Pygmalion: Liza

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

In the final act of Pygmalion, Liza explains to Prof. Higgins the relationship she desired from him. It’s a tender scene that almost warms the Professor’s heart despite himself.

LIZA: No I don't. That's not the sort of feeling I want from you. And don't you be too sure of yourself or of me. I could have been a bad girl if I'd liked. I've seen more of some things than you, for all your learning. Girls like me can drag gentlemen down to make love to them easy enough. And they wish each other dead the next minute. (much troubled) I want a little kindness. I know I'm a common ignorant girl, and you a book-learned gentleman; but I'm not dirt under your feet. What I done (correcting herself) what I did was not for the dresses and the taxis: I did it because we were pleasant together and I come--came--to care for you; not to want you to make love to me, and not forgetting the difference between us, but more friendly like.

Unfortunately, Higgins is a permanent bachelor. When he is incapable of offering affection, Eliza Doolittle stands up for herself in this powerfully feisty monologue.

LIZA: Aha! Now I know how to deal with you. What a fool I was not to think of it before! You can't take away the knowledge you gave me. You said I had a finer ear than you. And I can be civil and kind to people, which is more than you can. Aha! That's done you, Henry Higgins, it has. Now I don't care that (snapping her fingers) for your bullying and your big talk. I'll advertise it in the papers that your duchess is only a flower girl that you taught, and that she'll teach anybody to be a duchess just the same in six months for a thousand guineas. Oh, when I think of myself crawling under your feet and being trampled on and called names, when all the time I had only to lift up my finger to be as good as you, I could just kick myself!

Oedipus the King: Jocasta

Oedipus the King by Sophocles

JOCASTA:
Why should a mortal man, the sport of chance,
With no assured foreknowledge, be afraid?
Best live a careless life from hand to mouth.
This wedlock with thy mother fear not thou.
How oft it chances that in dreams a man
Has wed his mother! He who least regards
Such brainsick fantasies lives most at ease.

Mrs. Warren's Profession: Mrs. Warren

Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw

MRS WARREN:
Yes, Heaven forgive me, it's true; 
and you are the only one that ever turned on me. 
Oh, the injustice of it! the injustice! the injustice! 
I always wanted to be a good woman. I tried honest work; 
and I was slave-driven until I cursed the day I ever heard of honest work. 
I was a good mother; and because I made my daughter a good woman
 she turns me out as if I were a leper. 
Oh, if I only had my life to live over again! 
I'd talk to that lying clergyman in the school. 
From this time forth, so help me Heaven in my last hour, 
I'll do wrong and nothing but wrong. And I'll prosper on it.

A Doll's House: Nora

A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen

Nora:

It is perfectly true, Torvald. When I was at home with papa, he told me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not have liked it. He called me his doll-child, and he played with me just as I used to play with my dolls. And when I came to live with you—

I mean that I was simply transferred from papa's hands into yours. You arranged everything according to your own taste, and so I got the same tastes as you--or else I pretended to, I am really not quite sure which--I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other. When I look back on it, it seems to me as if I had been living here like a poor woman--just from hand to mouth. I have existed merely to perform tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have it so. You and papa have committed a great sin against me. It is your fault that I have made nothing of my life.

You neither think nor talk like the man I could bind myself to. As soon as your fear was over--and it was not fear for what threatened me, but for what might happen to you--when the whole thing was past, as far as you were concerned it was exactly as if nothing at all had happened. Exactly as before, I was your little skylark, your doll, which you would in future treat with doubly gentle care, because it was so brittle and fragile. Torvald--it was then it dawned upon me that for eight years I had been living here with a strange man, and had borne him three children--. Oh! I can't bear to think of it! I could tear myself into little bits!

Thanksgiving in the Wilderness: Emily

Thanksgiving in the Wilderness by Kellie PowellEmily is a woman in her twenties who becomes involved in a polyamorous relationship. She is mostly talking to the audience, but sometimes she addresses her friend Rita, who is onstage with her, and sometimes she talks to the man in question.

Emily:

(To Rita.) Contrary to popular opinion, there are not plenty of fish in the sea, and even if there are, none of them are interested in my bait. And I guess that's why, when I saw him again, and he started telling me about how he wasn't ready for a new relationship, and how he actually thinks that dating is pretty stupid... Which, to be fair, is essentially true. It is kind of ridiculous to think that there's one person out there for every other person, and that one person can meet all of your needs, and that anyone could really be satisfied with only one person, for all time --

(To the audience.) There's a rational part of me that does actually agree with him. That thinks that sex is only as complicated as the people who're having it. And that relationships shouldn't have to be a quid-pro-quo transaction: I agree to sleep only with you, so that you sleep only with me. If monogamy came naturally, why would so many married people have affairs? If people could just evolve past jealousy, we would all probably be a lot happier. He's right. Jealousy is irrational. He wanted something casual, and I was a little disappointed... I got my hopes up, which was stupid, and I got let down, which I should have predicted... And how can I really blame him? He was up front with me. He told me exactly what he wanted and exactly what he didn't. I could have said, "No, that's not enough for me. I want a real relationship or nothing." But I didn't say that.

(To Rita.) If I thought I could do better, then none of this would have ever happened. But I don't, and it did. I told myself, I'll just keep hanging out with him, until I meet someone better suited for me, the right person.

(To the audience.) I told myself, "Don't get attached, because this is temporary. Don't be jealous, because he's just not worth it." But I'd lie awake, with him sleeping next to me, and think... 

(To him.) "You're always rushing off - you have all these other friends and other things to do, and other women's beds to jump into... and I wish you had more room for me in your life. I wish you wished you had room for me in your life. I wish you gave a damn. Because, someday, you'll meet someone and you'll feel the thing that you always make fun of when other people feel it, and all your rhetoric about how monogamy is stupid and relationships are bullshit will go completely out the window. And I will never be able to stop wondering: Why wasn't it me? Why couldn't it have been me?"

Henry IV: Lady Hotspur

Henry IV (part 1) by William Shakespeare
Lady Hotspur:
O, my good lord, why are you thus alone?
For what offence have I this fortnight been
A banish'd woman from my Harry's bed?
Tell me, sweet lord, what is't that takes from thee
Thy stomach, pleasure and thy golden sleep? 
Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth,
And start so often when thou sit'st alone?
Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks;
And given my treasures and my rights of thee
To thick-eyed musing and cursed melancholy? 
In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watch'd,
And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars;
Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed;
Cry 'Courage! to the field!' And thou hast talk'd
Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents, 
Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets,
Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin,
Of prisoners' ransom and of soldiers slain,
And all the currents of a heady fight.
Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war 
And thus hath so bestirr'd thee in thy sleep,
That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow
Like bubbles in a late-disturbed stream;
And in thy face strange motions have appear'd,
Such as we see when men restrain their breath 
On some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these?
Some heavy business hath my lord in hand,
And I must know it, else he loves me not.

Antony and Cleopatra: Cleopatra

Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
Act 5 Scene 2

Cleopatra:
O Caesar, what a wounding shame is this,
That thou, vouchsafing here to visit me,
Doing the honour of thy lordliness 
To one so meek, that mine own servant should
Parcel the sum of my disgraces by
Addition of his envy! Say, good Caesar,
That I some lady trifles have reserved,
Immoment toys, things of such dignity
As we greet modern friends withal; and say,
Some nobler token I have kept apart
For Livia and Octavia, to induce
Their mediation; must I be unfolded
With one that I have bred? The gods! it smites me
Beneath the fall I have.
[To SELEUCUS]
Prithee, go hence;
Or I shall show the cinders of my spirits
Through the ashes of my chance: wert thou a man,
Thou wouldst have mercy on me.