Monologue & Soliloquy

Monologue (pronounced mon-uh-lawg or mon-uh—log)

(1) A form of dramatic entertainment, comedic solo, or the like by a single speaker, delivered to others.

(2) In casual use, a prolonged talk or discourse by a single speaker, especially one dominating or monopolizing a conversation; a monopolizing utterance.

Circa 1550: From the French monologue (on the model of dialogue), from the Ancient Greek, via the Byzantine Greek μονόλογος (monólogos) (speaking alone or to oneself), the construct being monos (single, alone), from the primitive Indo-European root men- (small, isolated) + logos (speech, word), from legein (to speak), from the primitive Indo-European root leg- (to collect, gather), with derivatives meaning "to speak” (as in “to pick out words”).  The travelogue (originally a talk on travel), dates from 1903, the construct a hybrid of travel + logue (abstracted from monologue) and coined by US traveler, photographer and filmmaker Burton Holmes (1870-1958), who essentially invented the multi-media documentary lecture in its modern understanding.

Monologue, monologist & monology are nouns, monologuer & monologize are verbs, monologic & monological are adjectives and monologically is an adverb.  There was once as debate about whether the noun monologician existed and it seems now not, monologist used on the rare occasions such a form is needed.  The noun plural is monologues, the present participle monologuing and the simple past and past participle monologued.  The alternative spelling is monolog.

Soliloquy (pronounced suh-lil-uh-kwee)

(1) As a theatrical device, an utterance or discourse by a person who is talking to himself or herself or is disregardful of or oblivious to any others present (often used as a device in drama to disclose a character's innermost thoughts).

(2) The act of talking while or as if alone.

1595–1605: From the Late Latin sōliloquium (a talking to oneself), the construct being sōli- (from sōlus (sole)) + loqu(ī) (to speak) from primitive Indo-European root tolkw- (to speak) + -ium.  English picked up the word from the title of Saint Augustine's (354-430) somewhat unsatisfactory treatise Soliloquiorum libri duo (Two Books of Soliloquies (387-388)), Augustine said to have coined the word, by analogy with the Ancient Greek monologia.

In the technical jargon of musical criticism (used widely in many languages), a soliloquent is a soloists.  In psychiatry, there’s even a distinction between “the internal soliloquy” in which the patient imagines speaking to themselves and the “internal monologue” in which others might in the mind be summoned to listen or respond.  Soliloquy & soliloquist are nouns, soliloquise (also soliloquize) & the most pleasing soliloquiaste are verbs.  The present participle is soliloquying or soliloquing and the simple past and past participle is soliloquied; the noun plural is soliloquies.

In drama, there are three types of soliloquy: (1) the most common form is where the character speaks either to themselves or the universe, essentially thinking out loud (or in the technical language of theatre direction “talking to an empty room”.  As a dramatic device, it’s the expression of the character’s inner thoughts and the structural equivalent of first-person narration in written fiction. (2) Soliloquies are sometimes delivered to some specific but non-human; that might be a skull, a book, an animal or a corpse (the (sort-of) exception to the non-human rule), it being necessary only that what is being addressed cannot hear or respond.  (3) The third type appears to break the rules but theorists insist it remains a soliloquy.  This is the so-called “breaking the fourth wall” (ie the (imaginary) wall between the actor and audience (the other three being the backdrop and the wings)) during which the actor directly will speak to the audience.  If this is just a few words then it’s a stage whisper or an aside but if a long-form speech, then it’s a soliloquy.

Soliloquy is sometimes wrongly used where monologue is meant, even the most famous in English literature ("to be, or not to be") from Shakespeare’s Hamlet is sometimes called a monologue.  In general use, monologue is the more popular word and, of course, except on stage, soliloquies are rarely seen in public.

The Death of Juliet. Oil on canvas, 1793, by Matthew William Peters (circa 1742-1814)

Farewell!--God knows when we shall meet again.

I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins

That almost freezes up the heat of life:

I'll call them back again to comfort me;--

Nurse!--What should she do here?

My dismal scene I needs must act alone.--

Come, vial.--

What if this mixture do not work at all?

Shall I be married, then, to-morrow morning?--

No, No!--this shall forbid it:--lie thou there.--

What if it be a poison, which the friar

Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead,

Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd,

Because he married me before to Romeo?

I fear it is: and yet methinks it should not,

For he hath still been tried a holy man:--

I will not entertain so bad a thought.--

How if, when I am laid into the tomb,

I wake before the time that Romeo

Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point!

Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,

To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,

And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?

Or, if I live, is it not very like

The horrible conceit of death and night,

Together with the terror of the place,--

As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,

Where, for this many hundred years, the bones

Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd;

Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,

Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,

At some hours in the night spirits resort;--

Alack, alack, is it not like that I,

So early waking,--what with loathsome smells,

And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,

That living mortals, hearing them, run mad;--

O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,

Environed with all these hideous fears?

And madly play with my forefathers' joints?

And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?

And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,

As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?--

O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost

Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body

Upon a rapier's point:--stay, Tybalt, stay!--

Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.

Romeo and Juliet (1597) Act 4, Scene 3 by William Shakespeare (circa 1564–1616).