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.

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!"

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.

Nurse - Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare)

Even or odd, of all days in the year,

Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen.

Susan and she -God rest all Christian souls!-

Were of an age: Well, Susan is with God;

She was too good for me. -But, as I said,

On Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen;

That shall she, marry; I remember it well.

'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;

And she was wean'd -I never shall forget it-,

Of all the days of the year, upon that day;

For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,

Sitting in the sun under the dovehouse wall.

My lord and you were then at Mantua-

Nay, I do bear a brain. -But, as I said,

When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple

Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,

To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug!

Shake, quoth the dovehouse! 'Twas no need, I trow,

To bid me trudge.

And since that time it is eleven years,

For then she could stand high-lone; nay, by th' rood,

She could have run and waddled all about;

For even the day before, she broke her brow;

And then my husband -God be with his soul!

'A was a merry man- took up the child.

'Yea,' quoth he, 'dost thou fall upon thy face?

Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit;

Wilt thou not, Jule?' and, by my holidam,

The pretty wretch left crying and said 'Ay.'

To see now how a jest shall come about!

I warrant, an I should live a thousand years

I never should forget it. 'Wilt thou not, Jule?' quoth he,

And, pretty fool, it stinted and said 'Ay.'