Monologue

Leontes Monologue from The Winter's Tale

From The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare

male · anguished · 2:12 min

To your own bents dispose you: you’ll be found, Be you beneath the sky. I am angling now, Though you perceive me not how I give line. Go to, go to! How she holds up the neb, the bill to him! And arms her with the boldness of a wife To her allowing husband! Gone already! Inch-thick, knee-deep, o’er head and ears a fork’d one!— Go, play, boy, play. Thy mother plays, and I Play too; but so disgrac’d a part, whose issue Will hiss me to my grave: contempt and clamour Will be my knell. Go, play, boy, play. There have been, Or I am much deceiv’d, cuckolds ere now; And many a man there is, even at this present, Now while I speak this, holds his wife by th’ arm, That little thinks she has been sluic’d in ’s absence, And his pond fish’d by his next neighbour, by Sir Smile, his neighbour. Nay, there’s comfort in ’t, Whiles other men have gates, and those gates open’d, As mine, against their will. Should all despair That hath revolted wives, the tenth of mankind Would hang themselves. Physic for’t there’s none; It is a bawdy planet, that will strike Where ’tis predominant; and ’tis powerful, think it, From east, west, north, and south. Be it concluded, No barricado for a belly. Know’t; It will let in and out the enemy With bag and baggage. Many thousand of us Have the disease, and feel’t not.—How now, boy!

Rehearse Leontes'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.