Love’s Labour’s Lost
Monologues
Looking for Shakespeare 2009
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Love’s Labour’s Lost
By William Shakespeare
Audition Monologues
(Pick one to memorize for your audition…you can pick whichever one you like)
Act V, Scene 2
Rosaline
Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit,
Whose influence is begot of that loose grace
Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools.
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear
Of him that hears it, never in the tongue
Of him that makes it. Then, if sickly ears,
Deafed with the clamours of their own dear groans,
Will hear your idle scorns, continue then,
And I will have you and that fault withal;
But, if they will not, throw away that spirit,
And I shall find you empty of that fault,
Right joyful of your reformation.
Act II, Scene 1
Princess
Good Lord Boyet, my beauty, though but mean,
Needs not the painted flourish of your praise.
Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,
Not uttered by base sale of chapmen's tongues.
I am less proud to hear you tell my worth
Than you much willing to be counted wise
In spending your wit in the praise of mine.
But now to task the tasker. Good Boyet,
You are not ignorant all-telling fame
Doth noise abroad Navarre hath made a vow,
Till painful study shall outwear three years,
No woman may approach his silent court.
Therefore to's seemeth it a needful course,
Before we enter his forbidden gates,
To know his pleasure; and in that behalf,
Bold of your worthiness, we single you
As our best-moving fair solicitor.
Tell him the daughter of the King of France,
On serious business, craving quick dispatch,
Importunes personal conference with his grace.
Haste, signify so much, while we attend,
Like humble-visaged suitors, his high will.
Act V, Scene 2
Princess
A time, methinks, too short
To make a world-without-end bargain in.
No, no, my lord, your grace is perjured much,
Full of dear guiltiness; and therefore this:
If for my love -- as there is no such cause --
You will do aught, this shall you do for me:
Your oath I will not trust, but go with speed
To some forlorn and naked hermitage,
Remote from all the pleasures of the world,
There stay until the twelve celestial signs
Have brought about the annual reckoning.
If this austere insociable life
Change not your offer made in heat of blood;
If frosts and fasts, hard lodging and thin weeds,
Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love,
But that it bear this trial and last love;
Then, at the expiration of the year,
Come challenge me, challenge me by these deserts,
And, by this virgin palm now kissing thine,
I will be thine. And, till that instance, shut
My woeful self up in a mourning house,
Raining the tears of lamentation
For the remembrance of my father's death.
If this thou do deny, let our hands part,
Neither entitled in the other's heart.
Act III, Scene 1
Moth
No, my complete master: but to jig off a tune at
the tongue's end, canary to it with your feet, humour it
with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and sing a
note, sometime through the throat as if you swallowed
love with singing love, sometime through the nose as if
you snuffed up love by smelling love, with your hat
penthouse-like o'er the shop of your eyes, with your
arms crossed on your thin-belly doublet like a rabbit on
a spit, or your hands in your pocket like a man after the
old painting; and keep not too long in one tune, but a
snip and away. These are compliments, these are
humours, these betray nice wenches that would be
betrayed without these; and make them men of note—
do you note me?--that most are affected to these.
Act I, Scene 2
Armado
I do affect the very ground, which is base,
where her shoe, which is baser, guided by her foot,
which is basest, doth tread. I shall be forsworn, which
is a great argument of falsehood, if I love. And how can
that be true love which is falsely attempted? Love is a
familiar; Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but
Love. Yet was Samson so tempted, and he had an
excellent strength. Yet was Solomon so seduced, and he
had a very good wit. Cupid's butt-shaft is too hard for
Hercules' club, and therefore too much odds for a
Spaniard's rapier. The first and second cause will not
serve my turn. The passado he respects not; the duello
he regards not. His disgrace is to be called boy, but his
glory is to subdue men. Adieu, valour; rust, rapier; be
still, drum for your manager is in love. Yea, he loveth.
Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure
I shall turn sonnet. Devise, wit; write, pen; for I
am for whole volumes in folio.
Act IV, Scene 3
Berowne
The King, he is hunting the deer; I am
Coursing myself. They have pitched a toil; I am toiling
In a pitch, a pitch that defiles. Defile, a foul word. Well,
set thee down, sorrow, for so they say the fool said, and
so say I, and I the fool. Well proved, wit! By the Lord,
this love is as mad asAjax. It kills sheep, it kills me -- I
a sheep. Well proved again, o' my side! I will not love; if
I do, hang me! I' faith, I will not. O, but her eye! By this
light, but for her eye, I would not love her -- yes, for her
two eyes. Well, I do nothing in the world but lie, and lie
in my throat. By heaven, I do love, and it hath taught
me to rhyme, and to be melancholy. And here is part of
my rhyme, and here my melancholy. Well, she hath one
o'my sonnets already. The clown bore it, the fool sent
it, and the lady hath it. Sweet clown, sweeter fool,
sweetest lady! By the world, I would not care a pin if
the other three were in. Here comes one with a paper.
God give him grace to groan!
Act IV, Scene 3
Dumaine
On a day--alack the day!--
Love, whose month is ever May,
Spied a blossom passing fair
Playing in the wanton air.
Through the velvet leaves the wind,
All unseen, can passage find;
That the lover, sick to death,
Wish himself the heaven's breath.
“Air,” quoth he, “thy cheeks may blow;
Air, would I might triumph so!
But, alack, my hand is sworn
Ne'er to pluck thee from thy thorn.
Vow, alack, for youth unmeet,
Youth so apt to pluck a sweet.
Do not call it sin in me,
That I am forsworn for thee;
Thou for whom Jove would swear
Juno but an Ethiop were,
And deny himself for Jove,
Turning mortal for thy love.”
This will I send, and something else more plain,
That shall express my true love's fasting pain.
O, would the king, Berowne and Longaville,
Were lovers too! Ill, to example ill,
Would from my forehead wipe a perjured note,
For none offend where all alike do dote.
Act IV, Scene 3
Berowne
Now step I forth to whip hypocrisy.
Ah, good my liege, I pray thee, pardon me.
Good heart, what grace hast thou thus to reprove
These worms for loving, that art most in love?
Your eyes do make no coaches; in your tears
There is no certain princess that appears;
You'll not be perjured, 'tis a hateful thing;
Tush, none but minstrels like of sonneting!
But are you not ashamed? Nay, are you not,
All three of you, to be thus much o'ershot?
You found his mote; the King your mote did see;
But I a beam do find in each of three.
O, what a scene of foolery have I seen,
Of sighs, of groans, of sorrow and of teen!
O me, with what strict patience have I sat,
To see a king transformed to a gnat!
To see great Hercules whipping a gig,
And profound Solomon to tune a jig,
And Nestor play at push-pin with the boys,
And critic Timon laugh at idle toys.
Where lies thy grief? O, tell me, good Dumaine.
And gentle Longaville, where lies thy pain?
And where my liege's? All about the breast?
A caudle, ho!