Resources
- How to Perform a Shakespeare SoliloquyIf you want to perform a Shakespeare Soliloquy, then you need to prepare. Our teaching columnist is here with advice to help you perform a Shakespeare Soliloquy.
- Shakespeare SoliloquiesThe most famous Shakespeare soliloquies (and indeed, the most famous soliloquies in the English language) are found in a handful of his plays , which you can access by clicking the links below. Perhaps the best known opening line to a Shakespeare soliloquy is ‘To be or not to be’, from Hamlet.
- Text to Text | Soliloquies From ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Les Misérables’What is a soliloquy? How is it different from a monologue? When does an author or playwright use each, and why?
Streaming Media
- Shakespeare’s SoliloquiesImagine having written thirty-eight plays…being an actor who became the most popular playwright of his time…and who’s legacy was to become the most enduring playwright of all time. Imagine writing something some four hundred years ago, and having us stand here in a theatre today still exploring, enjoying, and marveling at those golden words? Join our troupe of actors in various stages of rehearsal, presenting some of the bard’s most poignant speeches that have earned their illustrious place in the history of the theatre, and in all of literature.
- Shakespeare's SoliloquiesImagine having written 38 plays…being an actor who became the most popular playwright of his time…one whose legacy was to become the most enduring playwright of all time. Imagine writing text some 400 years ago, and us standing here in a theater today, still exploring, enjoying, and marveling at those golden words. Join our troupe of actors in various stages of rehearsal, presenting some of the Bard’s most poignant speeches that have earned their illustrious place in the history of the theater and in all of literature. (40 minutes)
Perspectives
Modern Hamlets and Soliloquies
In Modern Hamlets and Their Soliloquies (Iowa, 1992), Mary Maher examined how modern actors have chosen to perform Hamlet's soliloquies, and why they made the choices they made, within the context of their specific productions of the play. Adding to original interviews with, among others, Derek Jacobi, David Warner, Kevin Kline, and Ben Kingsley, Modern Hamlets and Their Soliloquies: An Expanded Edition offers two new and insightful interviews, one with Kenneth Branagh, focusing on his 1997 film production of the play, and one with Simon Russell Beale, discussing his 2000-2001 run as Hamlet at the Royal National Theatre.
Cultures of Piety: Medieval English Devotional Literature in Translation
Devotional texts in late medieval England were notable for their flamboyant piety and their preoccupation with the tortured body of Christ and the grief of the Virgin Mary. Generations of readers internalized and shaped the "cultures of piety" represented by these works. Anne Clark Bartlett and Thomas H. Bestul here gather seven examples of this literature, all written in the period 1350-1450, one in Anglo-Norman, the remainder in Middle English. (The volume includes an appendix containing the original texts of the latter six pieces.) The collection illustrates the polyglottal, conflicting, and often polemical nature of devotional culture in the Middle Ages. It provides a valuable context for and interesting counterpoint to the Canterbury Tales and other classic works of late medieval England. The introduction and the translators' headnotes discuss crucial aspects of the texts' histories and thematics, including the importance of the body in spiritual practices, the development of female patronage and of a wide audience for this literature, and the indivisibility of the political and the religious in medieval times.
William Shakespeare: The Tragedies
Critical essays analyze King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Macbeth, and Coriolanus, and discuss Shakespeare's use of irony and imagery.