Soliloquy

Soliloquy is an audible oratory or conversation with oneself. It is a term that is typically applied to theatrical characters engaged in a monologue, but can also be a term that is simply descriptive of any occurrence when one talks with oneself. Soliloquy can take the form of a dramatic or comedic monologue that is illusory (or abstractly hallucinagenic or dreamlike) of either a single passage or an entire series of unspoken reflections, and can therefore be a theatrical technique instrumental in advancing several ideas and thoughts in one sequence. In theater, a soliloquy is performed by a single actor on the stage, but more commonly in modern theater, the actor delivers the soliloquy in a sequence known as an "aside."

Examples of soliloquy in literature

From Shakespeare's Hamlet

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Act 2, Scene 2

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Now I am alone.

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O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

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Is it not monstrous that this player here,

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But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

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Could force his soul so to his own conceit

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That from her working all his visage wann'd,

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Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,

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A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

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With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!

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For Hecuba!

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What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

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That he should weep for her? What would he do,

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Had he the motive and the cue for passion

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That I have? He would drown the stage with tears

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And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,

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Make mad the guilty and appal the free,

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Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed

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The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,

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A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,

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Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,

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And can say nothing; no, not for a king,

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Upon whose property and most dear life

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A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward?

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Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?

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Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?

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Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat,

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As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?

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Ha!

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'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be

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But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall

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To make oppression bitter, or ere this

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I should have fatted all the region kites

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With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain!

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Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

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O, vengeance!

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Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,

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That I, the son of a dear father murder'd,

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Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,

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Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words,

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And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,

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A scullion!

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Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! I have heard

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That guilty creatures sitting at a play

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Have by the very cunning of the scene

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Been struck so to the soul that presently

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They have proclaim'd their malefactions;

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For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak

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With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players

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Play something like the murder of my father

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Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks;

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I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench,

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I know my course. The spirit that I have seen

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May be the devil: and the devil hath power

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To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps

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Out of my weakness and my melancholy,

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As he is very potent with such spirits,

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Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds

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More relative than this: the play 's the thing

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Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

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