What is Soliloquy in Literature? (Definition)
A soliloquy is a dramatic convention in which a character, alone on stage (or believing themselves alone), speaks their thoughts aloud. The audience overhears what would otherwise be private—a decision being weighed, a fear being confronted, a plan being formed. Unlike a monologue, which is delivered to other characters, a soliloquy is a window into a single mind.
Soliloquies are essential in early modern theatre because plays could not narrate inner life the way novels do. A Shakespearean soliloquy lets the audience track a character's reasoning in real time and often reveals contradictions the character hides from everyone else. Reading a soliloquy means asking what the character is trying to talk themselves into or out of, and what the speech costs them.
Examples of Soliloquy
Example 1: Soliloquy in Romeo and Juliet
Juliet, alone with the friar's potion, talks herself through every horror that might befall her in the tomb. The soliloquy lets the audience see her courage being chosen rather than assumed: she imagines waking among corpses, going mad, dashing out her own brains—and drinks anyway. Without the soliloquy her drinking would be impulse; with it, it is decision.
Example 2: Soliloquy in Hamlet
Hamlet's soliloquy turns suicide into a philosophical problem the audience watches him reason through. The speech is famous because the convention is doing exactly what it was designed for: exposing a mind that no other character in the play, including the audience surrogates, is allowed to access.
Example 3: Soliloquy in Macbeth
Macbeth's soliloquy after Lady Macbeth's death lets the audience watch his moral universe collapse. He no longer asks whether the murders were worth it; he concludes that nothing is worth anything. The soliloquy is the play's verdict on his choices, delivered in his own voice rather than imposed from outside.