"A soliloquy is a word taken from Latin and it means ‘talking by oneself.’ It’s a device that dramatists – and Shakespeare to great effect – used to allow a character to communicate his or her thoughts directly to the audience. The character may be surrounded by other characters but the convention is that they can’t hear the soliloquy because it is essentially a piece in which the character is thinking rather than actually speaking to anyone. Audiences in Elizabethan times took the convention for granted. Modern playwrights use a whole range of devices to communicate the thoughts of a character to the audience as the soliloquy has become old fashioned: modern audiences generally expect something more realistic, although they relate to the soliloquies when they attend performances of Elizabethan plays."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
No Sweat Shakespeare, in Definition of Monologues & Soliloquies In Shakespeare
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Soliloquy
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Soliloquy
18 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Soliloquy →
Related Quotes
"Soliloquy is an utterance or discourse by a person who is talking to himself or herself or is disregardful of or obli…"
"Soliloquy is sometimes wrongly used where monologue is meant. Both words refer to a long speech by one person, but a …"
"Shakespeare’s plays feature many soliloquies, some of which are his most famous passages. Perhaps the most famous is …"
"If I had them by the throat! (Hastily kisses the crucifix, and mumbles). In these twenty years I have spent millions …"
"Blest, crowned, beatified with this great reward, this golden reward, this unspeakably precious reward, why should I …"
"By one track, which I have named the internal soliloquy, is oriented towards itself (listening to oneself, being attu…"
"In the middle of your mathematics exam, the batteries go dead on your calculator. You put it away in disgust saying, …"
"Friar Lawrence alone, with a basket The gray-eyed morn smiles on the frowning night, Check’ring the eastern clouds wi…"
"Juliet. Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, Toward Phaeton would whip you to the west And bring I cloudy night imm…"
"Their [Soliloquies] study is particularly fruitful in enabling us to grasp something of the distinctive quality of Sh…"