The first page of results disagrees with itself
We read every page ranking for this search and counted what each one recommends. Then we read the overdone lists ranking alongside them, and the overlap between the two is not small.
One site carries both. Its list of monologues for men recommends Biff, Konstantin and Tom Wingfield, and its own page of overdone contemporary male monologues names all three. The two pages are eleven months apart and neither acknowledges the other.
The recommending pages and the overdone pages are written for different searches, so they never meet. A reader who searches for a speech gets one set, and a reader who searches for what to avoid gets the other.
Nobody arrives at both, which is how a piece can be simultaneously the most recommended dramatic male monologue on the internet and on a published list of pieces to stop bringing.
So do the second search before you learn the piece, not after. It costs ten minutes and it is the highest-value ten minutes in this whole process.
One more thing about that repetition. A good deal of it is a single source copied. One page’s ten recommendations are another page’s first ten, in the same order. Two teen lists are the same six pieces. So the apparent consensus is thinner than the page count suggests.
One list is fifty-seven per cent screen, and six of them are Disney villains
We counted the source medium of every recommendation on every page. The results split the field in half, and not in the way we expected.
Why the medium decides things. RADA, Guildhall, NYU Tisch and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland all require a published play and say so in writing. An actor who takes a Disney villain to any of the four has nothing eligible to perform, and no page in this set mentions it.
We had a theory about shouting, and half of it was wrong
Our working assumption was that dramatic monologues for men are overwhelmingly a man losing control. We tested it by reading and classifying every piece on the largest list.
The result did not support us. Of the thirty-four speeches on that list, only nine are built on rage, breakdown, threat or heavy profanity. That is about a quarter, not a majority. The other twenty-five are argument, seduction, confession, storytelling, grief and, in two cases, joy.
Where the theory did hold was on screen. Of the twenty-one film and television pieces on the biggest list, about fifteen are built on rage, menace or a man coming apart. Roughly three quarters, and its sixteen stage picks are nothing like that.
Shouting is not a dramatic-monologue problem. It is a screen-material problem. The pieces most associated with volume are film speeches, and the film speeches are the ones the schools will not accept anyway.
That matters because two separate objections turn out to point at the same handful of pieces, and no existing page connects them. They are cliché, and they are volume instead of stakes, and they are inadmissible on medium. Three strikes on the same speech.
Two pages in the entire set say anything about this at all, one line each, and one of them says avoid anger only. The other says, in three words, do not play strong. Nobody develops it any further than that.
For almost every famous dramatic speech, the famous one and the loud one are the same one, and there is a quieter speech by the same character that nobody performs. Once you see it you cannot stop seeing it.
Lopakhin is auditioned with the drunk triumph in the third act, never the memory of being hit in the face in the first. Faustus is auditioned with the terror at the end, never the reasoning at the beginning. Coriolanus is auditioned with the banishment, never the cold speech outside his enemy’s door.
The same holds for the third one. Sir Robert Chiltern is always the curtain speech, never the confession forty lines earlier, which is the better piece of acting and half the length.
In every pair, the quiet one is the harder audition and the one the room has not heard. That single observation produced most of the list below.
Thirty-two dramatic speeches, free, legal and quiet
Every entry is public domain. Every verse or prose call was read off marked-up lineation rather than guessed, and every line count was computed rather than copied.
Timings assume about three seconds a verse line and a hundred and forty words a minute for prose. They are estimates and they are text only, so add something for breath and time your own cut.
The plays are not where you think they are
Three assumptions cost us most of a day, and all three are worth passing on so they do not cost you one.
Ibsen barely writes a male monologue
AssumedThat the great social dramatist of the nineteenth century would be full of long male speeches, and all of it free.
What we foundThe longest male speech in Ghosts runs a hundred and thirty-four words. Rosmersholm has nothing male over a hundred and thirty-one. A Doll’s House has nothing.
The exceptionsBernick’s public confession and Doctor Stockmann’s meeting speeches, and those are the haranguing kind two schools warn against.
The translation is the copyright, not the play
AssumedThat anything by Chekhov, Pirandello or Sophocles is automatically free to use.
What we foundThe play is free and the translation is a new work with its own ninety-five years. Every entry above names its translator for exactly that reason.
The casualtyWe could find no confirmed public domain English Woyzeck. The versions everybody actually performs are modern and in copyright.
Some famous speeches are not speeches
AssumedThat the report of the slaughter in Macbeth and the Banquo material would both yield a monologue.
What we foundRoss is broken into short exchanges and his longest continuous run in that scene is ten lines. Banquo’s longest speech in the play is eleven.
Why it mattersTo perform either you would have to splice, and two schools ban stitched pieces by name.
Free is not the same as findable
AssumedThat anything out of copyright would be one click away.
What we foundMiddleton and Ford are effectively absent from the largest free library. Machinal is public domain and we could locate no free full text at all.
Grading the sources
This page counts other people’s pages, contradicts one of our own assumptions and corrects our library, so it owes you the method on each.
Where we differ from the standard account
Which dramatic pieces should a man bring?
Commonly saidBiff, Konstantin, Tom Wingfield, on page after page, with the same ten often copied in the same order.
What we foundAll three are on published overdone lists, one of them written by a site that recommends all three.
Are dramatic male monologues all shouting?
Commonly saidAssumed by nearly everyone, ourselves included when we started.
What we foundA quarter of the largest stage list. Three quarters of the biggest brand’s screen picks. It is a screen problem.
Is film material safe to bring?
Commonly saidNever addressed. One list offers six animated Disney villains without a word of caveat.
What we foundFour schools require a published play in writing, which makes more than half of one list inadmissible.
Where do I find the speech in the play?
Commonly saidThirty-four of thirty-four entries on one list carry no act or scene. Seventeen of seventeen on another.
What we foundEvery entry here has one, because you cannot read the scene around a speech you cannot locate.
Which speech by this character?
Commonly saidThe famous one, which is nearly always the loud one.
What we foundAlmost every famous dramatic character has a quieter speech nobody performs, and it is usually the better audition.
Is Ibsen a good source?
Commonly saidAssumed to be, because the plays are famous, serious and free.
What we foundHe barely writes male monologues. The longest male speech in Ghosts is a hundred and thirty-four words.
Is the text on these pages legal?
Commonly saidNever raised. Eight pages print in-copyright plays and screenplays in full.
What we foundNot one of the eight states a permission or names a licensor. One of them is a public school district.
Is the text on these pages even accurate?
Commonly saidTaken on trust, since the pieces are printed in full and look official.
What we foundThe largest list admits its texts are pieced together from longer scenes with additional lines added.
So do the overdone search before you learn the piece rather than after, and check whether the school will accept a screenplay at all. Then take whichever character you were drawn to and go looking for his other speech, the one where he is reasoning rather than roaring. It is almost always shorter, almost always harder, and almost always the one the room has not heard that morning.