Monologues vs. Soliloquies

Monologue Definition- from the Greek monos (“single”) and legein (“ to speak”) – is a speech given by a single person to an audience.

Monologue Example Antony delivers a well-known monologue to the people of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. You probably know how it starts: “Friends, Romans, countrymen lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones: So let it be with Caesar.”

Other Examples of Monologues Samwise Gamgee to Frodo In The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien O’Brien’s George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty – Four Elizabeth’s Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein

Soliloquy Definition – from the Latin solus (“alone”) and loqui (“to Speak”) – is a speech that one gives to oneself. In a play, a character delivering a soliloquy talks to themselves – thinking out loud, as it were – so that the audience better understands what is happening to the character internally.

Soliloquy Example The most well-known soliloquy in the English language appears in Act III, Scene 1 of Hamlet: “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?”

Other Examples of Soliloquy Juliet’s “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” Macbeth’s “Is this a dagger which I see before me?” Valjean’s Les Miserables Tony’s soliloquies (songs) Something’s Coming, Maria From West Side Story