 This lecture is titled from the perspective of play writing and in this lecture our focus is on monologues. The lecture is divided into two parts, monologues within a play and monologue as an independent art form. The reason we have focused on monologues for the purpose of play writing especially in the early stages of your writing career is related to the fact that monologues allow a greater degree of experimentation in terms of the notion of the self and the other and also since it is a form where you know you are at the center of that creativity in terms of even autobiographical elements that you can dramatize. It allows for certain flexibility. We therefore also in the second part have given composition exercises. The first part that deals with monologues within a play I think for this purpose we decided to do something quite demanding. We went back to Greek theater and chose pieces in order to give a sense of energy that Saugardner describes the plot structure of Greek tragedy and comedy. And because of the far space plot structure and its links to the notion of character we felt that it may be a good idea to look at these great plays from Greek period for the selection of the plays. I am really thankful to Neha for working very hard on the choices that we have made. There is certain amount of reservation that I do want to share with you about the monologues that have been listed in the monologue archives. Many of them actually have been chosen from dialogic situations. The character is placed in a situation where another person is present and it is in the process of dialogue that the character makes long speeches. So this notion of monologue in that sense is somewhat stretched in that situation and that is why it is quite beneficial to look at monologue as an independent art form also. We are keeping in mind this distinction but at the same time monologues within a play also give you some idea about the vitality of the sense of the self, both of the character and of how a writer negotiates it in the process of writing. So therefore, we hope that the choices that have been made by us will prove useful to you. Let us look at a definition of monologues. It is a long unbroken speech by a dramatic character of a play. The protagonist addresses another absent character as per the Bhan model or the audience. The Bhan model continues to really excite us and I think from time to time we foreground it. Then you have Soliloquy in which a character relates his or her thoughts or feelings to the audience without addressing any other character. So in the Soliloquy the link is between the character and the audience but not another person present on stage. Another such device of shorter duration is the aside. So this is by far the kind of framework within which we are looking at the dramatic forms. We are not looking at poetry, we are not right now thinking of fiction either. This is purely within drama as an art form that this definition is useful for us. Now monologue within a play is often a high point of the scene of the play. Independent monologues presented as comic or tragic one person performances by the monologist have a very very different orientation and we will see what that different orientation is because that is a stand alone artistic piece. So it has a sense of completeness that the kind of monologues that we have chosen from full flesh plays do not have. So this is monologue as an independent art form has its own flavor and its own sense of completeness. We feel that the ability to construct the monologue is an important experimental mechanism to try out various notions of selfhood as I stated earlier. And therefore again this model of barn where you can either you know write autobiographical stuff or you can write fictional stuff or a combination of the two. It allows for great deal of writing experimentation and also the other idea which seems very useful to us is the fact that for theatre you have to think about the imagistic aspects, the physical aspects, the presentational aspects. So that helps you you know write and create in a manner which holds the imagination of the audience. There is a kind of vividness to that writing. I think for writing short stories also in the longer run this exercise is very helpful. So to begin with now we will start with examples from Greek theatre. As I said this has been a difficult exercise because there is so much to choose from and also it clutters the scene in some ways because unless you remember what we have said about Aristotle and Aristotle's notion of tragedy. And also Camus comments on how important even in modern times he considered that notion of tragedy because it gave a very strong sense of the destiny of the characters. Unless you remember that and unless you remember the discussion of plot structure and also this sense of an incentive moment that is a point where the play begins in relationship to some very crisis-ridden situation in the life of the character. Then there is further complication, then climax, then denouement and resolution that pattern that Fretag also developed later on. Unless you remember these things I think the monologues really will not hold your attention. I hope you would remember or go back to that discussion in order to enjoy this section. We have chosen two examples of Sophocles and the reason we decided to choose Sophocles is because as you remember Aristotle thought he was the greatest writer of tragedies. And also although a Skylus dominated Athenian playwriting during Sophocles's early career but after the death of a Skylus, Sophocles became the pre-eminent playwright in Athens. In addition to innovations in dramatic structure, Sophocles's work is also known for deeper development of characters. That is also very important because we have learnt from Gardner that right from the point of Edgar Allan Poe, so far as the short story form is concerned. He broke away from Aristotelian notion of plot with a beginning, middle and an end primarily because it was character centric approach. But the fact is that the Greek plays and Sophocles's plays in particular have very complex sense of character although plot is the dominant element because of various reasons related to the world view of that period itself. But at the same time there is complex character development in Sophocles. Aristotle used Erepus the king as an example of the highest achievement in tragedy. We have not chosen the piece from Erepus the king but one of the other plays from the trilogy which is also described as the three Theban plays. So this particular play is Erepus at Colognes and very quickly I would tell you a bit about the scene where the monologue unfolds. Erepus has been in exile. He has punished himself because of the nature of transgressions that occurred in his life. He killed his father and through sheer chance and lack of knowledge he married his own mother. When he finds out his sin he had in Erepus the king blinded himself. In this play Erepus has been in exile but he has his loving daughters with him all along and he reaches a city called Colognes and they are looking for a place which would give them shade and a sense of respite and this place that they really find themselves in is the grove of the furies. Lot of people who pass by and discover that there is this blind old man with young daughters they sort of want to drive them away from this sacred grove and they once they learn who Erepus is then they really want him to be out of the city also. So it is in this context this monologue figures. This is seen as one of the most moving second part of the Erepus you know cycle because in this case Erepus gives his own self view. Now in monologues one of the things that we are looking for is this sense of the self view of the character and in this particular speech he begins to describe his own fate. There is no sense of haemarsia here that is the Greek sense of moral flaw instead Erepus projects himself as a victim of various accidents in his personal life. He is trying very hard to come to terms with his sad destiny and this is what he has to say. O front of impudence, which thinkest thou now to defile my grey hairs or thine own who has spit forth out of thy mouth at me murders and marriages and accidents which to my grief not of free will I suffered such was the will of heaven that had some cause for wrath it may be without house of old since for myself I know you cannot find any reproach of wrongfulness in me that could have doomed me to commit these wrongs against myself and mine for answer me if to my father by an oracle the revolution came that he should die by his son's hands how can you just leave tax me with the fact whom neither father yet then had begot or mother had conceived me who has yet had not begun to me and if thereafter proving as I proved hapless I did lay hands upon my sire and slay him know wise knowing what I did not yet to whom I did it how I ask can you with reason blame the unconscious deed. So this is this very pensive very tempered tone of Erebus who at one time was a man of great power and also great arrogance this is the way he now begins to describe his fate hapless as he calls him you know himself. So this is one example from the Greek period the other one is equally famous and important and many many interpretations both in the field of literature and in the field of psychoanalysis philosophy have emerged from these plays. So the second play is related to Electra who was first mentioned in Homer's Odyssey and also many other playwrights have written plays on this very captivating character. See interesting to note that the Greek playwrights wrote about many powerful women protagonists also. This play is set in the city of Argos a few years after the Trojan war. The play is around Electra and the vengeance she and her brother Orestes take on their mother Clytemnestra and stepfather Aegisthus for the murder of their father Agamemnon who had killed Clytemnestra's daughter Epiphegenia as a sacrifice before going to war. So there are all these very powerful almost violent cross currents within the family but somehow Electra is gripped by the murder of a father rather than the reason as to why this act was committed by the mother. It makes for very very complex set of motivations and that is why when it is pointed out that Sophocles was really you know great master at character development. You can see that there are layers and layers within these characters and their motivations that just don't come through only through external action. There is lot of this internal turmoil that is buried within it and that is why it is not a great surprise that a lot of playwrights continue to go back to the Greek sources in order to understand the depth of human consciousness. So then this is a play that we have chosen Electra by Sophocles and I am going to read a very short part from this because when I was trying to figure out how best to present this material before you I realized that the monologue that has been chosen by us is very very long one and the reason it cannot hold your attention as much as I think Erebus at Cologne's did is because first of all it is actually completely contextual because these internal plot patterns and internal happenings there are lot of them that are referred to in this monologue. And therefore, I would have to tell you the plot structure of the full play and so I decided that I would only use read part of it. The tone is very strident Electra was a very passionate character and she is also outraged by her father's murder. She cannot absolutely contain her fury and therefore with her brother after she had plotted this event they also decided for tactical reasons that he would go away and come back in another guise in order to undertake the murder of the mother. So of course, meanwhile many things happen and she thinks that her brother is dead and so she is talking to Chrysothemis her other sister and this is what she has to say. However then, the course I am resolved upon friends to stand by us even must know that none are left but us but the grave has taken and ref them and we to remain alone I while I heard my brother was alive and well had hopes that he would come one day to the requiting of his father's death but since he is no more to you I look not to refuse with me your sister here to slay the author of that father's murder justice. We need have no secrets now for wither to what still surviving hope do you yet look and suffer patiently who for the loss of your ancestral wealth have cause for grieving and have cause for pain and all the time that passes over you growing so old made an unwed and these delights no longer hope to gain any time a justice is too prudent to suffer that your progeny or mind should see the light to his own clear undoing. So this is what Electra has to say as I said she is full of fury she is outraged she can see that there is no future for them and now that she thinks her brother is dead and indeed he was not dead but you know now the two of them would have to carry on the you know affairs of the family. So this is another kind of monologue strident again very clearly an expression of the feelings of the character and in that sense very powerful and clear in terms of character portrayal but this is the second one that we thought would give you another kind of flavor. It is hardly reflective it is strident and action oriented urging the sister to help murder the mother so that they can avenge their father's death very very ambivalent act indeed. So after this let us move to Greek comedy Aristofen's was a writer of comedy and eleven of his forty plays survive when Neha first gave me this excerpt from his play titled women in parliament I can hardly read the original title it is so difficult it is also been translated in varieties variety of ways like women in power etc. I was really surprised because I was not familiar with Aristofen's except for the frogs and so this came as a tremendous surprise. This was written in 392 BC and the notion of comedy is rather complex here because on the one hand Aristofen's has actually used a powerful political theme and in fact in many of his plays he has used themes which were of great public significance. But at the same time he places it in very observed comic situation so there is a contrast between the serious nature of the subject matter and also the kind of liberties he takes with the way you know that subject is handled. So it is partly serious and partly a kind of subversion of certain ideas and therefore it is really hard to believe that you know this was not taken as seriously as the Greek tragedy. He himself perceived his work as you know outpourings of a very important mind and he considered his work as significant as that of Sophocles and other writers of tragedy. In this particular play he actually takes up the issues of gender and politics and also pokes for another idea of democracy taken too far. So in the first part you know these some women are shown the women characters who actually want to wage a political battle in order to take power away from the men. The reasons are given in the speech that we have chosen. You can see all these plays that we have mentioned on YouTube. Some very good versions are available and for women in power it is available in four parts. I saw that version yesterday night and I think it is really very well done. You do not necessarily get to see the most outstanding performances on YouTube necessarily but certainly whatever is available is of very good quality. So you can actually see these performances on YouTube. So now let me read this part and again that is a monologue in terms of this definition of monologue as one sustained bit of speech or statement made by a character within a play. This is Praksagora, the woman disguised as a man and this is what she says to her other friends and she is urging them to take action. So they are trying to sort of consolidate their political position. So this is what she has to say. It is unbelievable because it just seems so very relevant but this is the speech now. My country is as dear to me as it is to you and I groan. I am grieved at all that is happening in it. Scarcely one in ten of those who rule it is honest and all the others are bad. If you appoint fresh chiefs they will do still worse. It is hard to correct your pivishyuma. You fear those who love you and throw yourselves at the feet of those who betray you. There was a time when we had no assemblies and then we all thought, agree us a dishonest man. Now they are established. He who gets money thinks everything is as it should be and he who does not declares all who sell their votes to be worthy of death. When we are discussing the alliance it seems as though it were all over with Athens if it fell through. No sooner was it made then we were vexed and angry and the orator who had caused its adoption was compelled to seek safety in flight. You vote yourselves salaries out of the public funds and care only for your own personal interests hence the state limps along like ismias. But if you hearken to me you will be saved. I assert that the direction of affairs must be handed over to the women for this day who have charge and look after our households. And then she sort of goes on to build the case for women and why they should be in power. And in this play later on women take power and then instead of really bringing in an age of utopian justice we find that Aristophanes ridicules the possibilities and that you know that is again you know from a very serious theme of great public value and significance he brings it down to a very very comic observed interpretation of the rule of law and all kinds of bizarre rules are created by the women who take power. And then you know again you are left ambivalent about the combination of these ideas basically I think he may have at point of view that you really need to rationally analyze but I am really not trying to study Aristophanes here but to give you some flavor of even political monologues that unfolded in this period. This is a prose translation there is also verse translation so you can pick and choose in order to decide which one you prefer. Well, after this let us move on to a well known example and we have already discussed it during the earlier module and therefore I am not sure if you really need to look at it in great detail. This is the monologue from Shakespeare in which Jacques you know makes this philosophical statement where stage is used as a metaphor all the worlds stage and all the men and women merely players they have their exits and their entrances and one man in his time plays many parts. And we had also sort of discussed the fact that this particular statement all the worlds stage the metaphor here it is sort of its power comes from the fact that to pay different things are compared the world as an indeterminate and capacious idea is compared to a determinate concrete specific idea of stage or theater. So this particular speech also you can look at in terms of its power and also its value to you and also you can try and recollect some of the statements that were placed before you related to the content of this monologue where Pope has pointed out that this particular statement may seem like a truism but nonetheless it is true and what it shows is the permeability between the world of drama in the theater and what we routinely hail as the drama of everyday life. I think you can take this statement back to Greek theater and think about it all over again and it will give you another you know valuable sense of what it can mean. So after you know placing the statement of Pope so I will place before you another example of monologue that unfolds within a play and this is a very important play titled the Tragical History of the Life and Death of Dr. Faustus. I would like to point out that renaissance onward the focus of monologues was on characters and their dramatic need and that is a very big shift in perspective because in this particular play for example some of the renaissance aspirations come through very unambiguously. I will not be able to work out the total plot structure for you but briefly if you are not familiar with the play it deals with Dr. Faustus who is a man in search of knowledge. He is committed to knowledge and as a scholar he also is by you know constantly in a state of conflict because this new knowledge especially of the sciences that he seeks these clash with the system the Christian you know world order and also with the sense of morality of that period. And therefore there is this constant conflict that is shown in the play we are not going into the conflict right now because finally Dr. Faustus decides to sell his soul to the devil that is Mephistophilus in order to gain access to knowledge and it is seen as a tragedy by Marlow because this great mind this great scholar a man of great possibilities he finally actually dies a defeated man. So this is the play but what it does what these plays do in general is to allow for of course multiple interpretations and this play has been re-read in variety of ways. You know for example there is the modernist interpretation of Dr. Faustus and there is also a play that Mammet wrote you know placing it in postmodernist situation. So the conf and there is also another very interesting piece by Josie Grotowski on the same play but right now for the purpose of the monologue I would like to refer to just the first few lines because they make you realize the deep roots of his longing his ambition. So when we talk about renaissance sense of aspirations it sort of seems like just an idea but when you hear Faustus talking to himself and articulating the possibilities that he sees before him you see how deep these roots were and how intensely they were experienced in the isolation of his study where he worked on his research. This is act one scene one and it unfolds in the study of Dr. Faustus and this is what he has to say. As I said he is a scholar he was a great scholar and therefore much of this also has a sense of cognitive possibilities in terms of the new forms of knowledge and what it would do lines circles signs letters and characters I these are those that Faustus most desires oh what a world of profit and delight of power of honor of omnipotence is promised to the studious artisan all things that move between the quiet poles shall be at my command emperors and kings are but obeyed in their provinces nor can they raise the wind or rend the clouds but his dominion that exceeds in the stretcher that far as that the mind of man a sound magician is a demigod here tie my brain to get a d e t a as I said this is in densely experience in densely articulated and it wants to his mind wants to stretch stretch as far as human mind can go and he thinks these are limitless possibilities. So this is another monologue and this is a very powerful theme and a very powerful monologue so again you can see the different examples that we have placed before you and you can see which ones you like and therefore also it may trigger your own creativity I if I had time I would have actually read many examples of modern drama monologues within that but you know we do not have sufficient time for this purpose later on we may be able to dip into some of these examples. I would have really like to read from Beckett's waiting for Godot lucky speech and that is one of the most powerful monologues and also a very demanding one because this is very incoherent it is a very incoherent monologue almost as incoherent as most of the time our own inner conversations are they are not exactly absolutely clearly edged out so it has a very very different kind of feel but I think right now it may be necessary to go to full-fledged monologues that is monologues as an art form and with a kind of autonomy that you associate with an artistic piece. So we thought that we would point out that for such monologues that stand on their own in postmodern period or in recent years some of the qualities that have been singled out for a successful monologue performance most of these are not meant for reading most of them are meant for performance and what has been pointed out time and again is the vocal qualities of the performer very important body and facial expression and also of course the script is prepared by many of them but it is improvised you know the performance is improvised around the basic skeletal idea the script or the point of view can be autobiographical or it can be issue based you know or a blend of the two. So the example that we have chosen it contains both the elements this is a recent monologist Mike Daisy whose piece the agony and ecstasy of Steve Jobs actually caught the attention of a lot of people who saw the performance or who saw it on YouTube or who you know were able to invite him to their countries like he came to India I think last year and he did workshop around his monologues but it has caught the attention of many and I think it may be quite useful to directly go to his own I think blog because it shows some of the powerful contradictions some of the painful contradictions of the age of globalization this particular piece revolves around his admiration for Apple computer products but also his concern about the working condition of the workers in China who make the components for his computer and in that sense the work is outsourced. So the labor laws in the US and the labor laws elsewhere and how finally a product should be able to take care of the labor practice of whoever is working for them so that it opens up some very serious issues of labor and labor laws all over the world and therefore I think it may be good to see how he presents his own ideas you can see the full piece yourself but this must have given you some sense of monologue as an independent kind of exercise and artistic exercise and monologues within place. Both these really will help you understand your own relationship to monologues or your own relationship to writing a longer piece where each character has to be etched out in a distinctive way so it helps you work on these characters you know separately and as an exercise we recommend it very strongly. Let me place these composition exercises before you what I would like you to do is to go back to your literary notebook if you remember the first step we had taken that step was related to the maintenance of a notebook in which you would also jot down from time to time in case you were deeply affected by an idea or an emotion or you observe something new since you wanted to hone your writing skills this was seen as an important first step so what you can do is to go back to this literary notebook to write a monologue for performance. So the steps of the process perhaps we can mention are related to your decision if you first of all want to dramatize anything from this diary notation by way of working out a monologue the second question would be to sort of decide whether you want to retain the autobiographical flavor or you would like to imagine a character and if that is so I think what will happen is that you it would be beneficial to watch your own distancing process that is even if your jottings are somewhat autobiographical and of course they come from your own perceptual world. But if you are working out a character then watch your distancing process for this purpose again you can go back to Albert Camus the discussion of his diaries that we had undertaken otherwise you can just take a clean clear you know take on autobiographical or fictional piece that you want to work on. The fictional piece of course for this imaginary character would demand a lot more of this extending your sensibilities to see the world view of this creation of yours. There are couple of insights that the BBC mini courses on creative writing had offered regarding the use of monologue and they titled it perspective first person because this is what they feel about the use of monologue and also the pervasive sort of presence of this form for aspiring writers in early part of their career because they usually like to use the first person point of view and monologue actually works very well if you do so. Many aspiring writers are attracted to writing in the first person and perhaps this is because the first person is easy to understand in structural terms because it facilitates closeness in the readers and the main character. They go on to say however the important thing to understand when selecting a point of view is that they have all got pros and cons. So we come to the subject of point of view. How do you work that out? I think these decisions you will have to make and discuss it with the person who is teaching you this course or send us some of your queries. But some of the things that you would have to think about while writing this monologue is the locale in which you would place the character, the action that is even if it is not action oriented but since the feelings or thoughts of the characters are presented through activities. Hence choose the activity and the action of the character imaginatively. Do not use it as in a routine fashion because routine is one of the biggest killers of creativity. I think this is one of the statements that Camus had made. I am just extrapolating that because you know it sort of deadens your perception sometimes. So do not just you know see anything that you choose as routinely representative of the world that you wish to create. You have to think about why you are choosing a particular activity. What is the significance of it? Even if you do not have the Aristotelian sense of magnitude but you have to have a sense of why you are choosing that activity. That is the motivation, the reason behind the logic, the creative logic behind it. Story and plot again consider the manner in which the events would be constructed or implied in the monologue. I think both are important because when you place a character, the character has a past and it is the present that you capture. So sense of the past or anything that you think is necessary in order to crystallize that emotion or that thought or that situation. Theme, the theme of a play is crucial in determining your convictions and a successful presentation. I mean this is one of the most important things about writing. You have to have honesty and conviction. If you do not have this conviction about the character, it is very hard to write a piece that will grip the attention of your reader. Now you may say that it is really not possible to have that relationship with every character but I would say that think about this a little harder and see how strongly you feel about that character. Why do you want to create that character? And I think some bit of self-questioning will help you understand all these aspects because they have to come together. We are only separating out these ideas in order to clarify the initial steps but they actually come together in a sort of cohesive whole. So I think the conviction is very important and in both varieties of monologue whether it is autobiographical or fictional, the belief in one subject matter is really of utmost importance. Here and the character's speech again, the individuality of the character should be worked out in accordance with motivational aspects that are teased out. Some of the recent writers whose monologues you may want to read, I found them difficult but fascinating is the American playwright Mamet, David Mamet. And the reason of course I had difficulty with it, with those monologues is related to the fact that they are so, so steeped in the local flavor that if you are not familiar with some of those local elements of the character's life or a social ethos, it becomes somewhat difficult to understand. But you know you can think of other examples. Writing monologues for your character workbook has pointed out is an excellent way of getting inside them. A monologue offloads what is on their mind. They may comment on the action, offer their opinion, state their case or even explored in an aria of expression. And I think he must have been thinking about Lucky's speech in Waiting for Good All. That is my suspicion. In addition to the verbalizations of the characters, thoughts and feelings, the silence between the verbalizations are equally important. We have talked about the eloquence of silence on stage. So do think about the silences between sentences and this artistic mechanism is described as the subtext. So think of the subtext also. You do not have to artificially construct everything. As I said if you have conviction about your character and you try to match your view of that character with the writing process, you will find your way around this whole process of discovery. Writing is a process of discovery. A monologue will help you discover your own sense of the self, your own sense of the writing self and the sense of the self of the character that you want to create. And I think that is where we would like to conclude this session. I would like to conclude it by this statement about the selfhood issue and self dramatization because it really provoked me, provoked a lot of thought and discussion when we read it the first time. This is by Nietzsche and it was quoted by Richard Schekner in the box title, the power of believing in the self one is performing. So powerful is the sense of the self and when you present it for a monologue on stage, I think you can remember this self dramatization element from Nietzsche's statement. And I will read as a concluding remark, even when in the deepest distress the actor ultimately cannot cease to think of the impression he and the whole scenic effect is making even for example at the burial of his own child. He will weep over his own distress and the ways in which it expresses itself as his own audience. I think this remark applies not only to the actor but also to the writer. Think about it and move on with your writing. Try out these possibilities. Here is the works cited list for you and we hope you will in addition dip into the YouTube resources that are fortunately available so very easily to all of us and enjoy your writing work. Thank you.