Lysistrata by Ellen Mclaughlin [Intercut}

Oh, you don’t all have to stand on my account, boys.  Though it’s certainly heartening to see you so alert.  Do I have your full attention?  Are you ready to make terms?

[Groans]

All right, boys, here’s the deal.  You’ve always let your peckers do the talking in the past, why stop now?  For the first time in history they’re making sense.  Listen to them, there’re saying, “Lay down your swords and lay down with your wives.”

[You fail to grasp the complexity of the thing]

Oh, it’s not so very complicated.  In fact, it’s so obvious that even your dicks can think it through: Sex is good. War is bad.  Look at your women.  We want you to live, we want to love you long and hard, and night after glorious night.  We want to grow old beside you, sleeping in our own warm beds and happily bonking away with great regularity until all our teeth fall out and we have to gum each other.  It’s very simple.  The choice is yours.  All you have to do to embrace us again is to embrace peace.

Miranda - The Tempest (Shakespeare)

(Meeting Ferdinand)

I do not know

One of my sex, no woman’s face remember—

Save, from my glass, mine own. Nor have I seen

More that I may call men than you, good friend,

And my dear father. How features are abroad

I am skill-less of, but, by my modesty,

The jewel in my dower, I would not wish

Any companion in the world but you,

Nor can imagination form a shape

Besides yourself to like of. But I prattle

Something too wildly, and my father’s precepts

I therein do forget.

Nightmare Daughter - Vital Signs (Jane Martin)

This isn't fat, mother, this is bloom.  The bloom on the rose.  This is the radiance you read about in your two hundred romance novels a week.  Don't look down on the carpet.  I'm not on the carpet mother.  I'm here in the kitchen next to the refrigerator.  You caught me, sheriff!  Two in the morning but you sniffed me out!  I'm the Sarah-Lee bandido.  The Che Guevara of Haagen-Daaz ice cream.  By day my name is Nutra-Slim but come sunset, I rip the calorie counter from my heart, I trample grapefruit and carrot sticks and celery beneath my Nike Air Cross-Trainers and I expand.  I fill with cholesterol like a deranged zeppelin   I inhale cheesecake.  I eat graham crackers box and all.  Bits of packaged ham and pepperoni flake my disordered hair.  My fangs drip butter almond swirl.  And with my eyes rolled back in my head I crash through the wall into your pristine, chintz, unendurably perfect bedroom and fling myself on you screaming "this is me mother! This is your nightmare daughter you patronizing, priggish, punishing, unforgiving cancer of my life!"

Eve- Eve's Diary (Mark Twain)

We are getting along very well now, Adam and I, and getting better and better acquainted. He does not try to avoid me any more, which is a good sign, and shows that he likes to have me with him. That pleases me, and I study to be useful to him in every way I can, so as to increase his regard. 
During the last day or two I have taken all the work of naming things off his hands, and this has been a great relief to him, for he has no gift in that line, and is evidently very grateful. He can't think of a rational name to save him, but I do not let him see that I am aware of his defect. Whenever a new creature comes along I name it before he has time to expose himself by an awkward silence. 
In this way I have saved him many embarrassments. I have no defect like this. The minute I set eyes on an animal I know what it is. I don't have to reflect a moment; the right name comes out instantly, just as if it were an inspiration, as no doubt it is, for I am sure it wasn't in me half a minute before. I seem to know just by the shape of the creature and the way it acts what animal it is. 
When the dodo came along he thought it was a wildcat--I saw it in his eye. But I saved him. And I was careful not to do it in a way that could hurt his pride. I just spoke up in a quite natural way of pleasing surprise, and not as if I was dreaming of conveying information, and said, "Well, I do declare, if there isn't the dodo!" I explained--without seeming to be explaining--how I know it for a dodo, and although I thought maybe he was a little piqued that I knew the creature when he didn't, it was quite evident that he admired me. That was very agreeable, and I thought of it more than once with gratification before I slept. How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it!

Mrs Webb - Our Town (Thorton Wilder)

I don't know why on earth I should be crying. I suppose there's nothing to cry about. It came over me at breakfast this morning; there was Emily eating her breakfast as she's done for seventeen years and now she's going off to eat it in somebody else's house. I suppose that's it. 
And Emily! She suddenly said: I can't eat another mouthful, and she put her head down on the table and she cried.
Oh, I've got to say it: you know, there's something downright cruel about sending our girls out into marriage this way. I hope some of her girl friends have told her a thing or two. It's cruel, I know, but I couldn't bring myself to say anything. I went into it blind as a bat myself. The whole world's wrong, that's what's the matter. There they come.

Don John - Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare)

I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in 
his grace, and it better fits my blood to be 
disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob
love from any: in this, though I cannot be said to 
be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied 
but I am a plain-dealing villain. I am trusted with 
a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I 
have decreed not to sing in my cage. If I had my
mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do 
my liking: in the meantime let me be that I am and 
seek not to alter me.

Hamlet - Hamlet (Shakespeare)

O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, 
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That, from her working, all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.
Yet I, 
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing! No, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward? 
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by th' nose? gives me the lie i' th' throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this, ha?
'Swounds, I should take it! for it cannot be 
But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal. Bloody bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! 
O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murther'd,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must -like a whore- unpack my heart with words 
And fall a-cursing like a very drab,
A scullion!
Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! Hum, I have heard
That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,
Have by the very cunning of the scene 
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;
For murther, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ, I'll have these Players
Play something like the murther of my father 
Before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick. If he but blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be a devil; and the devil hath power
T' assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds
More relative than this. The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.