1. Monologues vs. Soliloquies

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

3. 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.”

4. 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

5. 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.

6. 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?”

7. 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