Soliloquy

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soliloquy

For other uses, see Soliloquy (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with Somniloquy.
This article is about the theatrical performance. For the psychological disorder, see Self-
talk.
A soliloquy (from Latin solo "to oneself" + loquor "I talk") is a device often used in drama
when a character speaks to himself or herself, relating thoughts and feelings, thereby also
sharing them with the audience, giving off the illusion of being a series of unspoken
reflections.[1] If other characters are present, they keep silent[2] and/or are disregarded by
the speaker.[3]

The term soliloquy is distinct from a monologue or an aside: a monologue is a speech

where one character addresses other characters; an aside is a (usually short) comment by
one character towards the audience, though during the play it may seem like the character
is addressing him or herself.

Soliloquies were frequently used in dramas but went out of fashion when drama shifted
towards realism in the late 18th century.

Good examples in literature can be seen in the character of Iago in Shakespeare's Othello.

Examples of a present form of soliloquy are found in the sitcom Lizzie McGuire and the
political drama House of Cards.

Soliloquies in Shakespeare
Shakespeare’s soliloquies contain some of his most original and powerful writing. Possibly
prompted by the essays of Montaigne, he explores in his greatest tragedies the way
someone wrestles with their private thoughts under pressure, often failing to perceive the
flaws in their own thinking, as in the great galloping I-vii soliloquy (‘if ‘twere done when ‘tis
done…’) in which Macbeth unconsciously reveals through his imagery his fear of damnation
but fails to realise what really holds him back from murdering his king: simply the fact that it
is wrong.

The earliest of the mature soliloquies occur in Julius Caesar where Shakespeare develops
Brutus as a forerunner of Hamlet: the self-critical and honest man struggling to do what’s
right in unpropitious circumstances. Hamlet’s seven soliloquies, and the single major
soliloquy of Claudius in Hamlet can all be described as ‘a search for a difficult sincerity’,
and represent Shakespeare’s most extended study of the workings of the human mind; it is
not until the novels of Dostoyevsky that a character’s inner self is examined with such
power, discrimination and technical skill.

1/2
Shakespeare’s soliloquies are written in blank verse of unparalleled variety, invention and
rhythmic flexibility, suggestive of the rapidly changing moods of their speakers. Often, it is
through vivid and memorable imagery that an individual registers his unique take on the
world: Hamlet’s perception of Elsinore as ‘an unweeded garden that grows to seed’, the
frantically deluded Leontes who feels he has ‘drunk and seen the spider’, the self-
dramatising murderer, Othello ‘Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse’ or Antony’s
transcendent vision of his afterlife with Cleopatra: ‘Where souls do couch on flowers, we’ll
hand in hand, And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze’.

References

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Soliloquy

2/2