Free · 48 monologues · original & public domain · no royalty
The monologue library
48 monologues you can read, print, and perform for free -- age-tiered for the classroom (elementary through high school) and public-domain classics for auditions and forensics. Attribution is the only requirement. Sensitive-subject pieces are withheld by default and never surface here.
Five More Minutes (A Masterclass)
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A pajama-clad tactical genius walks us through the ancient art of not going to bed: water, one more story, and a mysterious noise.
Read the monologue →The People Versus Broccoli
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A kid rises at the dinner table to deliver a full courtroom closing argument prosecuting the broccoli on their plate.
Read the monologue →Pick Me For The Hamster
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A kid makes a full, impassioned campaign speech to the teacher for the right to take the class hamster home for the weekend.
Read the monologue →Backpack Buddy
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
On the morning of the first day of school, a nervous kid whispers a pep talk down into their backpack -- to the stuffed animal they smuggled in, and really to themselves.
Read the monologue →This Is Gary
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A kid proudly introduces their imaginary friend Gary to a skeptical grown-up -- and defends him with total conviction and increasingly specific details.
Read the monologue →It Is Just A Game
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A kid who just lost the board game tries, out loud and against all odds, to be a good sport about it.
Read the monologue →The Ballad Of The Missing Mitten
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A kid narrates the epic, tragic, heroic quest to find one lost mitten as if it were the greatest adventure ever undertaken.
Read the monologue →The Negotiation
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A kid with a very wiggly tooth is thrilled, terrified, and ready to make a deal -- with the Tooth Fairy, tonight, on their terms.
Read the monologue →The New One
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A big sibling sorts through the tangled-up feelings about a new baby who gets held all day while nobody claps for THEM anymore.
Read the monologue →The Presentation
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A kid delivers a fully-prepared, airtight, slightly desperate presentation to a parent explaining why the family NEEDS a puppy immediately.
Read the monologue →The Water Fountain
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A teen paces the hallway, coaching themselves to finally say one normal sentence to the person they like by the water fountain.
Read the monologue →A Series of Learning Experiences
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A teen recaps a catastrophic first job interview at a frozen yogurt shop, reframing every disaster as valuable personal growth.
Read the monologue →Last Shift at Delgado's
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
On her final night at the hardware store where she has worked since sophomore year, an eighteen-year-old hands off the keys and tries to explain to the new kid why a small place can be a big thing to leave.
Read the monologue →A-Minus
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A straight-A perfectionist cheerfully insists she is completely fine about her first A-minus, one twitch at a time.
Read the monologue →The Last Lane
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
Outside the coach's office, a sixteen-year-old swimmer rehearses the hardest sentence he owns -- that he is quitting the sport he loves, because somewhere in the winning it stopped belonging to him.
Read the monologue →Totally Fine
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A graduating senior gives a cheerful tour of why leaving high school does not affect them at all, right up until it does.
Read the monologue →The Long Way to Say It
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
At the kitchen table, a seventeen-year-old finally tells the parent who has planned his whole future that he does not want to be a doctor -- he wants to teach -- and asks to be seen instead of steered.
Read the monologue →For the Record
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
Three days too late, a teen re-litigates a debate they lost, armed with all the devastating comebacks they only just thought of.
Read the monologue →Her Chair
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
At the first family dinner since her grandmother died, a fifteen-year-old stands to say the blessing no one else can manage -- and finds a way to keep the empty chair full.
Read the monologue →The One I Wanted
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
Alone in her room, a senior reads aloud the rejection from the one school she built her whole plan around -- and, somewhere between the shock and the shame, starts figuring out how to stand back up.
Read the monologue →The Bench
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A starter who got benched for the biggest game of the season fights the urge to sulk and figures out what kind of teammate to be.
Read the monologue →The Map
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A middle schooler gives a brand-new kid a deadly-serious guided tour of the entire unwritten social geography of the cafeteria before they sit in the wrong place.
Read the monologue →Vote For Me
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A middle schooler delivers a wildly over-the-top class-president campaign speech built entirely on promises they have no power to keep.
Read the monologue →Chaperone
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A middle schooler recaps, in horror, the school dance their parent volunteered to chaperone -- and then treated like a personal concert.
Read the monologue →The Group Project
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A kid who did the entire group project alone presents to the class while smiling so hard it hurts, refusing to throw their teammates under the bus out loud.
Read the monologue →The Negotiation
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A middle schooler whose phone was confiscated conducts a full hostage negotiation with the teacher who is holding it in a desk drawer.
Read the monologue →Thirty Seconds to Places
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
Frozen in the wings and shaking, a kid about to go on stage for the first time argues themselves out of running and into the light.
Read the monologue →Saved You a Seat
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A kid whose best friend has drifted into a cooler new group works up the nerve to say the friendship still matters, even if it is ending.
Read the monologue →Table Twelve
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A student who has switched schools too many times stands with a lunch tray, deciding whether it is worth trying to make friends one more time.
Read the monologue →The Kitchen Voices
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A kid who has been quietly overhearing tense grown-up conversations at home tries to sort out worry from hope, and decides to stop pretending everything is fine.
Read the monologue →All the World's a Stage
Monologue · public domain · free to perform · attribution required
Jaques, a melancholy nobleman in the Forest of Arden, sizes up the whole of human life as a play in seven acts -- from squalling infant to toothless old age.
Read the monologue →Bottom's Dream
Monologue · public domain · free to perform · attribution required
Bottom the weaver wakes from a very strange night, still half-asleep, and tries -- hilariously -- to describe a dream too wonderful for words.
Read the monologue →Friends, Romans, Countrymen
Monologue · public domain · free to perform · attribution required
At Caesar's funeral, Mark Antony works a hostile crowd with cunning, turning them against the assassins while pretending to praise them.
Read the monologue →How Happy Some O'er Other Some Can Be
Monologue · public domain · free to perform · attribution required
Helena, left alone and heartsick, puzzles over why the boy she loves prefers her friend -- and decides love is blind.
Read the monologue →If Music Be the Food of Love
Monologue · public domain · free to perform · attribution required
Duke Orsino, lovesick and dramatic, calls for more music -- then tires of it in the same breath, showing how quickly a mood can change.
Read the monologue →Once More Unto the Breach
Monologue · public domain · free to perform · attribution required
King Henry rallies his exhausted soldiers at the broken wall of a besieged town, calling on them to charge one more time.
Read the monologue →Our Revels Now Are Ended
Monologue · public domain · free to perform · attribution required
Prospero stops a magic show mid-scene and, shaken, reflects that all the world -- towers, temples, life itself -- is as fleeting as a dream.
Read the monologue →If We Shadows Have Offended (Puck's Epilogue)
Monologue · public domain · free to perform · attribution required
Left alone on the empty stage, the mischievous sprite Puck asks the audience to forgive the play and think of it as nothing more than a dream.
Read the monologue →The Quality of Mercy
Monologue · public domain · free to perform · attribution required
Disguised as a young lawyer, Portia stands in a Venice courtroom and pleads with a man to choose mercy over the harsh letter of the law.
Read the monologue →Rosalind's Epilogue
Monologue · public domain · free to perform · attribution required
Rosalind steps out of the play to charm the audience directly, teasing them into loving the show and sending them home with a smile.
Read the monologue →We Few, We Happy Few (St. Crispin's Day)
Monologue · public domain · free to perform · attribution required
Badly outnumbered on the morning of battle, King Henry turns fear into pride, promising his soldiers they will be remembered forever as a band of brothers.
Read the monologue →To Be, or Not to Be
Monologue · public domain · free to perform · attribution required
Hamlet, alone and weighed down, thinks aloud about why people endure hard times instead of giving up -- and why fear of the unknown keeps us going.
Read the monologue →Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Monologue · public domain · free to perform · attribution required
Told his wife is dead, Macbeth answers not with grief but with a bleak, exhausted vision of life as a brief, meaningless candle.
Read the monologue →I Left No Ring With Her
Monologue · public domain · free to perform · attribution required
Viola, disguised as a boy, realizes the lady she was sent to woo has fallen for her instead -- and untangles the impossible knot she is caught in.
Read the monologue →Now Is the Winter of Our Discontent
Monologue · public domain · free to perform · attribution required
Richard opens the play alone on stage, turning from talk of peace to a cold confession that he means to make trouble.
Read the monologue →The Red Monologue
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
Little Red tells her mother about a very strange walk to Grandmama's -- the huffy wolf, the three little pigs, a huntsman with a dented axe, and a surprise waiting at the end. A comic solo monologue for one performer.
Read the monologue →The Red Monologue 2.0
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
The same story from the Big Bad Wolf's side: brunch plans, a nap in Grandmama's bed, the huntsman's axe, and a very warm place to wake up. A punchy comic monologue that pairs with The Red Monologue.
Read the monologue →Voice Warm-ups for Actors
Monologue · original · free to perform · attribution required
A director's set of vocal and diction warm-ups -- tongue twisters, vowel drills, and rhythm exercises to run with your cast before a read-through or a show. A rehearsal resource, free to use.
Read the monologue →Every piece is free to read, print, and perform. No royalty, no performance fee. The only requirement is a single attribution credit line in your program or audition packet. Public-domain pieces host the full, unaltered text with a verified provenance record; forensics classifications, where noted, are illustrative only -- not official NSDA, NCFL, or UIL certifications.