monologues covers Shaw’s great contemporary.

Learn it inside the scene

Every one of these speeches answers someone. Joan answers Dunois, Liza answers Higgins’s threat, Vivie answers her mother’s plea. So learn the cue as carefully as the speech. Read the scene aloud a few times with the other parts in, then say the speech in your own words, one point at a time, before you work on the exact text.

In Offbook, you can upload the scene from the edition you’ve chosen, pick your role, and let realistic voices read every other character and wait while you say your lines. When you’re ready, hide your own lines while the others stay on screen, or swap your words for first-letter cues, so you’re recalling the argument instead of reading it.

Our free first-letter memorizer does the cue step with any speech you paste in, and our guide on how to memorize a monologue has the full method. Then run it standing, at full voice, until the argument feels like yours.

Questions actors ask

Is Saint Joan too famous for an audition?

Not if you make it yours. Juilliard’s FAQ says it gives no list of monologues to avoid and asks you to choose pieces you feel a connection with, whether commonly known or less so. If you choose the trial speech, know exactly why Joan tears up the paper. If you’d rather surprise the panel, try the Scene 5 speech.

Should I use an English accent for Shaw?

Usually your own voice is fine. Juilliard says you’re welcome, but not required, to use an accent if you feel a piece warrants one. By Act 5, Liza no longer speaks in the cockney written into her early lines, so you don’t need to play a dialect; your own voice is fine.

Which of these suits a teenager?

Joan is a teenager in the play; asked her age in Scene 1, she isn’t sure herself. Liza, Hypatia, and Vivie are young women too. Check what the notice asks for, and choose the character whose want you understand best.

Can I rehearse a Shaw speech on my phone?

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