Monologue

Bosola Monologue from The Duchess of Malfi

From The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster

male · philosophical · 1:20 min

Yes. (DUCHESS: Who am I?) Thou art a box of worm-seed, at best but a salvatory (115) of green mummy. (116) What 's this flesh? a little crudded (117) milk, fantastical puff-paste. Our bodies are weaker than those paper- prisons boys use to keep flies in; more contemptible, since ours is to preserve earth-worms. Didst thou ever see a lark in a cage? Such is the soul in the body: this world is like her little turf of grass, and the heaven o'er our heads like her looking-glass, only gives us a miserable knowledge of the small compass of our prison. (DUCHESS: Am not I thy duchess?) Thou art some great woman, sure, for riot begins to sit on thy forehead (clad in gray hairs) twenty years sooner than on a merry milk-maid's. Thou sleepest worse than if a mouse should be forced to take up her lodging in a cat's ear: a little infant that breeds its teeth, should it lie with thee, would cry out, as if thou wert the more unquiet bedfellow.

Rehearse Bosola's monologue

Run it out loud with a spotlight that follows your voice, line by line, until it's off the page. Free to start, no credit card.