All's Well That Ends Well · Act 1, Scene 1
Helena monologue from All's Well That Ends Well
- Play
- William Shakespeare
- Women
- Playing age Teens–30s
- About 1:00
- Classical · verse
Helena’s monologue from the play All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare (Act 1, Scene 1). A classical piece for women with a playing age of teens–30s, running about 1:00.
The full speech. Read it out loud twice before you start working it.
Helena’s monologue
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie
Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky
Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.
What power is it which mounts my love so high;
That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye?
The mightiest space in fortune nature brings
To join like likes, and kiss like native things.
Impossible be strange attempts to those
That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose
What hath been cannot be: who ever strove
To show her merit, that did miss her love?
The king's disease, --my project may deceive me,
But my intents are fix'd and will not leave me.
Public domain text.
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About All's Well That Ends Well
- All's Well That Ends Well is one of Shakespeare's "problem plays," comedies with darker, unresolved edges.
- The plot comes from a tale in Boccaccio's Decameron.
All 6 monologues from All's Well That Ends Well All 135 William Shakespeare monologues
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