9 Best Susan Glaspell Monologues

Trifles (Hale)

Category: Play Role: Hale From: Trifles

Hale says

Why, I don’t think she minded -one way or other. She didn’t pay much attention. I said, “How do, Mrs. Wright, it’s cold, ain’t it?” And she said “Is it?” -and went on kind of pleating at her apron. Well, I was surprised; she didn’t ask me to come up to the stove, or to set down, but just sat there, not even looking at me, so I said, “I want to see John.” And then she -laughed. I guess you would call it a laugh. I thought of Harry and the team outside, so I said a little sharp: “Can’t I see John?” “No,” she says, kind o’ dull like. “Ain’t he home?” says I. “Yes,” says she, “he’s home.” “Then why can’t I see him?” I asked her, out of patience. “‘Cause he’s dead,” says she. “Dead?” says I. She just nodded her head, not getting a bit excited, but rockin’ back and forth. “Why -where is he?” says I, not knowing what to say. She just pointed upstairs -like that (himself pointing to the room above). I got up, with the idea of going up there. I walked from there to here -then I says, “Why, what did he die of?” “He died of a rope round his neck,” says she, and just went on pleatin’ at her apron. Well, I went out and called Harry. I thought I might -need help. We went upstairs and there he was lyin’ – –

Trifles (Mrs. Hale)

Category: Play Role: Mrs. Hale From: Trifles

Mrs. Hale says

But I tell you what I do wish, Mrs Peters. I wish I had come over sometimes when she was here. I – -wish I had. I could’ve come. I stayed away because it weren’t cheerful -and that’s why I ought to have come.

I -I’ve never liked this place. Maybe because it’s down in a hollow and you don’t see the road. I dunno what it is, but it’s a lonesome place and always was. I wish I had come over to see Minnie Foster sometimes.

I can see now – Not having children makes less work -but it makes a quiet house, and Wright out to work all day, and no company when he did come in.

Did you know John Wright, Mrs Peters? he didn’t drink, and kept his word as well as most, I guess, and paid his debts. But he was a hard man, Mrs Peters. Just to pass the time of day with him -Like a raw wind that gets to the bone.

I should think she would ‘a wanted a bird. But what do you suppose went with it?

Trifles (Mrs. Hale)

Category: Play Role: Mrs. Hale From: Trifles

Mrs. Hale says

I wish you’d seen Minnie Foster when she wore a white dress with blue ribbons and stood up there in the choir and sang. Oh, I wish I’d come over here once in a while! That was a crime! That was a crime! Who’s going to punish that?

I might have known she needed help! I know how things can be -for women.

I tell you, it’s queer, Mrs Peters. We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things -it’s all just a different kind of the same thing, If I was you, I wouldn’t tell her her fruit was gone.

Tell her it ain’t. Tell her it’s all right. Take this in to prove it to her.

She -she may never know whether it was broke or not.

The Verge (Adelaide)

Category: Play Role: Adelaide From: The Verge

Adelaide says

Claire, dear, I wish I could make you feel how much I care for you. You can call me all the names you like -dull, commonplace, lazy -that is a new idea, I confess, but the rest of our family’s gone now, and the love that used to be there between us all -the only place for it now is between you and me. You were so much loved, Claire. You oughtn’t to try and get away from a world in which you are so much loved, Mother -father -all of us, always loved Claire best. We always loved Claire’s queer gaiety. Now you’ve got to hand it to us for that, as the children say. And can’t you see, dear, that it’s better for us we didn’t? And that it would be better for you now if you would just resolutely look somewhere else? You must see yourself that you haven’t the poise of people who are held -well, within the circle, if you choose to put it that way. There’s something about being in that main body, having one’s roots in the big common experiences, gives a calm which you have missed. That’s why I want you to take Elizabeth, forget yourself, and – I know you have to be yourself, Claire. But I don’t admit you have a right to hurt other people.

The Verge (Claire)

Category: Play Role: Claire From: The Verge

Claire says

But our own spirit is not something on the loose. Mine isn’t. It has something to do with what I do. To fly. To be free in air. To look from above on the world of all my days. Be where man has never been! Yes -wouldn’t you think the spirit could get the idea? The earth grows smaller. I am leaving. What are they -running around down there? Why do they run around down there? Houses? Houses are funny lines and down-going slants -houses are vanishing slants. I am alone. Can I breathe this rarer air? Shall I go higher? Shall I go too high? I am loose. I am out. But no; man flew, and returned to earth the man who left it.

The Outside (Mrs. Patrick)

Category: Play Role: Mrs. Patrick From: The Outside

Mrs. Patrick says

You’re a cruel woman -a hard, insolent woman! I knew what I was doing! What do you know about it? About me? I didn’t go to the Outside. I was left there. I’m only -trying to get along. Everything that can hurt me I want buried -buried deep. Spring is here. This morning I knew it. Spring -coming through the storm -to take me -take me to hurt me. That’s why I couldn’t bear – things that made me know I feel. You haven’t felt for so long you don’t know what it means! But I tell you, Spring is here! And now you’d take that from me – the thing that made me know they would be buried in my heart -those things I can’t live and know I feel. You’re more cruel than the sea! ‘But other things are true beside the things you want to see!’ Outside. Springs will come when I will not know that it is spring. What would there be for me but the Outside? What was there for you? What did you ever find after you lost the thing you wanted?

The People (Ed)

Category: Play Role: Ed From: The People

Ed says

What’s the matter with us is our friends. Just what would we be going on for? To make a few more people like the dear ones who have just left us? Seems to me we could best serve society not doing that. Precisely what do we do? –aside from getting under the bed in Bronxville. Now and then something particularly rotten is put over and we have a story that gets a rise out of a few people, but– we don’t change anything. T

he People. I looked at them all the way across this continent. Oh, I got so tired looking at them–on farms, in towns, in cities. They’re like toys that you wind up and they’ll run awhile. They don’t want to be expressed. It would topple them over. The longer I looked the more ridiculous it seemed to me that we should be giving our lives to–

(picks up the magazine and reads)

“The People–A Journal of the Social Revolution.” Certainly we’d better cut the sub-title. The social revolution is dead.

The People (The Woman)

Category: Play Role: The Woman From: The People

The Woman says

A plain, dark trees off at the edge, against the trees a little house and a big barn. A flat piece of land fenced in. Stubble, furrows. Horses waiting to get in at barn; cows standing around a pump. A tile yard, a water tank, one straight street of a little town. The country so still it seemed dead. The trees like–hopes that have been given up. The grave yards–on hills–they come so fast. I noticed them first because of my tombstone, but I got to thinking about the people–the people who spent their whole lives right near the places where they are now. There’s something in the thought of them–like the cows standing around the pump. So still, so patient, it–kind of hurts. And their pleasures: –a flat field fenced in. Your great words carried me to other great words. I thought of Lincoln, and what he said of a few of the dead. I said it over and over. I said things and didn’t know the meaning of them ’till after I had said them. I said–“The truth–the truth–the truth that opens from our lives as water opens from the rocks.” Then I knew what that truth was. “Let us here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.” I mean–all of them. Let life become what it may become! –so beautiful that everything that is back of us is worth everything it cost.

The People (The Woman)

Category: Play Role: The Woman From: The People

The Woman says

At least he has a heart. It’s only that he feels he must be witty. But you–you’re not going to let us just go away again, are you? He gave up his oyster bed, and this boy didn’t even wait for the dance, and me–I gave up my tombstone. Yes–tombstone. It had always been a saying in our family– “He won’t even have a stone to mark his grave.” They said it so much and so solemnly that I thought it meant something. I sew–plain sewing, but I’ve often said to myself– “Well, at least I’ll have a stone to mark my grave.” And then, there was a man who had been making speeches to the miners–I live in a town in Idaho–and he had your magazine, and he left it in the store, and the storekeeper said to me, when I went there for thread– “Here, you like to read. Don’t you want this? I wish you would take it away, because if some folks in town see it, they’ll think I’m not all I should be.” He meant the cover. So I took it home, and when my work was done that night, I read your wonderful words. They’re like a spring–if you’ve lived in a dry country, you’ll know what I mean. And they made me know that my tombstone was as dead as–well,

(with a little laugh)

as dead as a tombstone. So I had to have something to take its place.