The Queen Mab Speech, Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet Hamlet's Soliloquoy (Hamlet is my favourite Shakespearean play) Paulina's summation from The Winter's Tale The Agincourt speech from Henry V Richard III's opening monologue
Personally, my favorite to perform was Kate's "No shame but mine" wedding speech from Taming of the Shrew. Just in general, Shakespeare's comedies are pretty much the most fun an actress can have [without taking her clothes off].
7 Ages of Man (As You Like It) Juliet's soliloquoy (Romeo and Juliet) Lady Macbeth's letter speech (Macbeth) "Friends, Romans, countrymen..." (Julius Caesar) Edgar's "Poor Tom" monologue (King Lear)
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
Iachimo's monologue as he stalks into Imogen's room in CYMBELINE....most of the speeches in ROMEO & JULIET...and of course the bottomless HAMLET.
"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
~ Muhammad Ali
My favorite is Hamlet's first soliloquy, "O, that this too, too sullied flesh..." I also like th Crispian Day speech from Henry V. And Prospero's at the end of The Tempest. And of course Shylock's if you...
Wow, I can't pick. English majors...
Megan Mullally as Karen Walker on Will and Grace: "Tell me more. Tell me more. Like does he have a car?"
1. Much ado about nothing: benedic find our Beatrice "loves" him 2. Hamlet: Ophelia gone mad (not a monologue, but I did take out everyone else's lines and just did her when she was mad for a competition once and it was great!) 3. Macbeth: "out damn spot!" Lady Macbeth 4.King Lear: "blow winds" king Lear
Anything from Cymbeline.. Just completely amzing thoughts and prose. It's rarely used by other people, at least from what I am always told maybe that's why I enjoy it
I'm not gonna hate you in the magazines,
(I'm better than that)
I'm not gonna compromise my Christianity,
(I'm better than that)
You know I'm not gonna diss you on the Internet
Cause my momma taught me better than that.
Jaques' "All the world's a stage" piece in As You Like It Julia's letter piece in Two Gentlemen of Verona Cressida's "Hard to seem won" piece in Troilus & Cressida Prospero at the end of Tempest Puck's final monologue in A Midsummer Night's Dream The Jailer's Daughter ("Why should I love this gentleman?") in Two Noble Kinsmen
I can't talk now. I gotta go get my wallet out of the toaster.