Soliloquy Definition and 4 Examples in Literature

A soliloquy (pronounced “suh-li-luh-kwee”) is a monologue spoken by a theatrical character that expresses the character’s inner thoughts and emotions. You may write soliloquies in common prose, but the most famous soliloquies—including those by Hamlet and countless other William Shakespeare characters—are written in poetic verse. As for its etymology, it comes from the Late Latin sōliloquium (“solus” means alone and “loqui” means to speak).

“Great monologues exist all through theatre. Hamlet’s soliloquies are basically monologues. And some people think that Hamlet was constructed as a sequence of soliloquies, and then the play was kind of constructed around these great soliloquies. So it’s very exciting for a writer to just write a monologue without anything around it. One of these little monologues could be like the stepping stone to a novel. If the character comes alive, the person could be very much a character that you would want to write about." —Joyce Carol Oates

Playwrights like William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe use soliloquies to reveal a character’s thoughts and inner monologue. As they speak alone on a stage, physically facing an audience but emotionally trapped in their minds, characters share their innermost thoughts, motivations, and desires that they’d never articulate to other characters in the play.

1. 1. Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, Act 1, Scene 2 (1604): “Settle thy studies, Faustus, and begin/ To sound the depth of that thou wilt profess;/ Having commenced, be a divine in show,/ Yet level at the end of every art,/ And live and die in Aristotle’s works.”
2. 2. Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Act 3, Scene 1 (1603): “To be, or not to be—that is the question./ Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,/ Or to take arms against a sea of troubles/ And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep,/ No more. And by a sleep, to say we end/ The heartache and the thousand natural shocks/ That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation/ Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;/ To sleep, perchance to dream.”
3. 3. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, Act 2, Scene 1 (1599): “It must be by his death: and for my part,/ I know no personal cause to spurn at him,/ But for the general. He would be crown’d:/ How that might change his nature, there’s the question./ It is the bright day that brings forth the adder;/ And that craves wary walking. Crown him?—that;—/ And then, I grant, we put a sting in him,/ That at his will he may do danger with.”
4. 4. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, Act 2, Scene 2 (1597): “O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?/ Deny thy father and refuse thy name;/ Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,/ And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.”

The difference between soliloquies and monologues is that other characters don’t hear soliloquies. Technically, a soliloquy is a type of monologue; learn more about the differences between these two speeches and a third type—the aside.

• Soliloquy: A soliloquy is a long speech spoken by a single character not intended to be heard by any other character in the play. In the rare cases where someone else is on stage during a soliloquy, the audience should suspend disbelief. Effectively, time stops in the action of the play, because the soliloquy articulates thoughts that might flash through a person’s head in the span of a few seconds.
• Monologue: A monologue is a speech spoken by a single character but addressed to the other characters on stage (or on screen). Examples of monologuists include Linda Loman at the end of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (“Attention must be paid...”); Blake in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross (“As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado…”); Blanche in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (“He acts like an animal, has an animal’s habits!”); and Tom in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie (“I’m leading a double life, a simple, honest warehouse worker by day, by night a dynamic czar of the underworld…”). Learn how to write a monologue.
• Aside: An aside is not spoken to the other characters on stage, which makes it more like a soliloquy than a monologue. But unlike a soliloquy, an aside is typically very short. Within the realm of Shakespeare, Iago makes many asides in Othello. So, too, does John Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Soliloquies enable playwrights to compensate for the lack of a narrator in most dramatic works. In written novels, omniscient narrators can delve into characters’ minds, analyze their emotions, and relay them to an eager reader. In Ancient Greek theater, chorus characters analyzed lead characters’ emotional states in a way that they (the lead characters) could not.

When playwrights choose not to employ a chorus character (or a more overt narrator character, such as in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Into the Woods), the soliloquy is an expeditious literary device that allows the audience access to a character’s inner workings.

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