Monologue text

"The fall of the house of Usher"
by E. A. Poe

Information

The Fall of the House of Usher

Role: Roderick Usher
Place: Classical gothic imagery - England in the 1800's
Story synopsis: Roderick Usher is the last surviving male of the Usher clan and seems to suffer from a terrible mental and bodily illness. He has skin pale like that of a corpse, lustrous eyes, and long hair that float about his head. Moreover, he was plagued by a kind of sullen, intense, nervous agitation, similar to that of a drug-addict experiencing withdrawal. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of a certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured even by faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror. Usher's twin sister, Madeline, bore an astonishing resemblance to Roderick. Additionally, it became evident that the brother and sister shared an eerie, almost supernatural, sympathetic bond. Roderick could sense just what Madeline was feeling, and she in turn could read his every thought. Pathetically, though, his beloved Madeline was grievously ill, “beyond the powers of physicians to cure”. One night Usher dashes into the narrators' room. “There was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes... hysteria in his whole demeanor”. And makes a chilling announcement: he had buried his sister alive! All week he had listened to her stirring in her coffin; heard her struggles; felt the beating of her heart...

Monologue

Usher: "Not hear it? Yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long - long - long - many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it -yet I dared not- oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!... I dared not... I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard them - many, many days ago -yet I dared not- I dared not speak! And now... tonight... Ethelred... ha - ha! The breaking of the hermit's door, and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangour of the shield!... say, rather, the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footsteps on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!
(sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul) Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!"
 

~An excerpt from The Fall of the house of Usher by E.A. Poe~
(Adaptated for theatre by Alice Katsavou)

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