Inspired Pen — A Literary Life

~A Soliloquy, Youthful Mercury~

Basically, if a speech is addressed to another person or group of people, it is called a monologue, but if a speech is addressed to the speaker himself, it is called a soliloquy. 

Dating back from the earliest years of English drama, soliloquy was largely an invention of the Elizabethan playwrights. It was a convention used that allowed an actor who was alone on the stage, to address the audience directly.  Shakespeare and Goethe used the soliloquy to immense effect in order to reveal the personal thoughts, emotions and motives of their characters without resorting to third-person narration.

In later years, during the 19th century, Robert Browning and Alfred Lord Tennyson developed and cultivated what is termed “dramatic monologue” used for a poetic form.  In this, it has a speaker who is not the poet, but who delivers the poem in a clear communication situation.

An example of a dramatic monologue is a poem by Robert Browning, “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister,” published in 1842. The dramatic monologue is performed by a spiteful and grumbling monk who is jealous of the innocent happiness of a fellow monk, Brother Lawrence.  Here are the opening lines:

“Gr-r-r — there fo, my heart’s abhorrence! Water your damned flower-pots, do! If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, God’s blood, would not mine kill you! What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming? Oh, that rose has prior claims — Needs its leaden vase filled brimming? Hell dry you up with its flames!”

~Robert Browning, Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister