A soliloquy necessitates
speaking to the audience
Isabella has been pleading with Angelo, the Duke’s surrogate, for her brother Claudio’s life. The puritanical Angelo has, to her shock and surprise, promised reprieve if she will sleep with him; otherwise Claudio dies. Left alone, Isabella, a would-be nun, realizes the full import of her dilemma. If she looks elsewhere for help, no one will believe her story, for Angelo has an unassailable reputation for probity. Rather than wrestle with the problem, she decides to let her brother solve it, believing that he would rather die than see her lose her purity.
The actor must play the full value of Isabella’s dilemma and her solution. She must imagine the brother to be as upright and pure as Isabella sees herself. How much of the last four lines are self-deluding must be decided by the actor, but there is certainly room here for an immature or even cold-blooded Isabella.
Key to the Piece: Whatever the actor decides about Isabella’s character, in a soliloquy, the character speaks the truth and shares that truth with the audience – an imagined audience since an actor cannot address a speech to the auditioners.
Connection to the Audience
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Play: | Measure for Measure |
| Scene: | II, 4; 171 – 187 | |
| Character: | Isabella | |
| Setting: | Julia’s home, Verona | |
| Mikaela is from Montr�al and has been engaged in theatre and film since she was 15 years old. She has performed in seven theatre productions including: Our Town (Emily), Our Country�s Good (Duckling) and most recently The Cherry Orchard (Varya). Mikaela has a strong singing voice, plays classical piano and has trained in dance. | ||
Instructional Objective:
- A soliloquy in which the actor’s full attention is on the audience (but not the auditioners)
- The challenge is to share the truth with the audience
To whom should I complain? Did I tell this,
Who would believe me? O perilous mouths,
That bear in them one and the selfsame tongue.
Either of condemnation or approof,
Bidding the law make curtsy to their will,
Hooking both right and wrong to th’appetite,
To follow as it draws! I’ll to my brother.
Though he hath fall’n by prompture of the blood,
Yet hath he in him such a mind of honour
That had he twenty heads to tender down
On twenty bloody blocks, he’d yield them up,
Before his sister should her body stoop
To such abhorred pollution.
Then Isabel live chaste, and brother die:
More than our brother is our chastity.
I’ll tell him yet of Angelo’s request,
And fit his mind to death, for his soul’s rest.
