Soliloquies

Wɱ Shakespeare and characters

To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether this nobler to suffer the zings and perils of outrageous inner dialogue…

Crime writers seldom deal with soliloquy in novels and short stories. Hardly surprising: glaringly obvious but seldom mentioned, virtually all great examples come from live drama such as stage plays and movie sets. Unlike our romance sisters, we seldom delve deeply into matters of the heart… not until someone contemplates murder.

Unless, of course, we categorize 1^st person as presumed soliloquy.

[An exception occurs to me: graphic novels, particularly Marvel’s contributions. Young Spiderman had no one but his audience to confide his teenage problems, responsibilities, and financial and female woes.]

Soul System

Soliloquy includes a number of kinds, subsets if you will. These include:

• Soliloquy
• Monologue
• monodrama (Strindberg’s The Stronger)
• self revelation (Othello)
• solo soliloquy (Iago)
• said to object (Hamlet: Alas poor Yorick) 
• exposition, explanation
• dramatic monologue (Robert Browning’s My Last Duchess)
• Aside
• Lampshade (dealing with improbable story point)

Lampshade Hanging

Let’s break out lamp shading for a more thorough explanation. Think of it as drawing attention to it to disarm the audience. For example, the rest of the world doesn’t pack guns like characters in American novels. Agatha Christie handled this issue in And Then There Were None, by having Dr Armstrong say, “It's only in books people carry guns around.”

In classical literature, Dante addressed this a couple of times:

Inferno

That is no cause for wonder
for I who saw it hardly can accept it. (Inferno)

Paradisio

This cry of thine shall do as doth the wind,
    Which smiteth most the most exalted summits,
    And that is no slight argument of honour.
Therefore are shown to thee within these wheels,
    Upon the mount and in the dolorous valley,
    Only the souls that unto fame are known;
Because the spirit of the hearer rests not,
    Nor doth confirm its faith by an example
    Which has the root of it unknown and hidden.

In other words: sure, I speak of only celebrities because you wouldn’t pay attention otherwise.

Soliloquy Examples   ☞

• [-458] Æschylus : Agamemnon

Watchman:

I pray the gods to quit me of my toils,
To close the watch I keep, this livelong year;
For as a watch-dog lying, not at rest,
Propped on one arm, upon the palace-roof
Of Atreus’ race, too long, too well I know
The starry conclave of the midnight sky,
Too well, the splendours of the firmament,
The lords of light, whose kingly aspect shows-
What time they set or climb the sky in turn-
The year’s divisions, bringing frost or fire.

• [1592] Christopher Marlowe : Doctor Faustus

Faustus:

Ah, Faustus.
Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
And then thou must be damn’d perpetually!
Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
That time may cease, and midnight never come;
Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise again, and make
Perpetual day; or let this hour be but
A year, a month, a week, a natural day,
That Faustus may repent and save his soul!

• [1597] William Shakespeare : Romeo and Juliet

Juliet Capulet:

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

• [1599] William Shakespeare : Julius Caesar

Brutus:

It must be by his death: and for my part,
I know no personal cause to spurn at him,
But for the general. He would be crown’d
How that might change his nature, there’s the question.

• [1602] William Shakespeare : Twelfth Night

Olivia:

Above my fortunes, yet my state is well:
I am gentleman. I’ll be sworn thou art:
Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions, and spirit,
Do give thee five-fold blazon. Not too fast: soft! soft!
Unless the master were the man. How now!
Even so quickly may one catch the plague?
Methinks I feel this youth’s perfections
With an invisible and subtle stealth
To creep in at mine eyes. Well, let it be.
What, ho! Molvolio!

Molvolio:

This simulation is not as the former;
and yet, to crush this a little,
it would bow to me,
for everyone of these letters are in my name.
Soft! her follows prose.
• [1603] William Shakespeare : Othello
Haply, for I am black
And have not those soft parts of conversation
That chamberers have, or for I am declined
Into the vale of years—yet that’s not much—
She’s gone, I am abused, and my relief
Must be to loathe her. Oh, curse of marriage
That we can call these delicate creatures ours
And not their appetites!

• [1606] William Shakespeare : Macbeth

Macbeth:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

• [1609] William Shakespeare : Hamlet

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. To die – to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the rub.

• [1611] William Shakespeare : The Tempest

Prospero:

Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire and rifted Jove’s stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck’d up
The pine and cedar: graves at my command
Have waked their sleepers, oped, and let ’em forth
By my so potent art.

• [1667] John Milton : Paradise Lost

Satan:

And what should I be
All but less than he/whom,
Eve shall be free/thunder hath made greater?
Here at least/I am,
Freedom is more important than goodness.

• [1928] Eugene O’Neill : Strange Interlude

Charles Marsden:

He thinks he means that pure love!
it’s easy to talk, he doesn’t know life,  but he might be good for Nina,
if she were married to this simpleton would she be faithful?
and then I? what a vile thought!
I don’t mean that!

• [1944] Tennessee Williams : The Glass Menagerie

Tom Wingfield:

I descended the steps of this fire escape for a last time and followed, from then on, in my father’s footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space… I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something… I pass the lighted window of a shop where perfume is sold. The window is filled with pieces of colored glass, tiny transparent bottles in delicate colors, like bits of a shattered rainbow.

• [1953] Arthur Miller : The Crucible

John Proctor:

Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!

---

Peace, it is providence, and no great change;
we are only what we always were, but naked now,
Aye naked! And the wind, God’s icy wind will blow!

• [1971] Hunter S Thompson : Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Raoul Duke:

How long could we maintain? I wondered. How long until one of us starts raving and jabbering at this boy? What will he think then? This same lonely desert was the last known home of the Manson family; will he make that grim connection when my attorney starts screaming about bats and huge manta rays coming down on the car?

• [2004] Jeff Lindsay : Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Dexter Morgan:

Every Saturday, beginning dive classes practice underwater skills beside this dock. Tomorrow, they’ll find a morbid little surprise. When the Feds receive these kill tools with their suspect’s prints on them, the only threat to me will be the inane rants of a murderous madman. So close, I can feel it.

• [1922] James Joyce :  Ulysses

I saved my favorite until last. Oddly, no discussion about soliloquy mentions Molly Bloom's seductive soliloquy. Hint: Read it huskily, whispered, breathless. It's lovely.

Molly Bloom:

I love flowers I’d love to have the whole place swimming in roses God of heaven there’s nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and the waves rushing then the beautiful country with fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers all sorts of shapes and smells and colours springing up even out of the ditches primroses and violets nature it is as for them saying there’s no God I wouldn’t give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why don’t they go and create something I often asked him atheists or whatever they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off themselves first then they go howling for the priest and they dying and why why because they’re afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they don’t know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a woman’s body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldn’t answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didn’t know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the Jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharans and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down Jo me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.