Shakespeare Monologues

The Comedy Of Errors - Adriana
Adriana works with my playing age because she is young, early 20's.
I don't really relate to the character much, but I find the piece interesting because Adriana is a fun character to play and expresses many emotions
The emotional journey starts with confused and saddness then to pleading and anger and finishes with outrag and she is unforgiving. Therefore this monologue would show a huge emotional range.

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Helena
Act 1, Scene 1
Helena works with my playing age because she is young, being between the ages of 18-22.
I can relate to this piece because of the themes in the text; I have be hurt be someone I loved.
The emotional journey shows frustration and anger then changes to longing and sad then scheming.
But I do not think that it would move my acting skills so I don't think I will choose this one.

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Helena
Act 3, Scene 2
Helena works with my playing age because she is young, being between the ages of 18-22.
I was interested in this piece because of the emotional journey it seems fine to play.
Her emotional journey shows anger and frustration, and a new bitchy side to Helena.
This piece can move my acting skills in terms of showing tension physically and vocally, and use of breath to express her feelings.
But I don't think I will choose this one because it won't challenge me and show my acting skills fully.

The Comedy Of Errors (Adriana) by Shakespeare

Glass Eels by Nell Leyshon

About Lily

• Lily, a girl of about 16, lost her mum as a child and mourns her still, even keeping one of her dresses hidden beneath her mattress.
• Her father finds it impossible to talk to his daughter about anything, least of all the night his wife drowned in the river, when Lily chanced upon her corpse before anyone had told her she had died.
• Lily is furious that her father is seeing another woman. Her dad is equally angry that his daughter is slipping out of the house at night to go to the river where his wife drowned
• He discovers that she is also seeing a man twice her age.
• Forced to act as skivvy to her food-obsessed grandfather.
• The cornered eels clubbed by male mallets and a fly trapped inside a glass-pane insistently echo Lily's own plight.
• Lily also has a gawky, jug-eared charm and expresses sexual frustration through the restless contortion of her long limbs.
• Is gagging for sex and getting wetter with each passing scene.
• Not even allowed to talk about the mother who died when she was a child

Glass Eels

• Written by  Nell Leyshon
• It was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on July 2003
• The play has also been performed on stage at the Hampstead Theatre in 2007
• It is the second part of a planned quartet of Somerset plays covering the four seasons the first being the award winning Comfort Me with Apples. 
• The play is set on the Somerset Levels one August, probably on the River Parrett.
• While it explores a young girl's sexual awakening, and her acceptance of past loss, it also concerns eel fishing and a dying rural way of life.

Synopsis

Late August down on the Somerset levels: deep in the water and the silt, something is moving, unfurling...
Suffused with the austere poetry of the West Country, Glass Eels tells the story of a girl's sexual awakening as she struggles to free herself from the shadows of her childhood and the stifling atmosphere of an all-male household.

What are Glass Eels?

• Glass Eels are a very young eel.
• They are the type of eel that comes after the new born larvae.
• Glass eels are see through like glass.
• Glass eels have black beady eyes like pepper corns.

The Writer

• Born in Glastonbury
• Lives in Dorset
• Attended the University of Southampton gaining a first in English Literature
• Leyshon writes regularly for Radio 4 and 3.

 The Characters

Lily - a young girl struggling living in an all male household, going through a sexual awakening
Mervyn - Lily's Father, widdowed, and undertaker
Harold - Lily's Grandfather, arthritic, retiered undertaker
Kenneth - a Family Friend, quiet, builds empathy for Lily
Julie - Mervyn girlfriend

Reviews

The Telegraph Review
British Theatre Guide Review
The Guardian Review
Whats On Stage
The Stage Review
Camden New Journal
Indie London Review

 "Her plays are full of deep, shifting emotions - grief, frustration, fear, desire - and mix the naturalistic with a sense of history and mystery."

 "Lily, a girl of about 16, lost her mum as a child and mourns her still, even keeping one of her dresses hidden beneath her mattress."

Bibliography

Wikipedia

The Comedy Of Errors

The Comedy Of Errors

• The shortest and most farcical of Shakespears comedy's
• Involves slapstick and mistaken identity
• It has been adapted for opera, stage, screen and musical theatre
• It is generally assumed to be one of Shakespeare's early plays, (perhaps even his very first)
• Emphasises on slapstick over verbal humor (in contrast with later comedies) has led many critics to term it an "apprentice comedy."
• Shakespeare drew on classical sources for the plot of The Comedy of Errors. The bare bones of the story are drawn from the Roman comedy Menaechmi, written by the ancient dramatist Plautus (c.254- 184 B.C.)
• The English playwright made a number of changes to the original story, including the addition of a second set of identical twins (the Dromios), the expansion of Adriana's character and the creation of her sister, Luciana, and, finally, the creation of the back-story involving Egeon and Emilia.
• The play also draws on a number of other sources-- the lock-out scene, where Antipholus of Ephesus is locked out of his home for dinner, resembles a scene in another Plautine work, Amphitruo, in which a master is kept out of his own house while the God Jupiter impersonates him.

 

The Characters

Antipholus of Syracuse  -  The twin brother of Antipholus of Ephesus and the son of Egeon; he has been traveling the world with his slave, Dromio of Syracuse, trying to find his long-lost brother and mother.

Antipholus of Ephesus  -  The twin brother of Antipholus of Syracuse and the son of Egeon; he is a well-respected merchant in Ephesus and Adriana's husband.

Dromio of Syracuse  -  The bumbling, comical slave of Antipholus of Syracuse. He is the twin brother of Dromio of Ephesus.

Dromio of Ephesus  -  The bumbling, comical slave of Antipholus of Ephesus. He is the Syracusan Dromio's twin brother.

Adriana -  The wife of Antipholus of Ephesus, she is a fierce, jealous woman.

Luciana -  Adriana's unmarried sister and the object of Antipholus of Syracuse's affections.

Solinus -  The Duke of Ephesus; a just but merciful ruler.

Egeon -  A Syracusan merchant, husband of the Abbess (Emilia), and the father of the two Antipholi. He is, like his Syracusan son, in search of the missing half of his family; he has been sentenced to death as the play begins.

Abbess  -  Emilia, the long-lost wife of Egeon and the mother of the two Antipholi.

Balthasar -  A merchant in Syracuse.

Angelo -  A goldsmith in Syracuse and a friend to Antipholus of Ephesus.

Merchant  -  An Ephesian friend of Antipholus of Syracuse.

Second Merchant  -  A tradesman to whom Angelo is in debt.

Doctor Pinch  -  A schoolteacher, conjurer, and would-be exorcist.

Luce  -  Also called Nell. Antipholus of Ephesus' prodigiously fat maid and Dromio of Ephesus' wife.

Courtesan -  An expensive prostitute and friend of Antipholus of Ephesus.

 

Synopsis

Egeon, a merchant of Syracuse, is condemned to death in Ephesus for violating the ban against travel between the two rival cities. As he is led to his execution, he tells the Ephesian Duke, Solinus, that he has come to Syracuse in search of his wife and one of his twin sons, who were separated from him 25 years ago in a shipwreck. The other twin, who grew up with Egeon, is also traveling the world in search of the missing half of their family. (The twins, we learn, are identical, and each has an identical twin slave named Dromio.) The Duke is so moved by this story that he grants Egeon a day to raise the thousand-mark ransom that would be necessary to save his life.
Meanwhile, unknown to Egeon, his son Antipholus of Syracuse (and Antipholus' slave Dromio) is also visiting Ephesus--where Antipholus' missing twin, known as Antipholus of Ephesus, is a prosperous citizen of the city. Adriana, Antipholus of Ephesus' wife, mistakes Antipholus of Syracuse for her husband and drags him home for dinner, leaving Dromio of Syracuse to stand guard at the door and admit no one. Shortly thereafter, Antipholus of Ephesus (with his slave Dromio of Ephesus) returns home and is refused entry to his own house. Meanwhile, Antipholus of Syracuse has fallen in love with Luciana, Adriana's sister, who is appalled at the behavior of the man she thinks is her brother-in-law.
The confusion increases when a gold chain ordered by the Ephesian Antipholus is given to Antipholus of Syracuse. Antipholus of Ephesus refuses to pay for the chain (unsurprisingly, since he never received it) and is arrested for debt. His wife, seeing his strange behavior, decides he has gone mad and orders him bound and held in a cellar room. Meanwhile, Antipholus of Syracuse and his slave decide to flee the city, which they believe to be enchanted, as soon as possible--only to be menaced by Adriana and the debt officer. They seek refuge in a nearby abbey.
Adriana now begs the Duke to intervene and remove her "husband" from the abbey into her custody. Her real husband, meanwhile, has broken loose and now comes to the Duke and levels charges against his wife. The situation is finally resolved by the Abbess, Emilia, who brings out the set of twins and reveals herself to be Egeon's long-lost wife. Antipholus of Ephesus reconciles with Adriana; Egeon is pardoned by the Duke and reunited with his spouse; Antipholus of Syracuse resumes his romantic pursuit of Luciana, and all ends happily with the two Dromios embracing.

 

Reviews

Nottingham Post Review, Theatre Royal
The Telegraph Review, The National Theatre
The Journal Review, Newcastle Theatre Royal
The Guardian Review, The National Theatre

 

Bibliography

 SparkNotes

About Adriana

• Adriana is E. Antipholus’s wife and Luciana’s sister. She spends much of the play worrying that her husband loves another woman.
• Adriana is most notable for her observations about a woman’s role in marriage, her lamentations over her lost love, and her obdurate loyalty in the face of what she believes to be adultery.
• As a wife, Adriana is not the stereotypical shrewish and nagging woman. In the Plautus play that Shakespeare drew on to write The Comedy of Errors, Adriana’s equivalent character is so known for her shrewishness that she doesn’t even get a name – that alone is enough to characterize her. This stereotypical wife – jealous, possessive, and naggy – was one that Shakespeare’s audience would’ve been used to, so Shakespeare’s decision to turn Adriana into a more fully fleshed out woman (with a name) is significant.
• Adriana speaks often in the play, and serves as a balance to her idealistic sister about the very real travails of love and marriage. 
• She worries that her husband has gone wandering in love from her, but she accedes that this might be her own fault.
• She embodies all the very real concerns of a faithful wife – perhaps she is no longer attractive to her husband, and while he might be at fault for his roving, she still loves him, and would do anything in her power to keep him.
• She isn’t totally rolled over, though; she says awful things about her husband, but she admits they’re only inspired by her distress over losing him.
• Adriana definitely knows more about love’s darker side than her sister, Luciana, but it doesn’t detract at all from the depth of love for her husband.
• Even when she thinks E. Antipholus is both unfaithful and insane, she says she’d like to have him come home because it’s a wife’s duty to take care of her man.
• Despite our sympathy, we recognize that Adriana is still shrewish to some extent.
• When the Abbess talks to Adriana about how she needs to reign in E. Antipholus, Adriana admits that she has taxed her husband’s ear unendingly about his faithlessness. The Abbess catches her here: any man that is so complained against is bound to be unhappy. Though Adriana seems to know a lot about love and marriage, she doesn’t actually know enough to not nag her husband.
• In general she’s a faithful and loving (even if concerned) wife, and she is one of Shakespeare’s few characters who embodies the real trials of love in marriage. Most of Shakespeare’s comedies end with marriages, but Adriana is a more realistic portrayal of what actually happens after the marriage takes place. Adriana, even in this farcical play, can be seen as Shakespeare’s nod to a difficult reality.
• A fierce, outspoken and 'shrewish' woman who is possessive and jealous of her husband
• Adriana kicks against the restrictions on women's freedom brought by marriage and does not see why double standards should apply to men and women.
• She becomes furiously jealous of her husband's friendship with the Courtesan and believes that he is having an affair with her. 
• She fears that she has lost her attractiveness to her husband and that this explains his frequent absences from home.

Bibliography

shmoop
Novelguide

Pictures of Adraiana: