1.
BREATHE AND RELAX! (Use your diaphragm to its maximum potential and finish the ends of sentences with energy and punch instead of dying out.
2.
NEVER STRESS PRONOUNS (He, she, it, you, they, we, etc.)
3.
CHANGE THE METER! STAY AWAY FROM THE BEAT! (This will make it more conversational and will help the audience understand the context of the language. They will stay awake too!)
4.
COLOR VERBS FIRST THEN ADJECTIVES! (Action verbs keep the plot going, adjectives only describe…using colorful inflection will make you sound like this is the first time you are speaking the words.
5.
RESPECT PUNCTUATION AND KEEP THE THOUGHT WHOLE (Don’t pause at the end of a line If there isn’t a comma or period; go straight on in order to keep the thought whole.)
6.
FIND THE CLIMAX OR THE HIGH POINT OF THE PIECE AND USE AS MANY LEVELS AS
YOU CAN TO GET THERE AND TO COME FROM THERE. (Use a scale of emotional commitment and don’t scream constantly or whisper for effect. BE HONEST! Real humans don’t do it that why should real characters?
7.
WATCH VOCAL PATTERNS INSIDE OF LISTS (Mad kings, mad world, mad composition!
Remember the rule about grocery lists…BORING! Use levels and inflection.
8.
LISTEN CAREFULLLY TO OTHERS IN THE SCENE, OR TO WHAT YOU ARE SAYING IN THE
MONOLOGUE---KNOW THE PLOT FROM START TO FINISH (If you do not know the plot of the story, or understand the language of what you are saying, you will never understand your objectives and thus you will not deliver it right to your audience.
9.
ADD PAUSING TO CREATE THE EFFECT OF LISTENING AND THINKING (Real people do not memorize what they are going to say every minute of the day. We pause to think and then we speak; we stumble over thoughts; we rush and emphasize important thoughts…we yell, we cry, we beg, we sigh, characters do too.
10.
ADD YOUR OWN VERBAL EXCLAMATIONS AND WATCH YOUR “OHS” (Shakespeare added
“oh!” at the beginning and middle of thoughts because the character was so overcome with emotion he couldn’t find a better way to express it. Use your “ohs” wisely. Shakespeare didn’t add in verbal exclamations because he didn’t know how to spell them! ARGH!!)

1a Breathe
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc’d it to you, trippingly on the tongue, but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as live the town-crier spoke my lines.
No do not saw the air to much with your hand, thus but use all gently, for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.
Hamlet, Hamlet , III. ii
1b She told me,- not thinking I had been myself that I was the
Prince’s jester, that I as duller than a great thaw, huddling jest upon jest such impossible conveyance upon me
2b that I stood like a man at a mark, with a whole army shooting me.
Benedick, Much Ado About Nothing, II i
2a Don’t stress pronouns Let me not play a woman; I have a beard coming.
Flute,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
I ii
That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and cue for passion
That I have?
Hamlet, Hamlet , II i
3 a Change the meter
3b Break the beat
In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.
Antonio, Merchant of Venice,
And I to be a corporal of his field,
And wear his colors like a tumbler’s hoop!
What? I love, I sue, I seek a wife?
A woman, that is like a German clock,
Still a-repairing, ever out of frame,
And never going aright, and being a watch,
But being watched that it may still go right.
I i
Berowne,
Love’s Labors Lost,
III i
4a Color verbs first-then Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises, adjectives Sounds, and sweet airs, they give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices.
Caliban, The Tempest, III ii
4b Verbs (Adjectives)
Sir Proteus), to wreathe your arms, (like
You have learn’d, (like

a malcontent;) to relish a love-song, (like a robin-redbreast;) to walk alone, (like one that had the pestilence,) to sigh, (like a schoolboy) that had lost his ABC; to weep, (like a young wench) that had buried her grandam; to fast, (like one that takes diet;) to watch, (like one that fears robbing,) to speak puling, (like a beggar), at Hallowmas.
Speed, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, II
i
5a Respect Punctuation! Now to Marina bend your mind,
Keep the thought whole. who our fast-growing scene must find
At Tharsus, and by Cleon train’d
In music’s letters, who had gain’d
Of education all the grace,
Which makes her both th’ heart and place
Of General wonder.
Gower, Pericles , IV Cho
5b Punctuation
&
6a Levels
O you beast!
O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!
Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice?
Is’t not a kind of incest, to take life from thine own sister’s shame? What should I think?
Heaven shield my mother played my father fair!
For such a warped slid of wilderness
Ne’er issued from his blood. Take my defiance!
Die! Perish! Might but my bending down reprieve thee from thy fate, it should proceed.
I’ll pray a thousand prayers for thy death,
No word to save thee.
Isabella, Measure for Measure, III i
6b Find the climax & use levels
7a Watch Lists
Let heaven kiss earth! Now let not Nature’s hand
Keep the world food confin’d let order die!
And let this world no longer be a stage
To feed contention is a ling’ring act;
But let one spirit of the first-born Cain
Reign in all bosoms, that each heart being set
On bloody courses, the rude scene may end,
And darkness be the burier of the dead!
Earl of Northmuberland Henry IV Part 2
I i
I have neither the scholar’s melancholy, which is emulation; not the musician’s, which is fantastical; nor the courtier’s, which is proud; nor the soldiers, which is ambitious; not the lawyer’s. Which is politic; not the lady’s, which is nice; nor the lover’s, which is all of these: but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry

7b (remember not to stress pronouns) contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness.
Jaques, As you like It, IV i
I had an Edward, till a Richard killed him;
I had a Harry, till a Richard killed him.
Thou hadst an Edward, till a Richard killed him;
Thou hadst a Richard, till a Richard killed him.
Queen Margaret, Richard III , IV iv
7c So many hours must I tend my flock,
So many hours must I take my rest,
So many hours must I contemplate,
So many hours must I sport myself,
So many days my ewes have I been with young,
So many weeks ere the poor fools will ean,
So many years ere I shall shear the fleece:
So minutes, hours, days, months, and years,
Pass’d over to the end thy were created,
Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.
King Henry, Henry VI
8
Know the plot
Come away, come away death,
I am slain by a fair cruel maid
(or you could completely My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, interpret the piece wrong) O, prepare it!
My art of death, no one is so true.
, II v
9a Thought Process
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet
On my black coffin let there be strown.
Not a friend, not friend greet
My poor corpes, where my bones
Shall be thrown.
A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O, where
Sad true lover never find my grave,
To weep there.
F____, T______ N_____, II iv
Yes, one-and in this manner. He was to imagine me his love, his mistress; and I set him every day to woo me. At which time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve, be
Effeminate, changeable, longing and liking, proud, fantastical,
Apish, shallow, inconsistent, full of tears, full of smiles.
Rosalind, As you like It
9b Pausing for full effect Doubt though the stars are on fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
, III ii

10a
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.
Polonious, Hamlet, II ii
O England! Model to thy inward greatness,
Like little body with a mighty heart,
What mightst thou do, that honor would thee do,
Were all thy children kind and natural!
Chorus, Henry V, II Pro
2
3
4
___________________
Put it all together:
1 Tis torture, and not mercy; heaven is here,
Where Juliet lives; and every cat and dog
And little mouse, every unworthy thing,
Live here in heaven and may look on her;
5
6
7
8
But Romeo may not: more validity,
More honorable state, more courtship lives
In carrion-flies than Romeo; they may seize
On the white wonder of dear Juliet’s hand
9 And steal immortal blessing from her lips,
10 Who even in pure and vestal modesty,
11 Sill blush, as thinking their own kisses sin;
12 But Romeo may not; he is banished:
13 Flies may do this, but I from this must fly:
14 They are free men, but I am banished.
15
And say’st thou yet that exile is not death?
16 Hadst thou no poison mix’d, no sharp-ground knife,
17
No sudden mean of death, though ne’er so mean,
18
But ‘banished’ to kill me?—‘banished’?
19 O friar, the damned use of that word in hell;
20 Howlings attend it: how hast thou the heart,
21 Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,
22 A sin-absolver, and my friend profess’d,
23 To mangle me with that word ‘banished’?
24 Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel:
25 Wert thou as young as I, Juliet they love,
26 An hour but married, Tybalt murdered,
27 Doting like me and like me banished,
28 Then mightst thou speak, then mightst thou tear thy hair,
29 And fall upon the ground, as I do now,
30 Taking the measure of an unmade grave.