Soliloquy
Soliloquy is a
dramatic technique of speaking alone on the stage. It is a dramatic convention
in which a character expresses his thoughts and feelings while no one remains
on the stage. Playwrights employ the soliloquy as a device to provide the
audience with information about the character’s motives, plans, and state of
mind, to explain earlier events and actions that have occurred offstage, or to
fill in other necessary background. For example, four lines of Hamlet’s famous
soliloquy here:
To be or not to
be; that is the question.
Whether it is
nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and
arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms
against a sea of troubles.
A
soliloquy is different from aside. Both in soliloquy and in aside only
one character speaks, in soliloquy none is allowed to be present on the stage,
in aside some other characters remain present on the stage but they cannot hear
the utterance of the character who made an aside. A soliloquy is also different
from the dramatic monologue. A soliloquy is a dramatic technique but the
dramatic monologue is a form of poetry in which a single speaker speaks to
silent listener who respond only by physical gesture.
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