The Plea
- Classical
- Monologue
- 2 min
- Male role
- Adult
- Advanced
Casting
4 lines- MOI Male role, Adult your role
Full text
MOI
I come, no longer as a master; I come as a supplicant; I laid my pride down on the threshold of this door. Look at what is left, and see what is held by a hand that trembled at holding so strong a thing.
I believed I was enough for myself. One believes that at the age when the sap is strong and destiny is far away. But misfortune came, page after page, to teach me that no man, alone, is ever certain.
I do not ask for the offence to be erased; I ask for a hand, just one, in the dark. A word. One look that is not a sentence. Enough to keep hope alive until morning.
And if you refuse (for it is your right, I know it), I shall leave without a sound, as one leaves a church: head low, but standing; beaten, but at peace for having at least attempted what fear despises.
What you can do with it
Original text written for Acto. Read it, print it, work on it in class, perform it at an audition or on a self-tape: that is what it is for, and you need no permission. For a public performance or any commercial use, write to us at contact@acto.re.
In these selections
The same text, elsewhere
Close to this one
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Honour and Heart
What! Am I thought beaten because I hold my tongue? You take for a confession what is nothing but contempt. Know that if I yield the floor a moment, it is not out of weakness, and still…
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The Departure
It is done. I have chosen. Let heaven be my judge. Too long I drifted between a duty and a vow, listening by turns to blood and to the heart, like a ship with no master between two…
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Remorse
You speak to me softly, and that voice is killing me; for a reproach that is shouted can be fought, argued with; but yours, so gentle, slips in and takes hold, and judges me the better for…