[.ca] Soliloquy! the Shakespeare Monologues - Women (ISBN 0936839791)

Michael Earley bird gets the worm!:
LET ME TELL YOU SPORTS FANS! This book kicks a caribou's booty

HELPFUL:
This book is very helpful in the memorization of the Monologues. It has full footnotes and even guidelines on how to act out the lines. If it weren't for this book I highly doubt I would have gotten as many Shakespearean parts as I have.

Efficacious:
This paperback is ideal to carry for memorizing and rehearsing. It does not pretend to be comprehensive, but a quick look through some of the noblest monologues for women as well as some "breeches parts" (such as Sarah Bernhardt doing Hamlet.) For an audition, this is grand to review because an actor may not be familiar with every famous piece and may wish to do something different. The editors' advice and suggestions are apt and poignant. Teachers' would undoubtedly benefit from this small book for immediate assignments in class and perhaps abbreviated for critical review. One further thought for the men out there who are reading this: remember, that these parts were originally performed by young males who were considered uncommonly good actors. How about you?

An excellent resource:
Here is an excellent resource for finding Shakespearean monolouges. Earley and Keil have made superb selections and provided the actor with helpful annotation, glossaries and summaries. Of course reading and performing these pieces effectively ultimately requires the actor to read the entire work in order to build a proper context, this volume proves most helpful.

A good guide to the most popular Shakespeare for women:
This book explores many of the most widely-know and popular monolouges for Shakespeare for female characters and a few select monolouges for male characters. The best part about this book is that the monolouges not often comprised of smaller speeches, cut up and pasted. Most of these monolouges are classic, tried and true and really useful for Shakespearen auditions and readings. An adequate amount of plot explanation and scene information is provided, as are explanations for the Elizabethan terminology. Nothing is left unsaid as far as preparation, meaning and suggestions on how a scene should be done. But the lack of variety and the absence of many well-known and good monolouges made me give this book only four stars. I would only recommend this to an actress just starting out in Shakespeare, who dosen't know a lot of Shakespeare plays and would be unable to go direct to the source for a monolouge, or have a certain play in mind. This gives a nice sampling of plays and characters to start out with. But for actresses who know and have experience with Shakespeare, it would probably be even more useful to go to the actual play to find your monolouge.