Soliloquy – A powerful literary tool

Soliloquy is a powerful device which playwrights, screenwriters and writers exploit whenever the need arises. This tool has been in existence since the Elizabethan era. Without soliloquy, it would be difficult to convey certain actions of performing and literary arts.

So what exactly is a Soliloquy? In simple words, it is the manifestation of thoughts. These inner thoughts which could be about a place, event or people need to be conveyed to the audience and at the same time kept hidden from other participating actors ( Drama ). Imagine a situation where a character is contemplating murder or a coup. This actor needs to send across his mental deliberations to the people watching the play and also maintain secrecy – from other performers.

Soliloquy connects various actions through spoken dialogue and expression of thoughts.

Even authors exploit this form of process. Whenever a character thinks his words are either shifted onto a new paragraph, italicized or simply tagged with “he thought or she thought”, also called thought tags. While in performing arts, a character actually speaks out his thoughts to the audience by taking them into confidence and letting them know what is going on in his/her mind, a character in a book has no such limitations. As mentioned above the switch in the style of formatting or insertion of special phrases does the job.

Here is a soliloquy example from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.

“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.”

Juliet conveys her thoughts through monologue. They revolve around Romeo. She wants to be with him even if they have to be disowned by their respective families ( Montague and Capulet ) who incidentally are wealthy and well known.

Writers speak to themselves all the time, convincing, inspiring when faced with literary hurdles. Soliloquy?