Drama: Soliloquy, Aside, Stagecraft

This is Unit Fourteen of Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, part one of two: soliloquy, aside and stagecraft, the devices by which a play lets a character speak past the others. Unit thirteen closed by saying soliloquy and aside had been touched without being defined. Here is this unit's governing idea, and it pays off on a stage direction most readers skip: a play cannot report a thought, so it needs a way to let one reach the audience, and the two devices that do it rest on a convention of sincerity and on the question of who can hear. Neither has a headword in the anchor's glossary. We begin with the soliloquy, why it counts as evidence, and how it differs from a monologue. Then the most famous soliloquy in English, read as an argument, and the direction printed immediately before it: two men have concealed themselves, and the audience watched them hide. Then Faustus's last hour, a soliloquy organised by a clock, from commanding the heavens to pleading with them. Last, the aside, its bracket, and Sir Oliver answering a servant's bags and bouquets with a noose and a beating. By the end you will be able to define soliloquy and say why it is evidence. To read Hamlet's speech with its listeners in place. To follow Faustus from command to plea. And to define the aside and read Sheridan's first one.

Four entries to start: why a play needs devices for thought, the soliloquy and its convention, why that convention makes it evidence, and the monologue it is confused with.

Two devices, neither in the glossary.

AIL 1301 Speaking Past the Other Characters

A play cannot report a thought, so it needs a way to let one reach the audience. Two devices do it: a character alone speaking at length, and a character speaking briefly while others stand by unhearing. Neither has a headword in the anchor's glossary, so the band's core tools are undefined there.

Alone, and thinking aloud.

AIL 1302 Soliloquy

A soliloquy is a speech delivered by a character alone on stage, or believing themselves alone, giving thought directly to the audience. The glossary has no headword, so this is the standard sense. The convention is that a soliloquy is sincere, which is what makes it evidence; the convention is sincerity.

The closest drama gets to reliable telling.

AIL 1303 Why a Soliloquy Counts as Evidence

Characters lie to each other and the audience must weigh them. By convention a character alone is not performing, so a soliloquy is the closest a play comes to the reliable narration units ten and eleven had. That is why exam questions cluster on them, and questions cluster here for that reason.

Who else can hear decides it.

AIL 1304 Monologue Against Soliloquy

A monologue is a long speech delivered to other characters who are present; a soliloquy is delivered alone. The glossary defines neither, though it defines dramatic monologue as a poetic form. Audience is the whole distinction: who else can hear, and the glossary defines only the poem form.

Nine entries on Hamlet's speech: the question it puts, the direction before it, what that does to the definition, the irony it creates, the argument's shape, and four figures from fortune's arrows to a devout consummation.

Two courses, weighed.

AIL 1305 "To Be, or Not to Be"

Hamlet asks whether it is 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. The question is put as a choice between two courses, and the speech is an argument about it, not a mood.

Two men are listening, hidden.

AIL 1306 The Stage Direction Before It

Immediately before the speech the text prints a direction: the King and Polonius conceal themselves. The most famous soliloquy in English is delivered with two men listening from hiding, and the audience has watched them hide; here the governing idea pays off, because the direction decides who can hear.

He thinks he is alone; he is not.

AIL 1307 A Soliloquy With an Audience

The definition given earlier in this lecture allowed for a character believing themselves alone, and this is why. Hamlet is not alone; he thinks he is. The convention of sincerity still holds for him, and the scene gains a layer the convention alone would not give it; the definition anticipated this case.

Heard three ways at once.

AIL 1308 Dramatic Irony in the Speech

Unit thirteen's device is operating: the audience knows something Hamlet does not, namely that he is overheard. Every line is heard three ways at once, by the audience, by Hamlet alone, and by two men gathering evidence against him; unit thirteen's device sits inside a soliloquy.

Question, course, objection, consequence.

AIL 1309 The Argument of the Speech

It proceeds as a case: a question posed, one course described, an objection raised, and the objection's consequence drawn out. Unit nine read a sonnet this way and unit thirteen read Hamlet's prayer speech the same way. The method does not change; it is the same method as the sonnet unit's.

Fortune, armed and firing.

AIL 1310 "Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune"

Fortune is given weapons, which is personification in the sense unit seven defined. Outrageous carries its older force of excessive and violent rather than merely shocking. Suffering is redescribed as being under fire, which prepares the military image that follows; outrageous means violent here.

Weapons against an ocean.

AIL 1311 "Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles"

To take arms against a sea is a famously mixed figure: weapons cannot defeat an ocean. Readers have argued both that it is a flaw and that it captures the futility of the course being considered. Decision D6 applies and both readings are reported as readings, disputed and attributed.

Death renamed as sleep, twice.

AIL 1312 "To Die, to Sleep"

Death is renamed as sleep, twice, and the repetition makes the substitution feel settled. Unit seven called this a euphemism, which the glossary does not define. The comfort of the figure is what the rest of the speech will go on to withdraw, and the comfort is later withdrawn.

The register lifts for one clause.

AIL 1313 "A Consummation Devoutly to Be Wished"

A consummation is a completion, and devoutly brings religious language to a wish for death. The register lifts sharply for one clause. Noticing where a speech changes register is unit four's hinge question applied to drama, unit four's hinge inside a speech.

Eight entries on Faustus: the hour that opens with a struck clock, the command to the spheres, the bargaining downward, the Ovid line, the refusal, the plea, the clock as structure, and Hamlet set against Faustus.

One hour, and a clock already struck.

AIL 1314 Faustus's Last Hour

Marlowe gives Faustus a soliloquy in the hour before his damnation. The clock strikes eleven as the scene opens, and he begins that he has but one bare hour to live and then must be damned perpetually. The speech is timed from its first line, timed from the start.

He commands the heavens to stop.

AIL 1315 "Stand Still, You Ever-Moving Spheres"

He orders the spheres of heaven to stand still so that time may cease and midnight never come. A man commands the cosmos, which is an apostrophe in unit seven's sense, addressed to something that cannot answer and will not obey; it is apostrophe, and it fails.

The request shrinks as he makes it.

AIL 1316 "A Year, a Month, a Week, a Natural Day"

Failing to stop time he asks that the hour be lengthened, and the list shortens as he speaks: a year, a month, a week, a day. He is bargaining downward inside a single line, and the diminishing is the characterisation, bargaining downward in one line.

A lover's line, begging for delay.

AIL 1317 "O Lente, Lente Currite, Noctis Equi"

The line is Latin, meaning run slowly, slowly, horses of the night, and it is borrowed from Ovid, where a lover wishes a night with his mistress longer. Faustus uses a line about pleasure to beg for delay of damnation, which is an allusion doing savage work; the source makes the line worse.

Four flat clauses, and refusal.

AIL 1318 "The Stars Move Still, Time Runs"

The answer comes at once: the stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, the devil will come, and Faustus must be damned. Still means continually, the sense unit three trained. Four flat clauses, and the speech's first movement is over; still means continually.

From commanding to pleading.

AIL 1319 "See, Where Christ's Blood Streams in the Firmament"

He cries that he will leap up to heaven, asks who pulls him down, then sees Christ's blood streaming in the firmament and says one drop would save him. The speech has moved from commanding the heavens to pleading with them, inside twenty lines, and the movement is the structure.

The structure is a deadline.

AIL 1320 The Clock as Structure

The speech is organised by an hour passing. It begins as the clock strikes and will end when it strikes again, so its structure is imposed from outside the speaker. Unit nine called that a poem's argument; here the argument is being overtaken by a deadline imposed from outside.

Deliberation against consequence.

AIL 1321 Hamlet Against Faustus

Hamlet's soliloquy weighs a choice he need not make yet; Faustus's records a choice already made and running out. One is deliberation and the other is consequence. Both are soliloquies, and an exam question about purpose would want that difference; same device, opposite situations.

Four entries on the aside: the device defined, how it is marked on the page, Sheridan's boasting servant, and Sir Oliver's answer that the servant never hears.

Others on stage cannot hear it.

AIL 1322 The Aside

An aside is a short remark delivered to the audience, or to one character, which the others on stage are conventionally unable to hear. The glossary has no headword. It is the comic counterpart of the soliloquy and it works on the same convention of sincerity; the glossary omits this too.

A bracket, and nothing else.

AIL 1323 How an Aside Is Marked

The word aside appears in brackets beside the speech, before or after it. Sheridan's School for Scandal carries more than thirty. The bracket is editorial apparatus in the sense of amendment V-9, and it is also the only signal a reader gets: apparatus, and the only signal.

A servant boasting of his style.

AIL 1324 Sheridan's Servant

Trip, a servant, boasts of passing his time agreeably on fifty pounds a year while finding his own bags and bouquets, the accessories of a fashionable man. Sir Oliver, listening, is not meant to be impressed and is not, and Sir Oliver is listening throughout.

Two items answered with two.

AIL 1325 "Halters and Bastinadoes"

Sir Oliver's aside answers the servant's bags and bouquets with halters and bastinadoes, a noose and a beating. The reply rhymes structurally with what prompted it, two items against two, and the audience receives a verdict the servant never hears; the servant hears none of it.

That is soliloquy and aside defined, Hamlet's speech with its listeners, Faustus's hour, and Sheridan's first aside, with the governing idea paid off on a stage direction. You can say why a play needs devices for thought, define a soliloquy on its convention of sincerity, explain why that makes it the closest drama gets to reliable telling, and separate it from a monologue by who can hear. You can read To be, or not to be as an argument, know that the King and Polonius are hidden and the audience watched them hide, see unit thirteen's irony inside a soliloquy, and read fortune armed, the disputed sea, death renamed as sleep, and the register lifting for one clause. You can follow Faustus from commanding the spheres through a year, a month, a week and Ovid's horses to the stars moving still and one drop of blood, read the clock as a structure imposed from outside, and set deliberation against consequence. And you can define the aside, know its bracket is the only signal, and hear halters and bastinadoes answer bags and bouquets. Part two takes stagecraft.