Arnold Wesker's plays, written over a period of more than fifty years, offer actors, male and female, a remarkable source of monologues covering themes such as friendship, death, old age, political disillusion, failed love, and self-discovery fuelled by emotions ranging through anger, joy, hope, fear, outrage, love, bewilderment, guilt, and comic irony.

This is Wesker's own selection of them. In addition to definitive versions of famous monologues such as Paul’s speech from The Kitchen and Beatie Bryant’s triumphant speech from the end of Roots, this volume constitutes an introduction to an unknown Wesker. To those already familiar with The Wesker Trilogy and other plays, this volume contains further evidence of this author's power and passion.The volume also includes synopses of the plays from which the monologues come.