soliloquy
/səˈlɪləkwi
/noun (plural soliloquies)
1An act of speaking one’s thoughts aloud when by oneself or regardless of any hearers, especially by a character in a play: Edmund ends the scene as he had begun it, with a soliloquy [mass noun]: he did most of his thinking by soliloquy...
- His scenes play more as brief soliloquies; the characters voicing unspoken thoughts and memories, repeating phrases and exchanging salvos of opaque dialogue.
- Typically, viewers gain this knowledge through one character's asides or soliloquies of which other characters are unaware or through the use of a chorus commenting on events.
- Rome communicates his internal dialogue through improvised soliloquies which combine Shakespeare's language with street lingo and gesticulations.
Synonyms
monologue, speech, address, lecture, oration, sermon, homily, stand-up, aside;
dramatic monologue, interior monologue
informal spiel
1.1A part of a play involving a soliloquy: in the opening soliloquy he declares his true intent...
- The dissembling and physically deformed Richard, duke of Gloucester, reveals his true purpose in the opening soliloquy of Richard III.
Derivatives
soliloquist
- That narrative voice begins to speak again after the direct speech of the soliloquist has concluded.
- Louis, one of the six precious soliloquists in Virginia Woolf's novel The Waves, is mortified because - as he keeps on dolefully repeating - his father is ‘a banker in Brisbane’.
- Latent poets, shy soliloquists, timid town speakers, and reputable recitationists, you are hereby called to the fore to read the particular, popular and prophetic prose of one of Robbie Burns.
soliloquize
/ (also soliloquise) verb ...- On it, follies are played out on the topmost level, with anguished lovers soliloquizing on the middle level and earthy courtships and pranks played out on terra firma.
- ‘Ever till now,’ he soliloquizes, ‘When men were fond, I smiled and wondered how.’
- For an hour and a half, a writer soliloquizes, invades the space, before letting himself be invaded by the music and trying to escape from the performance.
Origin
Middle English: from late Latin soliloquium, from Latin solus 'alone' + loqui 'speak'.