Soliloquy

Soliloquy is the act of speaking alone or to oneself. The classical Latin definition of soliloquy comes from solus, or “alone,” and loqui, “to speak.” In drama, it occurs when a character, alone onstage, speaks their thoughts or feelings aloud. The audience hears the character during the soliloquy, but the speech is not directed to them or the other characters in the play. By comparison, a monologue is a character’s speech directed to either the audience or another character. Soliloquy moves the story along, summing up past occurrences, revealing or analyzing other characters’ motives, or foreshadowing events. A soliloquy allows the audience to identify with a character and gives the playwright an opportunity to explore themes within the drama.

Brief History

Literary, historical, cultural, and religious texts are replete with soliloquies. William Shakespeare wrote some of the best-known soliloquies, perhaps most famously represented by Hamlet’s soliloquy beginning “To be or not to be: that is the question” as the title character considered suicide. Anselm of Canterbury struggled with the existence of God in his Monologion (ca. 1076), when he proclaimed: “It is easy, then, for one to say to himself: Since there are goods so innumerable . . . must we not believe that there is some one thing, through which all goods whatever are good?” In the Old Testament, Job uses a soliloquy to relay his suffering over the loss of his children, health, and land, “Oh, that I were as in the months past, as in the days when God watched over me” (New American Bible, Job 29:2). The words are spoken with the stylistic structure of a literary composition.

Saint Augustine, bishop of Hippo, in 396–430 Common Era, conducted a dialogue between himself and “Reason” concerning the nature of evil and on order, faith, and the ego in his Soliloquia (386; Soliloquies, 1888). In Soliloquium, Peter Abelard, a twelfth-century philosopher and poet, contemplates the relationship between Christian faith and philosophy when he reveals that he “cannot doubt my own existence and will not trust my senses.” Thomas à Kempis, a fifteenth-century German monk, is credited with writing the Soliloquium animae (Soliloquy of the Soul), which he describes as “A discourse with [my]self . . . a free and tranquil mind which longs to meditate on things both inner and Divine” (x–xi).

In classical literature, the soliloquy is most often used in dramas. In Medea (431 Before the Common Era) by Euripides, the protagonist wrestles with her decision to murder her children to avenge her husband’s infidelity, saying, “Farewell my resolve / . . . what shall I do?” In Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy, the final part of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses (1922), Molly rues her marriage to Leopold Bloom: “I thought well as well him as another.” In the novel Les Misérables (1862), Jean Valjean utters his soliloquy to unburden himself from his suffering and guilt: “What have I done, Become a thief in the night.” Abraham Lincoln’s 1834 poem “The Suicide’s Soliloquy” recounts his struggles with mental anguish: “This heart I’ll rush a dagger through.” In Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1875–77; English translation, 1886), the heroine delivers a long soliloquy before her suicide in which she laments her adultery and relinquishes her children to their father. “Why not put out the light,” she questions, “when it’s sickening to look at it all?”

Overview

Stream of consciousness, audience, purpose, and motivation in verbal and written soliloquies may create foreshadowing or hints about what will occur later in the story or drama. Self-dialogue can be classified as inner and private speech that others can hear. A soliloquy can be written, spoken, or internal.

Linguist Yoko Hasegawa has discussed how soliloquy allows the mind to better understand a person’s mental abilities. She writes that language is necessary to manage ideas within the mind. A soliloquy has speech patterns such as accent, pronunciation, and voice. Peter Brooks’s research into the melodramatic mind found that emphatic verbal gestures and outbursts of emotion are evident within soliloquies. In Augustine’s Inner Dialogue: The Philosophical Soliloquy in Late Antiquity (2010), Brian Stock examines how soliloquy aids the narrative identity whereby an individual constructs a continually developing story of the self with characters, plot, and imagery. Furthermore, Stock researches the narrative self and the exploration of theoretical issues in Augustine’s Soliloquies. The nineteenth-century poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge uses call-and-response, a literary device, within his soliloquies.

The field of psychology perceives soliloquy as originating from culture or illness, expressed as a communication and linguistic disorder. Schizophrenic patients often have what are known as “bedtime soliloquies,” episodes of creative, artistic speech and song. Such patients express both inner and private speech during bedtime soliloquies. Since such patients’ private speech is at times able to be heard by others and is often spoken in a type of code or language that only the person speaking understands, those listening perceive the soliloquies as nonsensical or disordered and proof of mental instability. However, various soliloquies originate in bedtime settings or late at night in works of literature. For example, Juliet speaks to the moon, the night, the wind, the sky, and unseen horses in her soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1597). Soliloquy is also a name for a psychological treatment, in which group members speak to themselves, but loudly enough for members to hear, during a group-therapy session.

Soliloquy continued to be a popular literary device for more modern authors as well. Playwright Tennessee Williams employed soliloquies in The Glass Menagerie (1944) and Arthur Miller in The Crucible (1953). Modern adaptations of soliloquies can be found in the voiceovers often used in movies and television shows. The films Trainspotting (1996) and Fight Club (1999) contain often-quoted speeches that might be considered modern takes on the soliloquy. 

Soliloquy is not limited to those with oral speech. Deaf people speak soliloquies in sign language. All cultures and languages have soliloquy, although an alternate word may be used. Other communicative and expressive methods—such as music, art, and dance—employ soliloquy. Prayers and meditations often can be expressed in soliloquy, and soliloquy can take the form of self-talk to manage negative emotions, to conquer an addiction, to face stressful situations, or to learn new tasks.

Bibliography

Adler, Ben. "Streams of Consciousness." Columbia Journalism Review. Columbia Journalism Review, 1 May 2013.

Brooks, Peter. The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess. New Haven: Yale UP, 1995.

Hasegawa, Yoko. "Soliloquy in Japanese and English." Studies in Language, vol. 35, no. 1, 2011, pp. 1–40.

Kenny, Anthony. A New History of Western Philosophy. New York: Oxford UP, 2012.

Lane, Jennifer. "How to Deliver a Soliloquy." Backstage, 27 Oct. 2023, www.backstage.com/magazine/article/what-is-a-soliloquy-76113. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Larkin, Peter. Wordsworth and Coleridge: Promising Losses. New York: Palgrave, 2012.

Puchner, Martin, et al. Norton Anthology of World Literature. New York: Norton, 2012.

Shakespeare, William. Complete Works of William Shakespeare. London: Wordsworth Editions, 2007.

"Soliloquy." The Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/education/glossary/soliloquy. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

"Soliloquy." Literary Devices, literarydevices.net/soliloquy/#google‗vignette. Accessed 11 Oct. 2024.

Stock, Brian. Augustine’s Inner Dialogue: The Philosophical Soliloquy in Late Antiquity. New York: Cambridge UP, 2010.

Zimmerman, Katherine, and Peter Brugger. "Signed Soliloquy: Visible Private Speech." Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, vol. 18, no. 2, 2010, pp. 261–70.