Tennis Court speech.

Tennis Court

TASK: CHOOSE TO BE ONE OF THEPEOPLE FROM THE THIRD ESTATE. WRITE THEIR TENNIS COURT SPEECH.

Speech delivered by a peasant, who had a six children and he could not pay taxes nor earn enough money to feed his family:

“I want to talk about the terrible situation I am living and I strongly believe that most people here will agree with me. I have been working in my father´s farm since I was very young. It doesn´t matter how hard I have tried to be better off, I always have problems to feed my family. The taxes we have to pay are totally unfair and I cannot afford them because if I pay them, my family will starve. I am also fed up the of having local aristocrat’s animals wandering all over my land, ruining my crops. Our lives are hard enough without having to work on the local aristocrat’s land at harvest time for nothing. France needs to change. I don´t know how the King does not realize of our constant struggle to survive. I propose all the people here to remain in this Tennis Court until the King listens to us and he promises to make improvements.

We really deserve a better treatment since we are the ones who work all day long and provide the nobles with food. And we don’t receive any benefits. They exploit us. The king will have to guarantee us better living conditions. We won´t stop until we achieve THAT... “