Looking for a Monologue?
Here's Where to Start.

Free and Legal: Classical Sources

Shakespeare and his contemporaries are in the public domain, so the full texts are free.

• Folger Shakespeare Library — the gold-standard free editions, searchable, with line numbers and glosses.
• Project Gutenberg — free complete texts of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Webster, Sheridan, Wilde, Shaw, Ibsen (in translation), Chekhov (in translation), and thousands more.
• Open Source Shakespeare — excellent for searching speeches by character and counting lines.

One caution on translated playwrights (Chekhov, Ibsen, Molière): the original play may be public domain while a specific translation is still under copyright. Older translations on Gutenberg are free; newer ones are not.

Anthologies Worth Owning

A good anthology gives you curated, audition-length material with context — and proves the piece comes from a real play.

• The Good Audition Guides (Nick Hern Books) — especially Contemporary Monologues for Teenagers: Female and Male, edited by Trilby James. Curated by a drama-school audition tutor; every piece is from a published play, with smart notes on context and playing.
• In Performance series by JV Mercanti (Applause) — Contemporary Monologues for Teens and Contemporary Monologues: Late Teens–20s. Edited by a college acting-program director; age-targeted and built from published contemporary American plays.
• Monologues for Actors of Color: Women and Men, edited by Roberta Uno (Routledge) — the essential collections for actors of color, drawn from published plays by leading American playwrights.
• Best Contemporary Monologues series, edited by Lawrence Harbison (Applause) — age-banded volumes including a kids/teens collection.
• The Best Women's / Men's Stage Monologues annuals (Smith & Kraus) — fresh material from very recent plays; double-check that the source play is published and obtainable before you commit.

Publishers and Play Catalogs

When you want the actual script — and you should always get the actual script:

• Concord Theatricals — home of the Samuel French catalog; thousands of acting editions, searchable by cast size and genre.
• Dramatists Play Service — the other major American licensing house and script publisher.
• Theatre Communications Group / TCG Books — publishes much of the serious contemporary American repertoire, including most recent Pulitzer plays.
• Nick Hern Books and Methuen Drama / Bloomsbury — the heart of the British and international contemporary catalog.
• The Drama Book Shop (New York) — if you can visit, the staff are a monologue-finding resource in themselves.
• Your public library — and worldcat.org to find which nearby library holds any play.

Editorial Lists for Ideas

• Backstage — regularly publishes college-audition monologue roundups (e.g., "46 Monologues That Are Perfect for College Auditions"). Useful as a starting menu, not a final answer; some listed pieces are now widely used.
• New Play Exchange — a database of new plays searchable by character age and cast; great for discovering material no panel has heard, though check each play's publication status.

Conservatory Set Lists

Read them even if you're not applying there.

Several conservatories publish their recommended or required monologue lists publicly. They're free, professionally curated, and full of ideas — just remember they're built for those schools' applicant pools:

• NIDA (Australia) — publishes a substantial annual monologue list, classical and contemporary.
• WAAPA (Australia) — annual audition monologue list.
• Griffith University Musical Theatre (Australia) — set-list PDF with full texts.
• Actors Centre Australia — annual recommended monologue list.

US programs generally do not publish lists (Juilliard says so outright) — they publish rules. Read each program's audition page carefully for requirements like "from a published play," time limits, and classical/contemporary definitions.

What to Avoid

• Free-monologue websites and "monologue mills." Pieces written just to be audition monologues — not from real plays — are explicitly rejected by many programs and read as inexperience everywhere else. If it isn't from a published, produced play, keep looking.
• Film and TV scripts. A few US programs allow them; most conservatories (especially in the UK) do not. Know the rule for every school on your list.
• Overdone pieces. Some monologues are performed so often that panels dread them. Before you commit, search whether your piece appears on "overdone" lists — the best-known is the one maintained at monologueaudition.com — and ask any coach or drama teacher you trust.
• Pieces far from your age. A 17-year-old playing a divorced 45-year-old rarely lands. The strongest choice is a character a panel can believe you are, today.
• Poems, song lyrics, and novel excerpts. Almost universally against the rules.

The Real Secret

Read plays. The students with the freshest, best-fitting material found it by reading widely — recent Pulitzer winners and finalists, the catalogs above, and the full plays behind any monologue they liked in an anthology. The monologue you find on page 60 of a play nobody else read this season is worth ten from page one of a Google search.