Soliloquy and Aside

The soliloquy is one of Shakespeare's most powerful dramatic tools — a moment when a character speaks alone on stage, revealing thoughts and feelings directly to the audience. Understanding how soliloquies function is essential for Paper 1 Section A, where you may be asked to analyse an extract that includes one. This lesson examines the conventions of soliloquy and aside, explores major examples from the set plays, and develops your ability to analyse how Shakespeare uses these forms to explore the theme of love.

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What Is a Soliloquy?

A soliloquy is a speech delivered by a character who is alone on stage (or believes themselves to be alone). It is a convention of the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre that the audience accepts as a window into the character's inner life.

Feature	Explanation
Direct access to interiority	The soliloquy reveals what a character truly thinks, as opposed to what they say to other characters
Audience as confidant	The character speaks to the audience, creating a relationship of intimacy and complicity
Dramatic irony	Because the audience knows what the character is thinking, subsequent scenes carry added weight — we know more than the other characters on stage
Convention, not realism	Soliloquy is a theatrical convention; no one actually speaks their thoughts aloud. Its power depends on the audience's willingness to accept the convention

Key Definition: An aside is a shorter comment made by a character that other characters on stage supposedly cannot hear. Like the soliloquy, it is directed at the audience and reveals true thoughts or intentions. Asides are often used for ironic commentary or to signal deception.

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Soliloquy and Love in the Set Plays

Othello

Othello's soliloquies chart the destruction of a man by jealousy. His language moves from the eloquent, controlled verse of his early speeches to the fragmented, anguished utterances of the later acts.

"It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul" (5.2.1–22)

This soliloquy, delivered as Desdemona sleeps, is one of Shakespeare's greatest. Othello attempts to frame the murder as a sacrifice — an act of justice rather than revenge:

"It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul —
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars! —
It is the cause."

The repetition of "the cause" is both an attempt to convince himself and a refusal to name the sexual betrayal he believes has occurred. The imagery shifts between light and dark, justice and tenderness:

"Put out the light, and then put out the light:
If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,
I can again thy former light restore
Should I repent me; but once put out thy light,
Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume."

The metaphor — extinguishing a candle versus extinguishing a life — reveals Othello's awareness that murder is irreversible. The soliloquy allows us to see that Othello is not a simple brute but a man in agony, which makes the scene both more sympathetic and more terrible.

AO5 — Critical Interpretations: A.C. Bradley reads this soliloquy as evidence of Othello's essential nobility — he is tragic precisely because he suffers so deeply. F.R. Leavis, in a famous counter-argument, argues that Othello is engaged in self-dramatisation, "cheering himself up" with grand rhetoric rather than confronting the reality of what he is doing. Both readings can be supported by the text.

Iago's Soliloquies

Iago's soliloquies function very differently. Where Othello's soliloquies reveal vulnerability, Iago's reveal calculation:

"Thus do I ever make my fool my purse...
He holds me well;
The better shall my purpose work on him." (Othello, 1.3.381–402)

Iago's soliloquies are addressed to the audience as co-conspirators. He explains his plans, adjusts his strategies, and invites us to admire his ingenuity. This creates a deeply uncomfortable audience relationship: we become complicit in the destruction of Othello and Desdemona because we watch it unfold with knowledge we cannot share with the characters on stage.

AO3 — Context: The Vice figure from medieval morality plays — a gleeful embodiment of evil who addressed the audience directly — is an important theatrical ancestor of Iago. Shakespeare's audience would have recognised the convention while also noting how far Iago exceeds it in psychological complexity.

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The Taming of the Shrew

Soliloquy works differently in comedy. In The Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio's soliloquy in Act 4 reveals his "taming" strategy: