Abstract
In King Lear, Shakespeare inventively and daringly employed the astonishingly precise features of the convention that governed soliloquies in late Renaissance drama. Plentiful, unambiguous, conspicuous, varied, and one-sided evidence demonstrates that soliloquies represented self-addressed speeches by characters as a matter of convention rather than either interior monologues or audience addresses. The most distinctive employment of the convention in Lear occurs when a character speaks to himself in the presence of others without guarding his soliloquy from their hearing either because the speaker loses consciousness of their presence or because he does not care that others overhear his speech.
This essay will explore some of the ways Shakespeare inventively and daringly employed in one masterpiece the astonishingly precise features of the convention that governed soliloquies in late Renaissance drama.
One of the most fundamental and profound distinctions in theatrical scripts is that between dialogue, in the sense of a speech directed by a character at the hearing of one or more other characters, and a soliloquy, in the sense of words not directed by the character at the hearing of any other character. Over the course of European theatrical history, there have been three kinds of soliloquies: (1) audience-addressed speeches (aware of the presence of playgoers, the character directs the speech to their hearing); (2) self-addressed speeches (unaware of the presence of playgoers, the character directs the speech only to her own hearing); and (3) interior monologues (the words spoken by the actor represent the unspoken thoughts of the character).
Evidence that soliloquies in Shakespeare’s plays represented the speeches of characters
Plentiful, conspicuous, varied, unambiguous, and one-sided evidence demonstrates that soliloquies in late Renaissance English drama represented the spoken words of characters, not their unspoken thoughts. The most conspicuous evidence is that, whenever eavesdroppers are present, they overhear soliloquies by characters unaware of their presence. Overheard soliloquies occur with startling frequency in late Renaissance English drama. 1 In the absence of any countervailing evidence, the assumption that words spoken by an actor represented words spoken by the character portrayed by the actor would have seemed obvious to regular late Renaissance playgoers. In order to override such a conspicuous and frequently reinforced convention, a dramatist would have had to create an unambiguous and conspicuous signal, and I have not discovered any such signal in any late Renaissance English play. The benefit of any doubt would have gone to the pervasively reinforced convention.
Many soliloquies in late Renaissance drama occur in asides, in the sense of speeches guarded from the hearing of at least one other character. Some asides are directed by the speaker at the hearing of at least one other character. They are shared asides. Some asides, such as Romeo’s speeches guarded from the hearing of Juliet in the balcony episode, also qualify as soliloquies in the sense (specified above) of speeches not directed at the hearing of any other character. Such speeches are soliloquies guarded in asides since they fulfil the criterion of each kind of speech. Like other soliloquies, soliloquies guarded in asides represented the spoken words of the character rather than the character’s unspoken thoughts. One of the many pieces of evidence for this nuance of the convention is a stage direction in the First Folio edition of Richard III next to a soliloquy guarded in an aside by Richard: ‘Speakes to himselfe’. 2 This describes the character, not the actor; the latter speaks to be heard by playgoers. Guarding a soliloquy was a skill. In order to prevent another character onstage from hearing one’s soliloquy, a character had to maintain her guard actively and continuously. If a character became so distracted by what she was saying to herself in a soliloquy that she momentarily lowered her guard, the other character would begin to overhear the speech. Shakespeare created numerous situations dramatising this complication. For example, in the presence of her servant Lucius, Portia initially guards a soliloquy in an aside from his hearing. But she becomes so preoccupied by her fear for Brutus on the day of the assassination of Caesar that she lowers her guard. She then realises that she has done so, as she says in a now fully guarded soliloquy: ‘Sure the boy heard me’ (2.4.42). 3 Another nuance of the convention, illustrated by the numerous instances of overheard soliloquies, was that a character could guard a soliloquy from the hearing only of characters whose presence the speaker was aware. Encountering the operations of this nuance of the convention in countless episodes, regular playgoers would have assumed it to be in operation implicitly.
An implicitly overheard soliloquy occurs in the second scene of Lear. When Gloucester enters, he does not at first notice the presence of Edmund and speaks only to himself. After speaking for over three lines, Gloucester finally notices the presence of his younger son. The part of the speech that constitutes a soliloquy is here italicised:
Kent banish’d thus? and France in choler parted?
And the King gone to-night? Prescrib’d his pow’r,
Confin’d to exhibition? All this done
Upon the gad? Edmund, how now? What news? (1.2.23–6)
In King Lear occurs one of the most daring, subtle, clever, profound, and sophisticated employments of the convention whereby soliloquies represented the spoken words of characters, not their unspoken thoughts. After being put in the stocks by Cornwall and left alone, Kent falls asleep. Edgar enters, fails to notice the presence of Kent, and begins a soliloquy in which he comes to terms with his predicament and decides on a plan to evade capture by pretending to be a mad beggar. Having witnessed many episodes in which soliloquies are overheard, regular late Renaissance playgoers would have hoped and even assumed that Kent will awaken in time to hear at least part of Edgar’s soliloquy, that Kent will make his presence known to Edgar, and that these two sympathetic victims of injustice will commiserate and join forces. At some moment during Edgar’s long speech, regular late Renaissance playgoers would have become frustrated and anxious because Kent remains asleep. Shouting out ‘Wake up, Kent!’ would have been futile since neither Kent nor any other character in the play ever shows any awareness of the existence of playgoers and so would not hear such a plea. After speaking for 21 lines, Edgar exits. Most regular late Renaissance playgoers would have been profoundly disappointed that the two sympathetic sufferers, who seemed on the verge of making contact, do not do so. It would not occur to most dramatists intentionally to disappoint playgoers. Shakespeare dared to do so in order to accomplish a profound artistic purpose. Disappointment is a major theme of the play. The plot gets going because of Lear’s disappointment in Cordelia’s tepid response to his love test. Shortly thereafter he is bitterly disappointed by the treatment he receives from his two elder daughters. Most of the characters experience intense disappointment. In a disturbing irony, Gloucester is disappointed that his attempt to commit suicide has failed: ‘Is wretchedness depriv’d that benefit, / To end itself by death?’ (4.6.61–2). Rather than merely depicting characters who experience disappointment, Shakespeare deepens and extends the theme and intensifies playgoers’ empathy with characters by creating situations in which playgoers themselves experience disappointment. Failing to understand the operations of the convention and never guessing that Shakespeare might have intentionally set up playgoers to be disappointed, post-Renaissance editors have not provided readers with necessary information for them to understand Shakespeare’s dramatic purposes in the episode. Many editors have inserted a scene division before and after Edgar’s soliloquy to prevent readers from thinking that the two characters ever could have interacted.
That soliloquies represented the speech, the outward behaviour, of characters in late Renaissance drama is not a trivial matter. A fundamental feature of the human condition is that we never have direct access to the mind of another person. The ability to read minds was one of the proofs of the divinity of Jesus offered in the New Testament. Late Renaissance dramatists refrained from giving playgoers the fantasy experience of having the godlike power to read minds. The sentimental cliché that soliloquies were the direct representation of the innermost thoughts of characters, which arose in the Romantic period, is demonstrably false.
Evidence that Shakespearean soliloquies represented self-address
In the late 1580s and early 1590s occurred one of the most conspicuous and significant innovations in dramatic technique in theatrical history. In medieval and early Renaissance drama, non-choral characters occasionally direct speeches unambiguously at playgoers in the midst of the action. After 1590, audience address was strictly segregated from the action, confined to choral characters who did not participate in the action and to epilogues after the action had concluded. In sharp contrast, conspicuously self-addressed speeches by characters engaged in the action exploded. Among the many kinds of conspicuous, unambiguous evidence are: (1) self-address by name, title, epithet, alias, or element of the character’s consciousness; (2) self-address by second-person pronouns; and (3) self-directed commands.
Such evidence occurs conspicuously and frequently in King Lear. In the following catalogue of evidence, each unambiguous verbal marker of self-address is emboldened. The very first soliloquy in the play contains two such markers: Cordelia. What shall Cordelia speak?
In this soliloquy guarded in an aside, Cordelia asks herself a question and answers it. She is not soliciting advice from playgoers, nor is she commanding them to love and be silent. In Kent’s first soliloquy, he addresses himself by name and by second-person pronouns: Now banish’d If So may it come, Shall find
An implicit reason that Kent addresses himself by name is that in public he is in disguise as a lowly servant. Naming himself in a self-addressed speech and hearing his name spoken help him maintain his sense of his former identity even though he must conceal that identity during his interactions with other characters. In a soliloquy in 3.6, Edgar addresses himself by his alias, by second-person pronouns, and by giving himself commands:
When false opinion, whose wrong thoughts defile In
In this context, ‘away’ is a verb meaning ‘flee’. According to R. A. Foakes and Stanley Wells, ‘lurk’ means ‘keep out of sight’. 4 This one brief passage contains 10 unambiguous markers of self-address. Edgar addresses himself by his alias rather than by his name as a joke for his own amusement. This form of self-address, however, suggests that Edgar’s sense of his own identity is less fixed, more fluid than Kent’s. He throws himself into the part of Poor Tom, or (perhaps more accurately) Poor Tom emerges from within Edgar and provides an outlet for the frightened, suffering, irrational, self-pitying self that lurks (so to speak) within him (and within most of us).
Another unambiguous marker of self-addressed speech is an apostrophe in the sense of a passage addressed to an imaginary listener. It would be incongruous to address an imaginary audience in a speech directed at actual listeners, as demonstrated by the fact that apostrophes in speeches directed by characters to the hearing of their fellow characters are rare in Shakespeare’s plays. By conspicuous contrast, apostrophes pervade soliloquies. The obvious explanation for this huge differential is that soliloquies represented speeches directed by the character at no listener other than herself. If soliloquies had represented audience addresses, apostrophes would have been as incongruous and as rare in those speeches as in speeches directed at other characters.
Apostrophes occur frequently in soliloquies in Lear. Edmund’s first soliloquy contains a series of unambiguous markers of self-address in the form of apostrophes:
My services are bound. […] Legitimate Well, my Now,
As a materialist, Edmund does not actually believe that supernatural beings can hear him. His addresses to Nature and gods are facetious and are therefore not genuine prayers but rather apostrophes like his addresses to his absent brother. In 2.1, Edmund’s excitement about his impending machinations takes the form of an apostrophe to personifications: ‘
That by Peruse this letter. […]
This shameful lodging.
In a soliloquy in 3.4 Lear apostrophises wretches and a personification (‘pomp’): Poor naked How shall
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en Too little care of this! Expose That
Lear is not addressing playgoers, none of whom would have been naked. ‘Wheresoe’er you are’ is a further indication that he is not addressing playgoers. In 4.1, Edgar addresses the wind:
The wretch that Owes nothing to
In the next scene, after the exit of Edmund, Goneril addresses him in an apostrophe: ‘To
Soliloquies in King Lear contain 179 unambiguous verbal markers of self-address. There is no countervailing evidence. Nowhere in the play does any character unambiguously address playgoers. In addition to verbal markers, there are other forms of evidence that soliloquies in late Renaissance drama, including soliloquies guarded in asides, represented self-address rather than audience address. According to a stage direction cited above, in a soliloquy guarded in an aside, Richard of Gloucester ‘Speakes to himselfe’, not to auditors. In The Merchant of Venice, Bassanio ‘comments on the caskets to himself’, not to playgoers (3.2.62 SD).
The most important kind of evidence of self-address is characterisation. If a soliloquy had represented a speech knowingly directed by the character to thousands of playgoers in a late Renaissance public theatre, it would have represented the most public form of speech possible in the period. The character’s motive in speaking would have been to inform, entertain, persuade, surprise, amuse, dismay, or otherwise affect a large congregation of strangers. A self-addressed speech, in contrast, is the most private form of speech possible. The character’s implied hypothetical motive or motives in speaking are entirely self-directed. In some soliloquies, the character attempts to talk herself or himself into a belief. That is a fundamentally different psychological, rhetorical, and dramatic situation from one in which a character attempts to convince thousands of strangers to share a belief.
If, for example, Edmund’s first soliloquy in 1.2 had been a speech knowingly addressed by the character to playgoers, it would follow logically that the character knows that he is merely a character in a play rather than a real person. That element of the implied hypothetical psychology of the character would have made the character radically different from any sane human being. The speech would have represented Edmund’s attempt to convince thousands of strangers that ‘bastards’ (1.2.22) are superior to people born in wedlock. As a self-address, the speech is an attempt by Edmund to convince himself of his superiority to others, to reassure himself of his worth. Edmund’s repeated sharing of information about his situation with thousands of strangers would also conflict with a fundamental feature of his personality as depicted by Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s Edmund is sociopathic. He prides himself on his complete independence from others. He cooperates with others, including Regan and Goneril, merely to further his own selfish ends, not out of genuine fellowship. If Edmund had knowingly shared his opinions and plans with thousands of strangers in order to keep them informed, that would have made him an unusually public-spirited fellow. Edmund does not show a sign of public-spiritedness until he is on the verge of death.
Edgar’s implied hypothetical psychology would also be rendered incoherent if his self-addressed speeches were transformed into knowing addresses to playgoers. Once Edgar has been turned into an outcast, he is radically alone and isolated. He responds to his lonely isolation by often speaking to himself. If his soliloquies had instead represented knowing addresses to playgoers, he would not have been alone. He would have been comforted by the presence of thousands of sympathisers.
In spite of the massive, unambiguous, conspicuous, varied, and one-sided evidence that soliloquies in Shakespeare’s plays and those of other dramatists of the time represented self-addressed speeches as a matter of convention, a majority of current scholars have convinced themselves that soliloquies in Shakespeare’s plays were typically meant to represent speeches knowingly addressed by characters to playgoers. 5
In his influential work Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theatre: Studies in the Social Dimension of Dramatic Form and Function, Robert Weimann points out unambiguous evidence of audience address by characters engaged in the action in plays written before 1590 and insists that Shakespeare abided by a convention practised by earlier, vastly inferior dramatists. 6 Weimann blinds himself to two very conspicuous, inconvenient facts. First, unambiguous evidence of audience address by characters engaged in the action is conspicuous by its absence from plays by Shakespeare and other major dramatists active between 1590 and the closing of the theatres in 1642. Second, beginning with the first performance of Thomas Kyd’s landmark play The Spanish Tragedy around 1586, there was an explosion of unambiguous evidence of self-address in soliloquies by major dramatists. Some individual plays – including The Spanish Tragedy, Doctor Faustus, Romeo and Juliet, and King Lear – contain over a hundred unambiguous markers of self-address.
Some champions of the audience-address doctrine argue that any soliloquy in which a character reviews his situation must represent audience address because it would be unnecessary for a character to review in a self-addressed speech details of his situation of which he is already aware.
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For these proponents, a beauty of this argument is that it is supposedly validated by deductive reasoning and does not require any bothersome testing against evidence. If proponents had tested their supposition, they would have discovered countless pieces of disconfirming evidence. In Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, the title character reviews his situation in detail in his opening soliloquy. In the course of the soliloquy, he addresses himself by name five times, and the speech contains 28 other unambiguous markers of self-address. The speech contains no evidence of audience address. The opening soliloquy of Richard III, in which Richard reviews his situation, contains a command unambiguously directed at an element of his own consciousness: ‘
The notion that soliloquies that do not contain unambiguous evidence of self-address ipso facto constituted audience address even though those speeches do not contain unambiguous evidence of audience address is untenable. That notion entails a failure to accept a fundamental responsibility of empirical scholarship, the burden of proof. One could use that anti-empirical methodology to prove that female roles in Shakespeare’s theatres were typically performed by actresses because in only a small number of cases is there direct evidence that a particular female part was played by a male actor. Furthermore, if one soliloquy by a character represented audience address, it would not make sense that during another soliloquy the character could completely forget that playgoers were present and address only himself as if playgoers were not present. Moreover, if characters had regularly gone back and forth between self-address and audience address, there would be plenty of evidence of these transitions. There would be a body of unambiguous evidence of audience address in soliloquies comparable to the immense body of unambiguous evidence of self-address. In fact, while unambiguous evidence of self-address is pervasive and conspicuous, unambiguous evidence of audience address in soliloquies by characters engaged in the action is conspicuous by its absence. Having heard countless examples of unambiguous self-address in soliloquies, regular late Renaissance playgoers would have assumed that any given soliloquy constituted self-address as a matter of convention unless the convention were unambiguously overridden, and such unambiguous violations of the convention are conspicuous by their absence from plays by Shakespeare and other major dramatists of the period from about 1590 to 1642. 8
A recent strenuous defence of the doctrine that Shakespeare designed soliloquies to represent audience address occurs in Reading Shakespeare’s Soliloquies: Text, Theatre, Film by Neil Corcoran (2018). The book does not employ empirical methodology. Corcoran did not test his assumption against the relevant evidence from Shakespeare’s period. If he had, he would have discovered plentiful, unambiguous, varied, conspicuous, and one-sided evidence of self-address in soliloquies in Shakespeare’s plays that refutes the doctrine of audience address.
Instead of conducting a systematic survey of relevant evidence from Shakespeare’s era, Corcoran supplies evidence that, in some highly praised post-Renaissance adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays, soliloquies have been performed as knowingly addressed by characters to playgoers. This argument entails another fundamental violation of empirical methodology. Evidence of theatrical practices in one era cannot be used as evidence of theatrical practices in a much earlier era. Performance practices are not trans-historical. They differ in different times and places, in different cultural contexts. By employing similar ex post facto evidence, one could prove that female roles in Shakespeare’s theatre were portrayed by actresses because there have been countless highly successful post-Renaissance productions in which female characters have been played by actresses. Corcoran justifies his procedure by fiat: ‘it’s impossible to divorce any consideration of Shakespearean soliloquy from the history of its reception’. 9 This is simply false. It is possible to limit one’s ‘consideration’ only to evidence from the late Renaissance period (which consists mainly of printed versions of plays). By laboriously analysing this evidence, one can in fact recover a precise and conclusive understanding of the features of the convention that governed soliloquies in the period. Corcoran’s anti-empirical doctrine gives him permission to evade the time-consuming and laborious task of differentiating late Renaissance stage practices from post-Renaissance practices. He anachronistically projects onto Shakespeare’s plays practices that are demonstrably at odds with the actual procedures conspicuously evident in those works.
Another fundamental flaw in Corcoran’s analysis is illustrated by the following assertion: ‘[f]or a soliloquist to say “Now I am alone” is problematic […] because the speaker – the actor who speaks – is of course not alone at all, but in a theatre in front of an audience’. 10 The situation is ‘problematic’ only if one disregards the obvious distinction between the actor and the character portrayed by the actor. Most playgoers accept the premise that there are differences between the psychology of an actor and the implied hypothetical psychology of the character played by the actor, that there are differences between the psychology of an actor playing Edmund and the implied, hypothetical psychology of the character Edmund. That an actor knows that playgoers are present in no way implies that the character also knows they are present. If Shakespeare had wanted playgoers to understand that Hamlet was aware of playgoers, he easily could have done so. He could have had Hamlet say, ‘Now I am alone except for you spectators’.
According to Corcoran, a soliloquising character who mentions the theatre thereby shows ‘some awareness of himself or herself as a dramatic character’. 11 The mere fact that a character mentions the theatre in no way suggests that the character is aware that he is a character. Real human beings often mention the theatre. A dramatist who seeks to represent human behaviour will therefore occasionally depict a character who mentions the theatre without any suggestion that the character thereby knows that he is himself only a character. References to the theatre by characters engaged in the action in a play by Shakespeare are instances of dramatic irony. Unbeknownst to the character who mentions the theatre, he is himself a theatrical character. Like Corcoran’s other arguments, this one disintegrates upon inspection.
That Shakespeare designed soliloquies by characters in the midst of the action to be self-addressed speeches does not obligate a modern acting company to stage soliloquies in this way. Each new production is a new work of art and should be judged on its own merits, not on the degree of its supposed faithfulness to an earlier work of art.
Other daring employments of the convention
King Lear contains many other daring employments of the convention of self-addressed speech in addition to those already described. That soliloquies represented speech as a matter of convention not only inspired Shakespeare to create many overheard soliloquies; it also inspired him to create feigned soliloquies. In some episodes, a character who is aware of the presence of other characters pretends to speak to himself but actually allows those characters to overhear the speech in order to mislead them about his state of mind. An example occurs in 1.2. Noticing the approach of his credulous brother, Edmund concocts in a genuine soliloquy guarded in an aside a plan to deceive his brother by putting on an act: ‘Pat! He comes like the catastrophe of the old comedy. My cue is villainous melancholy, with a sigh like Tom o’ Bedlam’ (1.2.134–6). He then pretends to talk only to himself but actually allows Edgar to hear what he says: ‘O, these eclipses do portend these divisions!’ (1.2.136–7). Edmund’s implicit motive for deceiving his brother into believing that he holds a ‘melancholy’ belief in astrological determinism is that such a psychological state would render him incapable of taking action when in fact he is on the verge of carrying out a scheme to cause a rift between his father and brother. This is not the first time in his career that Shakespeare constructed an episode in which a character who has a concocted a plan of action pretends to talk to himself but allows at least one other character to overhear a speech in which he expresses melancholy that would render him incapable of action. 12 Edmund’s decision to allow his brother to overhear a phony soliloquy was presumably inspired by his having overheard Gloucester’s genuine soliloquy earlier in the scene. He presumably got the idea to express a pessimistic belief in astrological determinism from Gloucester’s expression of such a belief earlier in the scene. It is ironic that Edmund puts on a Tom o’ Bedlam act before his machinations force that identity onto his brother.
Edgar sometimes feigns soliloquies in the guise of Poor Tom, as in the following passage: ‘Peace, Smulkin, peace, thou fiend!’ (3.4.140–1). Addressing imaginary beings in the presence of others was regarded as a symptom of insanity. Edgar allows these words to be heard by other characters in order to convince them that he is insane.
Another kind of feigned self-addressed speech is perpetrated by Edmund in 2.1. After he tricks Edgar into fleeing and Gloucester enters, Edmund gives his father a false account of Edgar’s behaviour before Gloucester’s arrival: ‘Here stood he in the dark, his sharp sword out, / Mumbling of wicked charms, conjuring the moon / To stand’s auspicious mistress’ (2.1.38–40). Edmund pretends that he overheard Edgar ‘mumbling’ to himself about his nefarious intent. Edmund cleverly includes the detail that Edmund apostrophised the moon because an apostrophe is a hallmark of self-addressed speech. In 1.2, Edmund deceived his brother by means of a phony self-addressed speech, and he now deceives his father by a false report of a self-addressed speech attributed to his brother.
Shakespeare often created complex patterns involving soliloquies. One such pattern occurs in 1.2 of Lear: The villain (Edmund) has a substantial self-addressed speech while alone onstage at the very beginning of the scene. He then misleads another character (Gloucester). Again alone onstage, the villain has another substantial self-addressed speech in the middle of the scene. The villain then misleads another character (Edgar). Alone yet again, the villain has a third substantial self-addressed speech at the very end of the scene.
This is actually the second time that Shakespeare constructed a scene employing this very particular pattern. In the first scene of Richard III, the villain (Richard) has substantial soliloquies at the beginning, middle, and end. Between the first and second soliloquies, he misleads a character (his elder brother Clarence). Between his second and third soliloquies he misleads another character (Hastings). In each play, the pattern subtly but powerfully contributes to the impression that the villain is in total control of the situation.
Shakespeare often created situations in which a self-addressed speech by one character is immediately followed without any intervening dialogue by a self-addressed speech by another character. For example, in 1.2 Edmund’s opening soliloquy is immediately followed by a self-addressed speech by the entering Gloucester before he notices the presence of Edmund. The juxtaposition is dramatically significant. In Edmund’s soliloquy he articulates an injustice: that he has been unfairly treated because he was born out of wedlock and later than his brother. His response to the situation is to formulate a plan of action that he will put into operation at the first opportunity. In Gloucester’s soliloquy, overheard by Edmund, he expresses utter bafflement and hopelessness about recent events. Another case of consecutive soliloquies, discussed above, occurs when Kent’s soliloquy in the stocks is immediately followed by Edgar’s soliloquy.
The storm scene 3.2 is a tour-de-force of non-communication between characters. The opening stage direction is ‘Storm still’. Playgoers can hear what characters say but are expected to imagine that within the fictional world the thunder is frequently deafening and interferes with communication between characters. Similarly, playgoers can see the characters but, since this is a night scene, are expected to imagine that the characters are in the dark and have trouble seeing one another.
In the first speech of the scene, Lear is so fixated on addressing elements of the storm that he has become oblivious of the presence of the Fool. The speech fulfils the criterion of a soliloquy because it is not directed at any other character. The elements of the storm do not appear as characters, and the play contains no evidence that they are conscious beings within the fictional world. The speech is a form of self-address since Lear is addressing figments of his own hyperactive imagination. He addresses winds, cataracts, hurricanoes, fires, and thunder by name and by five pronouns and directs seven commands at them. All told, the speech contains 13 markers of self-address and no markers of audience address. Lear is evidently shouting, so (in spite of the storm) his soliloquy is implicitly overheard by the Fool.
In the second speech of the scene, the Fool attempts to reach Lear: ‘O nuncle, […] Good nuncle, […]’ (3.2.10–13). But his words go unheeded by Lear, who remains oblivious because his imagination is still wholly fixated on the storm.
As in his first speech in the scene, Lear directs his next speech to figments of his imagination (thunder, fire, rain) as if those elements possessed consciousness. The passage contains 11 markers of self-address and no markers of audience address.
The next speech by the Fool resembles comedy routines he elsewhere performs for the King. But his master is currently inaccessible, lost in his confrontation with elements of the storm. After his initial attempt to communicate with the utterly distracted Lear fails, the Fool gives up trying to reach the unreachable Lear. The Fool’s speech is not directed at the hearing of any other character and so qualifies as a soliloquy. What he is doing in the speech is attempting to cheer himself up by doing what he often does when he is alone, rehearsing one of his comedy routines. The desperate and futile attempt by the Fool to generate a sense of normalcy in a frightening situation by engaging in a familiar activity is pitiable.
After Kent enters in disguise, Lear says, ‘No. I will be the pattern of all patience, I will say nothing’ (3.2.37–8). The speech is not directed at the hearing of either the Fool or the entering character. That the speech begins with the word ‘No’ and that Lear goes on to enjoin himself to be patient and silent implies that Lear is actually responding to his own earlier behaviour in which he addressed the storm with a fury that he now renounces.
The first successful conversational interaction between characters in the scene does not begin until line 39, when Kent asks, ‘Who’s there?’ and the Fool responds, though cryptically. But this does not lead to a sustained interaction among the characters. Kent’s question intended to be heard by Lear, ‘Alas, sir, are you here?’ (3.2.42) goes unanswered. Lear is physically ‘here’ but still psychologically absent, distracted, oblivious to the presence of the other characters. After his question goes unanswered, Kent comments on the storm, ‘Things that love night / Love not such nights as these […]’ (3.2.42–9). This is directed neither at Lear nor at the Fool. Like the Fool, Kent has temporarily given up on communicating with the still inaccessible Lear. It is unlikely that Kent would shout this orderly, rational speech, in which he compares the current storm with storms he has experienced in the past. It is not an effort by Kent to engage the Fool in conversation, and the Fool shows no sign of having heard the speech. Playgoers can overhear Kent’s speech in spite of the fictional storm, just as they can see the characters in spite of the fictional darkness.
Still oblivious to the presence of the Fool and Kent, Lear in his next speech addresses more figments of his imagination.
That hast within Unwhipt of justice!
That art incestuous! Close pent-up
These dreadful summoners grace. (3.2.49–60)
Lear does not step out of the storm in the fictional world to address patrons in the theatre. It is a dramatic irony that, unbeknownst to Lear, there might be actual guilty wretches in the audience who overhear his apostrophes to guilty wretches. That feature of the situation is analogous to moments in the balcony episode in which Juliet addresses Romeo in apostrophes when, unbeknownst to her, Romeo overhears himself addressed. Kent’s next words, ‘Alack, bare-headed?’ (3.2.60), imply that he has just now spotted the King. The rhetorical question is not directed at the hearing of Lear or the Fool.
Communication involving all three characters is finally established. Kent reaches the King and informs him that shelter, a ‘hovel’ (3.2.61) is nearby. Lear addresses the Fool (‘Come on my boy’ [3.2.68]) and his rescuer (‘Where is this straw, my fellow?’ [3.2.69]).
After Kent and Lear exit, the Fool speaks to himself for 17 lines in which he rehearses another comedy routine, his regular activity when alone. The routine in this case is a comic prophecy satirising numerous categories of people. The speech ends as follows, ‘This prophesy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time’ (3.2.95–6). Some commentators have argued that the Fool here steps out of the fictional world of the play because he knows what happens after the fictional time period. These commentators have ignored the fact that this assertion occurs in a rehearsal for a comedy routine. The last sentence of the speech is implicitly not the end of the prospective routine but rather a set-up for a witty rejoinder:
This prophesy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time.
No, fool, we live after Merlin’s time.
Yes, but also before. Arthur is the once and future king. As a member of Arthur’s court, Merlin will return with him. So I live before his time.
Or words to that effect. Of the 96 lines of the scene, over two-thirds (65) occur in self-addressed speeches. It is tragic that these pitiable characters engage more often in isolated self-addressed speech than in communication with one another.
Another scene that includes an ingenious dramatisation of non-communication between characters is 4.6. It includes 14 speeches that are not directed by the speaker at the hearing of any other character. These include seven soliloquies guarded in asides by Edgar; one soliloquy by the Gentleman before he becomes aware of the presence of other characters; two unguarded prayers to the gods by Gloucester; and four eruptions of self-address (two by Edgar and two by Lear). As in the case of 3.2, it is tragic that these characters, each of whom should arouse the sympathy of playgoers, are frequently isolated from one another, each in his own self-contained world.
Conclusion
Most of the soliloquies in the play have not been recognised by scholars as soliloquies. Many scholars have defined soliloquy on the basis of its etymology, as a passage spoken when a character is alone. This is a glaringly wrong-headed procedure. There is no chance that Shakespeare adapted his dramatic technique to fit the etymology of a word, much less a word that had not become a theatrical term in English until after his death. The dramatically crucial distinction is not whether a character is alone or not but whether the character directs her speech at the hearing of any other character or not. According to the definition-by-etymology, neither Juliet’s soliloquies in the balcony episode before Romeo makes his presence known nor Romeo’s soliloquies guarded in asides qualify as soliloquies. Another reason that many soliloquies have been overlooked is that some commentators have added an extraneous criterion of length. For them a soliloquy requires bulk. The decision Cordelia expresses in the following brief passage has profound and tragic consequences: ‘What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent’ (1.1.62). The passage is not directed at the hearing of any other character, so it does not count as dialogue in the sense of a passage directed at the hearing of another character. But for commentators who count only long speeches as soliloquies, the passage does not count as a soliloquy. It does not have a place or designation in their taxonomy of dramatic passages. Their procedure resembles that of a biologist who adds the extraneous criterion of size to the other criteria for the category mammal and who on that basis does not count mice as mammals. That would render incoherent the biologist’s taxonomy of animals. Another problem is that any cut-off point between a short speech not directed at the hearing of another character and what counts as a ‘soliloquy’ in the system would be utterly arbitrary. Many scholars blind themselves to the huge number of soliloquies that are guarded in asides. They would deny that Cordelia’s speech just quoted is a soliloquy even though it is not directed at the hearing of any other character. Just as a single person can be both a Canadian and a violinist, a single speech can be both a soliloquy and an aside if it fulfils the criterion for each category. As indicated above, soliloquies (in the sense of passages not directed at the hearing of any other character) and asides (in the sense of passages guarded from the hearing of other characters) are overlapping rather than mutually exclusive dramatic devices. The passage spoken by Cordelia earlier in this paragraph fulfils the criterion of a soliloquy and the criterion of an aside. It is a soliloquy guarded in an aside.
King Lear contains a total of 75 self-addressed speeches (passages not directed by the speaker at the hearing of any other character) by 10 characters (see Table 1). These passages occupy 392 lines (about 12 per cent of the approximately 3200 lines of a conflated edition). Only 14 of these passages occur when the speaker is alone onstage. Four characters guard a total of 21 soliloquies in asides.
Self-addressed speeches in King Lear.
The most distinctive and daring feature of Shakespeare’s employment of the convention of self-addressed speech in King Lear is the frequency of situations in which a character talks to himself in the presence of others without guarding his self-addressed speech from their hearing either because the speaker is so distracted that he loses consciousness of the presence of others or the speaker simply does not care that others overhear his soliloquy. In the following passage, Lear is engaged in two conversations, one with the Fool and one with himself. The self-addressed passages are italicised:
[…] Thou canst tell why one’s nose stands i’ th’ middle on’s face?
No.
Why to keep one’s eyes of either side’s nose, that what a man cannot smell out, he may spy into.
I did her wrong.
Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?
No.
Nor I neither; but I can tell why a snail has a house.
Why?
Why, to put’s head in, not to give it away to his daughters, and leave his horns without a case.
I will forget my nature. So kind a father! Be my horses ready?
Thy asses are gone about ’em. The reason why the seven stars are no moe than seven is a pretty reason.
Because they are not eight.
Yes, indeed, thou wouldst make a good Fool.
To take’t again perforce! Monster ingratitude!
If thou wert my Fool, nuncle, I’ld have thee beaten for being old before thy time.
How’s that?
Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise.
O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!
Keep me in temper, I would not be mad!
How now, are the horses ready? (1.5.19–47)
The italicised passages are not efforts by Lear to keep up his side of the conversation with the Fool. Nor are they meticulously guarded in asides by the overwrought King. They are emotional outbursts that interrupt his conversation with the Fool. In each case in which a self-addressed speech erupts in a conversation without being guarded in an aside, the eruption is implicitly overheard by other characters present according to a frequently reinforced nuance of the convention. Recognising that Lear’s outbursts are not directed at himself, the Fool does not respond to them.
After Lear discovers that his servant (Kent in disguise) has been put in the stocks by Cornwall and Regan, he expresses his psychological suffering: ‘
A similar eruption occurs in 3.4. The scene opens with a conversation between Kent and Lear. But in the midst of a speech initially addressed to his servant, Lear’s imagination reverts to the cruelty of his daughters.
O, that way madness lies,
Lear does not speak these words as a highly artificial, incongruous way of keeping his servant informed about his relationship with his daughters. Lear’s imagination has been momentarily overwhelmed by his grievance against his daughters, whom he sees in his mind’s eye, that he loses consciousness of his present situation, including the presence of his servant. Berating his cruel daughters in absentia is a futile and frustrating endeavour. Lear then gives himself commands to shun ‘that’, to shun being carried away by imaginary conversations with his daughters. The words ‘No more of that’ are an implied self-directed command, a command to stop allowing his imagination to run wild. In 4.6 in the midst of a speech that Lear otherwise intends Gloucester to hear, Lear becomes distracted by an image in his mind’s eye: that of a beadle whipping a whore. Disregarding the presence of the other characters, Lear chastises the imaginary beadle (4.6.160–3). The frequency of eruptions of self-address in the midst of his conversations with others is a symptom of Lear’s incipient or full-blown madness. This profound feature of Lear’s characterisation has been obscured by the wrong-headed practice of defining soliloquy by its etymology. Of Lear’s 18 self-addressed speeches, none occurs when he is alone onstage.
It is significant that Lear is not the only character who in the midst of a conversation becomes so genuinely absorbed by someone he sees in his mind’s eye that he disregards the presence of the character with whom he has just been conversing. In the midst of a conversation with the Old Man, the blind Gloucester sees Edgar in his mind’s eye and addresses this figment of his imagination: O dear son The food of Might I but live to see I’ld say I had eyes again. (4.1.21–4)
Gloucester does not say these words as a rhetorical ploy to gain sympathy from the Old Man. Nor does he cautiously guard the speech in an aside. Overwhelmed by emotion, he simply does not care that the Old Man overhears it. Edgar is also onstage but has not yet made his presence known. By a pervasively reinforced nuance of the convention of self-addressed speech, Edgar overhears himself addressed in an apostrophe in Gloucester’s self-addressed speech, just as in the balcony episode Romeo overhears soliloquies in which Juliet addresses him in apostrophes. After receiving news from a messenger that Gloucester has been blinded, Albany makes a solemn oath in an apostrophe:
To thank And to revenge
Albany does not speak these lines to hold up his side of a conversation with the messenger. His imagination has shifted to the pitiable Gloucester, and he momentarily ignores the presence of the messenger. It is important that his oath is both spoken and heard by the speaker. An oath that one speaks and hears oneself speak is a much stronger commitment than an unspoken intention. In the presence of other characters, Cordelia apostrophises Lear: ‘ Had Did challenge pity of them. […] And wast To hovel In short and musty straw? Alack, alack, ‘Tis wonder that Had not concluded all. (29–41)
Th’ untun’d and jarring senses, O, Of this child-changed father! [i.e., bring him into tune] (13–16)
This is a genuine prayer, not a ploy by Cordelia to show off her piety to other characters. Although speaking to oneself or to imaginary or absent beings in the presence of others was regarded as a symptom of madness, characters who are not generally regarded as insane sometimes behave in this way. This suggests that the distinction between sanity and insanity is not clear-cut. Almost any person can exhibit symptoms of insanity if the person is overwhelmed by emotion or under great stress.
Episodes in which a character is so overwhelmed by emotion that he speaks to himself or to absent beings in the presence of others without caring that they overhear his private speech occur on occasion in Shakespeare’s other plays. But in no other play does this circumstance occur with the amazing frequency (40 instances) with which it occurs in Lear. The frequent depiction of characters who are so overwhelmed by circumstances that they speak to themselves in the presence of others without guarding their speeches was a daring experiment on Shakespeare’s part. Even late in his career, Shakespeare was an experimental dramatist.
The evidence presented in this essay demonstrates that Shakespeare was deeply committed to the convention of self-addressed speech. He found myriad imaginative ways to employ its subtle nuances. Playgoers must have welcomed the challenge of figuring out how the nuances operated in particular dramatic situations. If they had not enjoyed this challenge, Shakespeare would not have continued throughout his career to employ the convention in challenging ways.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Kathleen Hirsh for her assistance in the preparation of this study.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
