Electra Monologue
| Electra Monologue by Sophocles | |
| Character: | Electra |
| Gender: | Female |
| Age (range): | ? |
| Style: | Drama |
| Length: | < 3 minutes |
Looking for a published monologue? Want to know
character history & story background? We have exactly what you
need! Join Our Community
today and gain access to dozens of monologues for auditions,
classes, competitions, workshops, and more! Click
To See What The Buzz Is About... |
|
- ELECTRA: I am ashamed, dear ladies, if to you
- Through frequent lamentations I appear
- Too sorely oppressed; but, for necessity
- Obliges me to do so, pardon me.
- For how should any woman gently born,
- Viewing the sorrows of her father's house,
- Do otherwise than I, who witness them
- For ever day by day and night by night
- Rather increase than lesson? to whom, first,
- The mother's face who bare me has become
- Most hostile; next, I must be companied
- In my own home with my sire's murderers,
- By them be ruled, take at their hands, or else
- At their hands hunger! Then, what sort of days
- Do you suppose I lead, when I behold
- AE gisthus seated on my father's throne,
- Wearing the selfsame garments which he wore,
- And pouring out libations on the hearth
- By which he slew him? When I witness, too,
- The consummation of their impudence,
- The homicide lying in my father's bed
- With that abandoned mother--if it be right
- To call her mother, who consorts with him!
- And she--so profligate that she lives on
- With her blood-guilty mate--fearing no vengeance--
- Rather, as if exulting in her doings--
- Looks out the day on which by cunning erst
- She slew my father, and each month on it
- Sets dances going, and sacrifices sheep
- In offering to her guardian deities!
- I see it, I, ill-fated one! At home
- I weep and waste and sorrow as I survey
- The unblest feast that bears my father's name,
- In private; for I cannot even weep
- So freely as my heart would have me do;
- For this tongue-valiant woman with vile words
- Upbraids me, crying "Thou God-forsaken thing,
- Has no man's father died, save only thine?
- Is nobody in mourning, except thee?
- Ill death betide thee, and the nether Gods
- Give thee no end to these thy sorrowings!"
- So she reviles; save when she hears it said
- Orestes is at hand; then instantly
- She is possessed, and comes and screams at me--
- "Is it not you who are the cause of this?
- Pray is not this your doing, who stole Orestes
- Out of my hands, and conjured him away?
- But mind you, you shall pay me well for it!"
- So snarling, there joins with her and stands by
- And hounds her forward her illustrious groom,
- The all unmanly, all injurious pest,
- Who fights no battles without women! I,
- Waiting and waiting, till Orestes come
- And end it, miserably daily die.
- For always meaning, never doing, he
- Has utterly confounded all my hopes
- Remote or present. Friends, in such a case,
- There is no room--no, not for soberness
- Or piety; but, beneath injuries,
- There is deep need we prove injurious, too!
Credits: Reprinted from Dramas. Sophocles. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1906.
