Helen Mirren Monologues

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little lives are rounded with a sleep.

I charge thee that thou attend me! Thou dost here usurp the name thou owest not and have put thyself upon this island as a spy, to win it from me, the sovereign on't.

Follow me. Speak not you for him, he's a traitor. Come, I'll manacle thy neck and feet together. Seawater shalt thou drink. Follow.

What? I say, my foot my tutor? Put thy sword up, traitor, for I can here disarm thee with this stick and make thy weapon drop.

What? I say, my foot my tutor? Put thy sword up, traitor, for I can here disarm thee with this stick and make thy weapon drop.

Silence! One word more shall make me chide thee, if not hate thee. Thou think'st there is no more such shapes as he, having seen but him and Caliban. Foolish child. To the most of men, this is a Caliban and they to him are angels.

Come on. Obey. Thy nerves are in their infancy again and have no vigor in them.

No harm. I have done nothing but in care of thee. Of thee, my dear one, thee, my daughter, who art ignorant of what thou art, naught knowing of whence I am, nor that I am more better than Prospera, master of a full poor cell, and thy no greater mother.

For this, be sure, tonight thou shalt have cramps, side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up. Urchins shall work all exercise on thee. Thou shalt be pinch'd as thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging than bees that made 'em.

O, was she so? I must once in a month recount what thou hast been, which thou forget'st. This dam'd witch Sycorax, for mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible to enter human hearing, from Algiers, thou know'st, was banish'd. Is not this true?

This blue-eyed hag was hither brought with child and here was left by the sailors. Thou, my slave, as thou report'st thyself, was then her servant, but for thou wast a spirit too delicate to act her earthy and abhorr'd commands, she did confine thee into a cloven pine, within which imprison'd thou didst painfully remain a dozen years, within which space she died and left thee there. Thou best know'st what a torment I did find thee in. Thy groans did make wolves howl and penetrate the breasts of ever angry bears. It was mine art, when I arrived and heard thee, that made gape the pine and let thee out.

If thou more murmurest, I will rend an oak and peg thee in his knotty entrails 'til thou hast howl'd away twelve winters.

The King of Naples, being an enemy to me inveterate, hearkens to my brother's suit, which was that he should presently eradicate me and mine out of the dukedom and confer fair Milan with all its honors upon my brother. Whereon, one midnight did Antonio open the gates of Milan. Into the dead of darkness, his ministers for the purpose hurried thence me and thy crying self.

Dear, they durst not, so dear the love my people bore me. In few, they hurried us aboard a bark, bore us some leagues to sea, where they'd prepared a rotten carcass of a boat, not rigg'd, nor tackle, sail, nor mast. The very rats instinctively had quit it. And there they hoist us, to cry to the seas that roar'd to us, to sigh to the winds whose pity, sighing back again, did us but loving wrong.

O, a cherubim thou wast that did preserve me. Thou didst smile, infused with a fortitude from heaven that raised in me an undergoing stomach to bear up against what should ensue.

By providence divine. Some food we had and some fresh water that a noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo, out of his charity did give us, with rich garments, stuffs and necessaries, which since have steaded much. Of his gentleness, knowing I loved my books, he furnish'd me from mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.

The very same. Who, long ago, was wife to him who ruled Milan most liberally. Who, with as tolerant a hand toward me, gave license to my long hours in pursuit of hidden truths, of coiled powers contained within some elements to harm or heal. I brooked no interruption but your squalling, for thou, child, art a princess born.

Upon thy father's death, authority was conferred, as was his will, to me alone, thereby awakening the ambition of my brother, and thy uncle, call'd Antonio. Thou attendest not!

I pray thee, mark me, that a brother should be so perfidious! He whom I did charge to execute express commands as to the prudent governing of fair Milan, instead undid, subverted... dost thou attend me?

Perverting my upstanding studies, now his slandering and bile-dipped brush did paint a faithless portrait. His sister, a practicer of the black arts! A demon, not a woman, nay, a witch! And he full knowing that others of my sex have burned for no less. The flames now fanned, my counselors turned against me. Dost thou hear?