Male Dramatic Monologues

Eurydice! 

Before I go down there, I won't practice my music. Some say practice. But practice is a word invented by cowards. The animals don't have a word for practice. A gazelle does not run for practice. He runs because he is scared or he is hungry. A bird doesn't sing for practice. She sings because she's happy or sad. So I say: store it up. The music sounds better in my head than it does in the world. When songs are pressing against my throat, then, only then, I will go down and sing for the devils and they will cry through their parched throats. Eurydice, don't kiss a dead man. Their lips look red and tempting but put your tongue in their mouths and it tastes like oatmeal. I know how much you hate oatmeal. I'm going the way of death. Here is my plan: Tonight, when I go to bed, I will turn off the light and put a straw in my mouth. When I fall asleep, I will crawl through the straw and my breath will push me like a great wind into the darkness and I will sing your name and I will arrive. I have consulted the almanacs, the footstool and the architects, and everyone agrees: I found the right note. Wait for me.

Love,
Orpheus

Hello, John. Apologies for the deception, but I wanted to make sure you started reading, so I thought it best not to announce myself. I hope you’ll forgive me the self-indulgence, but I have worked so very hard for this moment, a culmination of two centuries of work. Why does a man seek to destroy the world? It’s a simple enough answer: for immortality and power. Uninspired, perhaps, but – my god. The discovery, not simply of the dark and horrible reality of the world in which you live, but that you would quite willingly doom that world and confine the billions in it to an eternity of terror and suffering, all to ensure your own happiness, to place yourself beyond pain and death and fear. It is an awful thing to know about yourself, but the freedom, John, the freedom of it all. I have dedicated my life to handing the world to these Dread Powers all for my own gain, and I feel… nothing but satisfaction in that choice. I am to be the king of a ruined world, and I shall never die. I believe there are far more people in this world that would take that bargain than you would ever guess. And I have beaten all of them. Don’t worry, John. You’ll get used to it here, in the world that we have made. Look at the sky. It’s looking back.

Well, I’m just tired by all this hysteria about Howard Beale. And I’m tired of finding you on the phone every time I turn around. I’m tired of being an accessory in your life. After six months of living with you, I’m turning into one of your scripts. But this isn’t a script, Diana. There’s some real actual life going on here. I went to visit my wife today. She’s so depressed my daughter flew in from Seattle to be with her. Yes, I feel lousy about that. I feel lousy about the pain I’ve caused my wife and kids. I feel guilty and conscience-stricken and all those things you think sentimental but which my generation called simple human decency. And I miss my home because I’m beginning to get scared. It’s all suddenly closer to the end than to the beginning, and death is suddenly a perceptible thing to me. You’ve got a man going through primal doubts, Diana, and you’ve got to cope with it. I’m the man you presumably love. I’m part of your life. I live here. I’m real. You can’t switch to another station. I just want you to love me. I just want you to love me, primal doubts and all. We’re born in terror and we live in terror. Life can be endured only as an act of faith and the only act of faith any of us are capable of is love. You understand that, don’t you? You are a wasteland, Diana.

In the elevator I think of sleepaway camp. How Michael bribed Jim Shanahan with M&Ms to switch bunks so we could whisper in the night. I remember being teenagers, when our families rented houses in Hyannis and we’d walk down the beach, hop the fence, and swim for hours together up and down the shore. I think of our first summer back from college, when we reunited for a joint on the Kennedy breakwater, and Mike told me he was gay. The sun is fighting off the January clouds as it sinks behind the park. I run from 53rd and Fifth to East Drive, past the Zoo, the Dairy. A pay phone! I jam in a quarter, dial Mike—his machine picks up—I try again—same thing—slam the phone down and keep running. I’m running. Past the skaters, past the Carousel, the statue of Shakespeare. The Sheep’s Meadow is empty. I hop the fence and run to the middle of the field. Rain begins falling and I spin myself in circles and stagger around like a wino. The TICK-BOOM, TICK-BOOM is so loud I can’t hear the rain on the grass. I can’t hear the wind. I’m about to scream when I realize I’m not alone. Watching me from the hill in front of me are hundreds of seagulls. I sprint right into them, waving my arms like a castaway on a desert island spotting a rescue plane. They fly up into the air en masse, only to land across the meadow, on another hill. I talk to them. MY FRIEND IS DYING. I’M LOST. I’M AFRAID. I run past the fountain, the waterfall, up through the woods, to the top of the Belvedere Castle. I look down into the empty Delacorte Theatre. I see an old rehearsal piano, sitting out under a tarp, below the trees. I climb down, hop another fence, and pull off the tarp. 

You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about why we shouldn’t get married. At first, I couldn’t think of any reasons. But then it dawned on me. The one dark secret that will absolutely be the wedge that keeps us apart. Your parents. Dear old Mom and Dad. You see, here’s the problem. They love me. I am exactly the type of man your parents want you to marry. From the south, have a good job… And an absolutely wonderful dancer, if I do say so myself. If you marry me, your parents will be ecstatic, and you will have lost a lifelong battle of defiance against them. See what I’m saying? I think you have to marry me. Because if you do, your parents will always know the unhappiness you feel for not being able to disappoint them. Imagine the guilt they would feel for not allowing you to choose your husband unwisely. They’d be racked with guilt. They’d be miserable. So even though you’ve technically lost, you’ve really won.

(tick… tick… tick…)

The sound you are hearing is not a technical problem. It is not a musical cue. It is not a joke. It is the sound of one man’s mounting anxiety… In one week I’ll be thirty. Three-zero. Older than my dad was when I was born. Older than Napoleon was when he… did something that was probably extremely impressive at the time—I’m not a historian. I’m a composer. Sorry, a “promising young composer.” I should have kids of my own by now, a career, but instead I’ve been “promising” for so long I’m afraid I’m starting to break the promise. And I want to get some writing done, but I keep hearing those tick-ticks. And sometimes, after a couple of them, I’ll hear something else—a distant BOOM, like a bomb has gone off not too far away and the next one might be closer and I’d better look out. Tick… tick… BOOM!

You see, it's a great many years since I've been able to allow myself to fall in love. I know lots of charming women; but the worst of it is, they're all married. Women don't become charming, to my taste, until they're fully developed; and by that time, if they're really nice, they're snapped up and married. And then, because I am a good man, I have to place a limit to my regard for them. I may be fortunate enough to gain friendship and even very warm affection from them; but my loyalty to their husbands and their hearths and their happiness obliges me to draw a line and not overstep it. Of course I value such affectionate regard very highly indeed. I am surrounded with women who are most dear to me. But every one of them has a post sticking up, if I may put it that way, with the inscription Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. How we all loathe that notice! In every lovely garden, in every dell full of primroses, on every fair hillside, we meet that confounded board; and there is always a gamekeeper round the corner. But what is that to the horror of meeting it on every beautiful woman, and knowing that there is a husband round the corner? I have had this accursed board standing between me and every dear and desirable woman until I thought I had lost the power of letting myself fall really and wholeheartedly in love.