Dramatic Devices

Soliloquy

as an

Effective dramatic device

What are dramatic devices

• Dramatic devices are conventions that are used in drama to enhance the action on stage. This can be used for many effects, including realism, emphasis or contrast.

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• Dramatic devices are essential tools in theatre. They serve as stand-ins for reality, enabling the audience to perceive the performance as authentic within its staged context.

Literary device vs Dramatic devices

• The term ‘literary device’ refers to the structures writers use in their creative writing to communicate with their audiences.
• Presenting a story about people to a reader or an audience, making the characters seem like real people in real situations in real places, doing things that real people do – fighting, falling in love, dying – is a trick because they are not real people doing real things.
• The writer has the task of making the audience identify with the characters and events of the story and to do that he or she uses an array of devices to help him or her create the illusion of reality.
• The better the writer is at doing that and the greater the mastery the writer has of the range of literary devices the more effective the work will be.
• Shakespeare is, as a writer, right at the top of the scale.

Dramatic device in a play

• A play has action as an essential part of the plot.
• It need some tools to make the plot interesting.
• Soliloquy, aside, dramatic irony, etc. are such tools.
• A dramatic device is anything that drives the action. In Shakespeare’s plays, they come one after another, each one following closely on the previous one.

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Soliloquy�

• It is a speech in which a character, who is usually alone on the stage, expresses his or her thoughts aloud. It is a very useful device, as it allows the writer to convey a character’s most intimate thoughts and feelings directly to the audience.
• The convention is that the audience is allowed to hear the character’s thoughts. He or she is not talking, but thinking. Shakespeare uses soliloquies liberally, and some of his finest pieces of writing are in this form, for example, the ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy in Hamlet.

How it works:

• Have you wondered what it might be like to be able to read everyone's minds?
• Is being privy to people's innermost thoughts and desires a blessing or a curse?
• In a drama, the literary device that expresses a character's internal sentiments to the audience is called a soliloquy.

Simplified definition

• A soliloquy is a literary device, most often found in dramas, in which a character speaks to him or herself, relating his or her innermost thoughts and feelings as if thinking aloud. In some cases, an actor might direct a soliloquy directly to the audience, such that rather than the audience "overhearing" the character's spoken thoughts, the character is actively sharing his or her thoughts with the audience. Usually, no other characters are present when one character is giving a soliloquy. If other characters are present, the play is typically—though not always—staged to indicate that these characters cannot hear the soliloquy being spoken.

Some additional key details about soliloquies:

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• The term soliloquy comes from the Latin, soliloquium, which means "talking to oneself."
• Because soliloquies allow the audience to know what a character is thinking or feeling, a soliloquy often creates dramatic irony, as the audience is made aware of thoughts and events that the other characters in the play are not.
• Soliloquies were once very common in dramas—they appear frequently in Shakespeare. But as plays shifted toward realism in the late 18th century, soliloquies became less frequent.

Soliloquy vs. Monologue vs. Aside�

• Soliloquies, monologues, and asides are easy to confuse: they all involve a solitary speaker. However, there are fundamental differences between them based on both the length of the speech and who's listening to it.

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• Like a soliloquy, a monologue is a speech delivered by a single speaker. The difference between the two types of speech is its audience:

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• In a soliloquy, the speaker is giving a long speech to him or herself (or to the audience).
• In a monologue, the speaker is giving a long speech to other characters.
• Putting that in practical terms: If other characters respond (or could respond) to a character's speech, or if a character is clearly addressing a specific person or people, then it cannot be a soliloquy.

Soliloquy vs. Aside�

• An aside resembles a soliloquy in that only the audience—not the other characters onstage—can hear an aside. For instance, in this scene from Hamlet, Hamlet responds to his step-father Claudius calling him "my son" with an aside saying he's more related to his uncle than he'd like to be:

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CLAUDIUS

Take thy fair hour, Laertes. Time be thine,

And thy best graces spend it at thy will.—

But now, my cousin Hamlet, and my son—

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HAMLET

(aside) A little more than kin and less than kind.

• Here Hamlet is speaking his own secret thoughts to himself in a way that other characters can't hear. However, asides are different from soliloquies because of their length. While there is no clear "word count" at which you can distinguish between an aside and a soliloquy, an aside is usually just a few words or lines, while a soliloquy is a longer speech. H

Soliloquy vs. Interior Monologue�

• An interior monologue is a record of a character's inner thoughts. Interior monologues can resemble soliloquies in that they depict a character's innermost thoughts and feelings, but unlike a soliloquy, the interior monologue is not meant to be performed. Put more bluntly: even though a soliloquy reveals a character's thoughts, it is a speech-act. A soliloquy must be spoken in order to be a soliloquy, while an inner monologue by definition will never be spoken: it's a record of a character's thoughts.

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• Because they are records of a character thinking and not speaking, inner monologues are rare in dramas (as staging them would have to include some way to reveal a character's thoughts without that character speaking them, for instance through something like a voiceover delivered over a speaker).

Shakespeare: master in Soliloquy �

• Shakespeare's soliloquies are often praised as the most powerful parts of his plays.
• Through soliloquy, he is able to show complicated characters who experience inner turmoil and conflicting thoughts.
• The soliloquies are also often the most dramatic and revealing moments in the plays, because through them characters reveal what is actually happening, or what they are actually feeling, which can sometimes conflict with the way people are behaving—and this makes for dramatic tension.

Macbeth’s soliloquy

• Macbeth's soliloquy from Act 2, Scene 1 shows him grappling with a guilty conscience over his plan to kill the king and take power for himself. By revealing his inner thoughts as he tries to figure out if the dagger is or is not real, the soliloquy reveals not just his thoughts but the state of his mind:

"Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? or art though but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? [...]"

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Hamlet’s soliloquies

• In the play, Hamlet delivers seven soliloquies (or a speech that the audience can hear but the other characters cannot). These speeches let us know what Hamlet is thinking but not saying.
• To really understand the plot development of Hamlet, one needs to understand the actual meaning and concept of each of Hamlet's soliloquies.
• These soliloquies are the pivotal pillars of the drama and are still considered some of Shakespeare's most brilliant writing. You will likely recognize lines, such as the famous "To be or not to be ..." Without reading these seven soliloquies, one cannot enjoy the true experience of this amazing drama.

Hamlet's Fourth Soliloquy (to be or not to be)��

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?... (Act 3, Scene 1)

• The first six words of the soliloquy establish a balance. There is a direct opposition – to be, or not to be. Hamlet is thinking about life and death and pondering a state of being versus a state of not being – being alive and being dead.
• In this soliloquy, there’s a sense of agonized frustration in this soliloquy that however bad life is we’re prevented from doing anything about it by fear of the unknown.

Why do Writers Use Soliloquies?�

Soliloquies offer a variety of different possible effects, regardless of whether they are being used in a Shakespearean play or a more modern drama.

• Exposition: Characters can reveal action that has taken place off-stage or off-screen but is critical to understanding the current story.
• Revealing inner thoughts: A soliloquy gives an audience direct access to a character's thoughts and feelings, with the result that the audience knows that character and the character's inner struggles in a unique way.
• Revealing more than inner thoughts: While a character may explore their thoughts in a soliloquy, the way that they explore those thoughts can be even more revealing to the audience. King Lear, for instance, seems unaware that his soliloquies are more than angry diatribes: they reveal to the audience his descent into madness.
• Creating dramatic irony: A writer can ramp up the dramatic tension in a play by using a soliloquy to reveal to an audience a character's thoughts or plans that the other characters don't know.
• Making the audience complicit with a character: There is a certain joy in rooting for the villain, especially if you, as the audience, are aware of the villain's plans and relish them just as the villian does. Writers know this, and from Shakespeare with Iago to the writers of House of Cards with Frank Underwood, they use soliloquies to place the audience's allegiance with the villain.
• Accessing a tradition: Because soliloquies are such a defining feature of Shakespeare's and other classic Renaissance plays, writers might include a soliloquy as a way to connect their work to that tradition.

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