Monologue



A monologue (or monolog) is when the character may be speaking his or her thoughts aloud, directly addressing another character, or speaking to the audience, especially the former. Monologues are common across the range of dramatic media (plays, films, animation, etc.). It is distinct from a soliloquy, which is where a character relates his or her thoughts and feelings to him/herself and to the audience without addressing any of the other characters. It is also distinct from an apostrophe, wherein the speaker or writer addresses an imaginary person, or inanimate object, or idea.

Comic monologue
The term "monologue" was actually used to describe a form of popular narrative verse, sometimes comic, often dramatic or sentimental, which was performed in music halls or in domestic entertainments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Characters would break out, announcing their thoughts to themselves. Famous examples include Idylls of the King, The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God and Christmas Day in the Workhouse. The comic monologue has evolved into a regular feature of stand-up and television comedy. An "opening monologue" of a humorous subject is a typical segment of stand-up comedy.

Notations

 * Cohn, Dorrit, Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction, 1978.
 * Edwardes, Jane, The Faber Book of Monologues, Faber and Faber, 2005.
 * Hirsh, James, Shakespeare and the History of Soliloquies, Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003.