First published in 1994. The Modern Monologue is a continuation of the previous collection The Classical Monologue. This starts at the dawn of the modern age in 1892, presenting a survey of indispensable speeches from plays that continue to shape the course of modern theatre. The plays included in this collection also happen to be the ones that have helped to define modern acting in all its many guises. Modern playwrights such as Brecht, Genet, Beckett, Ionesco, Pinter, Shepard, Guare, Nichols and Churchill, to name only a handful of the dramatists represented here, assume that a play and its characters are malleable and shifting; that mood swings, strangeness and sudden eruptions are key components of modern theatre's compelling attraction.

Table of Contents:
Notes to the Actor, Absent Friends (1974) Alan Ayckbourn, After the Fall (1964) Arthur Miller, Antigone (1944) Jean Anouilh, The Balcony (1956) Jean Genet, The Bald Prima Donna (1950) Eugene Ionesco, Blithe Spirit (1941) Noel Coward, Blues for Mister Charlie (1964) James Baldwin, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) Tennessee Williams, Cloud Nine (1979) Caryl Churchill, The Cocktail Party (1950) T. S. Eliot, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1967) Peter Nichols, East (1975) Steven Berkoff, Faith Healer (1979) Brian Friel, The Glass Menagerie (1945) Tennessee Williams, The Good Person of Sichuan (1939-40) Bertolt Brecht, Happy Days (1961) Samuel Beckett, Hello and Goodbye (1965) Athol Fugard, The House of Blue Leaves (1971) John Guare, Huis Clos [In Camera/No Exit] (1944) Jean-Paul Sartre, Icarus's Mother (1965) Sam Shepard, The Iceman Cometh (1940) Eugene O'Neill, Jumpers (1972) Tom Stoppard, La Turista (1967) Sam Shepard, The Lark (1953) Jean Anouilh, Long Day's Journey into Night (1940) Eugene O'Neill, Look Back in Anger (1956) John Osborne, The Maids (1947) Jean Genet, The Misunderstanding (1944) Albert Camus, Napoli Milionaria (1945) Eduardo de Filippo, Old Times (1971) Harold Pinter, Otherwise Engaged (1975) Simon Gray, The Plough and the Stars (1926) Sean O'Casey, Pygmalion (1912) Bernard Shaw, The Room (i960) Harold Pinter, Roots (1959) Arnold Wesker, The Ruffian on the Stair (1964) Joe Orton, The Rules of the Game (1919) Luigi Pirandello, The Ruling Class (1968) Peter Barnes, Saint Joan (1924) Bernard Shaw, Sawd (1965) Edward Bond, The Sea (1973) Edward Bond, Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1974) David Mamet, Spring Awakening (1892) Frank Wedekind, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) Tennessee Williams, Summer and Smoke (1948) Tennessee Williams, Ubu Rex (1896) Alfred Jarry, A View from the Bridge (1955) Arthur Miller, Who's Afraid of Virginia Wooip (1962) Edward Albee