SOURCE: Hirsh, James. “Shakespeare's Soliloquies: The Representation of Speech.” In Shakespeare and the History of Soliloquies, pp. 119-98. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003.

[In the following excerpt, Hirsh claims that, in accordance with accepted dramatic convention, soliloquies in Shakespeare's plays are direct speech acts, not interior monologues. He discusses numerous soliloquies and asides that are overheard by other characters, either onstage or offstage, with particular reference to the ones in Romeo and Juliet.]

Shakespeare employed the conventions that governed soliloquies in the late Renaissance and that were the focus of the preceding chapter. But Shakespeare's works require detailed special attention for several reasons. In the first place, he employed these conventions more imaginatively than any other dramatist, and so his use of the conventions is interesting for its own sake. Secondly, Shakespeare often used these conventions implicitly and in very complex ways. A clear understanding of how these now obsolete and alien conventions operated in particular episodes is necessary for even a basic understanding of those episodes. Thirdly, Shakespeare's plays have been read, performed, and discussed more widely than the work of any other dramatist, so how these conventions operated in his plays should be of interest to performers, playgoers, readers, and scholars. Fourthly, as will be shown in chapters 9 and 10, a great many misconceptions have arisen about Shakespeare's soliloquies; so it is necessary to explain in detail the conventions he actually employed in order to dispel specific misconceptions. And finally, some misconceptions about Shakespeare's soliloquies are long-standing and deeply cherished, so it is necessary not merely to illustrate the assertions made here but to prove them beyond a reasonable doubt.

Soliloquies in Shakespeare's works represent speeches by characters rather than their unspoken thoughts. Shakespeare's scrupulous adherence to this convention, which had been in operation since the beginning of European drama, is demonstrated by an enormous body of evidence from Shakespeare's plays and narrative poems. I have not encountered any evidence of any sort that any soliloquy in any work written by Shakespeare represented an interior monologue. Shakespeare did not follow this convention in a perfunctory or reluctant way. The evidence clearly indicates that Shakespeare's commitment to the convention whereby soliloquies represented speech as a matter of course was due to both practical and philosophical considerations. The implicit and explicit operations of this convention provided opportunities for a great variety of intricate eavesdropping episodes involving soliloquies and conferred a degree of suspense on every soliloquy. Even if the character speaking a soliloquy was alone onstage, another character could enter at any moment and overhear the remainder of the speech. Even if a character guarded a soliloquy from the hearing of another character, the speech could be overheard by a third character in hiding or by an entering character. Shakespeare profoundly explored the consequences of the fact that human beings do not have direct access to the minds of other human beings or even to all parts of their own minds. In an amazing variety of ways, Shakespeare's plays and poems dramatize the potential consequences of this fact. Shakespeare chose to place playgoers and readers in the same situation in regard to characters that characters face in regard to one another and that people face in regard to one another. He chose to present playgoers with only the outward behavior of each character, from which they are encouraged to imagine the motivations that would have prompted such behavior if the character were a real person. The evidence that soliloquies represented speeches by characters is vast and diverse.

EXPLICIT COMMENTS BY CHARACTERS

Shakespeare's plays contain numerous passing comments by characters that explicitly indicate that soliloquies represented the speeches of characters rather than words passing through the characters' minds. In a soliloquy rationalizing his infidelity to Julia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Proteus calls her “bad” and then chastises his tongue for doing so:

Fie, fie, unreverend tongue, to call her bad.(1)

(2.6.14, emphasis added)

Alone with the corpse of Caesar in Julius Caesar Antony also uses his tongue:

thy wounds … / (Which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips / To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue).

(3.1.259-61, emphasis added)

After praising himself in a soliloquy, Cloten describes what he has been doing as speech:

I dare speak it to myself, for it is not vainglory for a man and his glass to confer in his own chamber.

(Cymbeline, 4.1.7-9, emphasis added)

The following passage in Hamlet's long soliloquy at the end of 2.2 indicates that Hamlet's words represent speech rather than unspoken thought:

                                                                                Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
Why what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear [father] murthered,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must like a whore unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing like a very drab.

(2.2.580-86, emphasis added)

To unpack one's heart with words like a whore or to curse like a very drab is not to maintain a demure silence but rather to speak without restraint. Hamlet condemns himself for speaking to no purpose. Ironically, even the passage in which he condemns himself for unpacking his heart with words consists of further unpacked words, further speech. Like many characters in plays until the late seventeenth century, Hamlet continues to speak to himself even though he recognizes the futility of doing so.² In 2 Henry IV Hal soliloquizes by the bedside of his sleeping father. Later in the same scene, he describes what he did:

thinking you dead, … / I spake unto this crown as having sense.

(4.5.155-57, emphasis added)

Experienced playgoers of the period would not have been startled at this ex post facto indication that Hal's soliloquy earlier in the scene represented speech.

Numerous characters give onstage reports of self-addressed speeches that occurred offstage. In King John 3.4, for example, Constance, whose son Arthur has been taken prisoner, enters the stage distraught and explains what she did offstage:

I tore them [her “hairs”] from their bonds, and cried aloud,
“O that these hands could so redeem my son … !”

(70-72, emphasis added)

The context indicates that the speech she “cried aloud” was not addressed to other characters. Constance has entered alone, and her exclamation was clearly an outburst of deep feeling, not emitted to hold up her end of a conversation. Even if there had been other characters within earshot, she did not direct her exclamation to them for rhetorical effect. In an onstage soliloquy Romeo quotes a soliloquy he spoke offstage when he first noticed the miserable poverty of an apothecary:

Noting this penury, to myself I said,
“An' if a man did need a poison now, …
Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.”

(5.1.49-52, emphasis added)

Experienced Renaissance playgoers who were familiar with the dramatic convention of their own time whereby soliloquies represented speech would not have assumed that the word “said” here was merely metaphorical. Even inexperienced playgoers would not have done so. They had earlier witnessed an episode in this play in which words that Juliet said to herself were overheard by Romeo.

Because soliloquies represented speech, characters occasionally express an understandable concern about the danger that their soliloquies may be overheard by other characters. At the beginning of 3.4 of Twelfth Night, Olivia enters alone and begins a soliloquy but almost immediately notices the approach of Maria at the other door and cautions herself in a soliloquy now guarded in an aside:

I speak too loud.

(4)

As in the similar circumstances in The Changeling when de Flores cautions himself (“I'm too loud”),³ Olivia's words mark the transition from an unguarded soliloquy to a soliloquy spoken in an aside guarded from the hearing of an entering character. Olivia merely lowers her voice. None of her words represent her unspoken thought. At the beginning of 3.1 of Macbeth Banquo enters alone and speaks to himself for ten lines. At the approach of other characters he says,

But hush, no more.

(10)

While alone onstage in 2.4 of Measure for Measure Angelo acknowledges that he is vain about his “gravity” and then says:

let no man hear me.

(10)

Angelo's impulse to speak his mind is apparently so strong that his recognition of the risk he is running does not deter him from taking the risk. Just as Hamlet continues to speak to himself even though he recognizes the futility of doing so, Angelo continues to speak to himself even though he recognizes the danger that someone may overhear his words.

The fact that soliloquies in Shakespeare's plays entailed the risk of being overheard affected characterization. A character who speaks to himself is motivated to do so for some reason that outweighs the risk of being overheard. The likelihood of being overheard varies from circumstance to circumstance, and the speaker's motive or impulse also varies. Depending on the circumstances, speaking to oneself may suggest foolishness, madness, daring, duplicity, or alienation from others. It may indicate a need to externalize one's anger, grief, desire, or other passion. A character may speak to himself in order to test his ideas by literally hearing what they sound like. And so forth. By contrast, an interior monologue would never entail a risk of being overheard and thereby carries less suspense than a self-addressed speech consisting of the same words. Even if a character begins a soliloquy while alone onstage, playgoers knew that another character could enter at any moment and, if unnoticed by the speaker, would overhear the remainder of the soliloquy as a matter of course. The mere occurrence of an interior monologue would not imply anything about a character other than that he or she is capable of thought.

NARRATIVE POEMS

Shakespeare's commitment to soliloquies as the representation of speech rather than as the representation of thought is further demonstrated by his narrative poems. A narrative poet can simply and unambiguously specify that a passage is an interior monologue merely by introducing the passage with the words “She thought” or other words to that effect. Shakespeare was aware of the hypothetical possibility of mind reading. Jesus reads minds in the book of Matthew. But Jesus is presented as a divinity, and mind-reading is one of his powers that demonstrates his divinity. It is noteworthy, therefore, that in his narrative poems Shakespeare never provides readers with a verbatim account of a character's thoughts. Neither of his long narrative poems contains a single interior monologue. They do, however, contain many self-addressed speeches by characters. Venus's soliloquies after the departure of Adonis in Venus and Adonis are speeches, not interior monologues, as demonstrated by the following selected passages:

So she at these sad signs draws up her breath,
And sighing it again, exclaims on Death.

(929-30, emphasis added)

“My tongue cannot express my grief for one,
And yet,” quoth she, “behold two Adons dead!”

(1069-70, emphasis added)

As many examples from Shakespeare's works show, “quoth” meant “spoke.”

Soliloquies are so pervasive and conspicuous in The Rape of Lucrece that they seem to be a raison d'être for the poem. The part of the poem before the rape includes five soliloquies by Tarquin. The part of the poem after the rape contains no fewer than ten soliloquies by Lucrece and one by her husband Collatine. In one passage Lucrece soliloquizes for 272 lines without narrative interruption. It is the longest uninterrupted soliloquy in Shakespeare's works. The rest of the poem provides little more than a context for this remarkable series of soliloquies.

These soliloquies emphatically represent speeches rather than interior monologues. Most are introduced by “quoth he” or “quoth she.”⁴ Some soliloquies are introduced by other formulations indicating that they are spoken:

And to the flame thus [Tarquin] speaks advisedly

(180)

thus breathes she forth her spite

(762)

[the sun] To whom she sobbing speaks

(1088)

In some cases, a soliloquy is also followed by an indication that the preceding words represented speech, rather than purely mental activity:

This said

(358, 1037)

Thus cavils she with everything she sees.

(1093)

Other comments made by the narrator also indicate that soliloquies in the poem represent speech:

She stays, exclaiming on the direful night

(741)

Here she exclaims against repose and rest

(757)

So she, … / Holds disputation with each thing she views.

(1100-1)

Sometime her grief is dumb and hath no words,
Sometime 'tis mad and too much talk affords.

(1105-6)

So Lucrece, set a-work, sad tales doth tell

(1496)

She throws her eyes about the painting round,
And who she finds forlorn, she doth lament.

(1499-1500)

At a number of points in her soliloquies, Lucrece's own comments indicate that her words represent speech rather than thought:

my talk

(797)

Unprofitable sounds

(1017)

my lamenting tongue

(1465)

Shakespeare may have been so insistent about this matter because he did not want readers to make the mistake of thinking that this poem gave them the godlike power to read minds. Nowhere in this poem of 1,855 lines is a verbatim account given of a character's thoughts.

OVERHEARD SOLILOQUIES

The concern expressed by Olivia, Angelo, and Banquo that their self-addressed speeches might be overheard was not groundless. Soliloquies are indeed overheard on numerous occasions in the worlds occupied by Shakespeare's characters. In Shakespeare's plays whenever a character is unaware of the presence of a second character, the second character overhears the first character's soliloquy unless the second character is asleep or there is some other obvious impediment. Some of the most famous episodes in the canon involve overheard soliloquies. Romeo overhears a soliloquy spoken by Juliet in the balcony scene. Because he is aware of her presence, he is able to guard his own soliloquies from her hearing by speaking them in asides. Because Juliet is unaware of the presence of Romeo, however, she is unable to guard her speech from his hearing:

JULIET.
Ay me!
ROMEO.
                    She speaks! / O, speak again, bright angel …

(2.2.25-26)

Romeo addresses Juliet here, but only in an apostrophe. He guards his soliloquy from her hearing. Juliet does speak again. His apostrophe to her is balanced by her apostrophe to him:

Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo / Deny thy father …

(33fol.)

This is one of countless examples in drama before the middle of the seventeenth century in which a character overhears an apostrophe addressed to himself in a soliloquy. Romeo asks,

Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?

(37)

Romeo decides not to speak to her at this point and does hear more. He hears Juliet's next soliloquy, which contains more apostrophes addressed to Romeo, including “Take all myself” (49). At this, Romeo ceases to guard his speech and overtly answers her apostrophe: “I take thee at thy word” (49). This episode is not only a decisive moment in their relationship; it is also a watershed of sorts in the history of love. Romeo's awareness of the depth of Juliet's feelings at this early stage renders completely moot the wooing procedure of the courtly love tradition by which a woman was supposed to play hard-to-get for an indefinite period and the suffering male gave her slavish devotion. It would have been a gross violation of the literary and perhaps social conventions of the age for Juliet to have been so frank about her feelings so early in her relationship with Romeo. But after he makes his presence known to her, her knowledge that he has heard her speeches and therefore knows of the depth and sincerity of her feelings allows her to dispense entirely with the customary coyness, as Juliet herself explains:

In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond,
And therefore thou mayest think my behavior light,
But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true
Than those that have [more] coying to be strange.
I should have been more strange, I must confess,
But that thou overheardst, ere I was ware,
My true-love passion.

(98-104)

The relationship of Romeo and Juliet, based on sincerity and equality, is so attractive that it provided an alternative model for love that superseded the courtly love tradition. All this was accomplished as a result of an overheard soliloquy.

A famous episode in Twelfth Night involves a long series of overheard soliloquies. Early in 2.5, Maria gives instructions to Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Fabian about the eavesdropping plot she has devised to expose the foolishness of Malvolio:

Get ye all three into the box-tree; Malvolio's coming. … Observe him, for the love of mockery; for I know this letter will make a contemplative idiot of him. …

(15-20)

Maria devises this plot with the confident expectation that the target of eavesdropping will talk to himself. Countless characters in similar circumstances in ancient, medieval, and other Renaissance plays held the same expectation, and it was almost always fulfilled, as it is in this case. Malvolio's speeches are interspersed with asides spoken by the eavesdroppers to one another. The situation backfires in a way. Toby is outraged at Malvolio's remarks but cannot respond openly without ruining the eavesdropping plot. The situation devised to humiliate Malvolio in the future has had the unintended consequence of causing Toby suffering in the present.

Another memorable overheard soliloquy occurs during the battle near the end of 1 Henry IV. Encountering what he takes to be the corpse of Falstaff, Hal delivers a eulogy of sorts that ends with the words, “Embowell'd will I see thee by and by, / Till then in blood by noble Percy lie” (5.4.109-10). After Hal exits, Falstaff, who was pretending to be dead to avoid being killed by Douglas, rises up and exclaims, “Embowell'd!” (111). The convention whereby soliloquies represented speech allowed Shakespeare to dramatize a common daydream—the daydream of learning how one's friends will react to one's death. This episode suggests that one might be disappointed. Hal refers to Falstaff as “old acquaintance” (102) not “old friend.” The first line of one couplet seems to express strong emotion, but the second line takes it back:

O, I should have a heavy miss of thee
If I were much in love with vanity!

(5.4.105-6)

This episode suggests how expendable Hal regards his relationship with his “old acquaintance.”

In 5.2 of Troilus and Cressida Cressida speaks to herself after the exit of Diomedes, unaware that there are eavesdroppers present. Her self-condemnation concludes,

Minds sway'd by eyes are full of turpitude.

(112)

In a soliloquy of his own, guarded from the hearing of the two other eavesdroppers from whom he has concealed his own presence, Thersites comments,

A proof of strength she could not publish more,
Unless she said, “My mind is now turn'd whore.”

(113-14)

This is clearly a reference to her soliloquy, not to her earlier dialogue with Diomedes.

Left alone onstage in 2.2 of Macbeth when Lady Macbeth goes off to “gild the faces of the grooms” with blood (53), Macbeth gives voice to his sense of guilt:

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

(57-60)

Lady Macbeth re-enters in time to hear at least part of this soliloquy and to respond to it:

My hands are of your color; but I shame
To wear a heart so white.

(61-62)

In soliloquies of her own in 5.1, Lady Macbeth gives voice to her sense of horror and remorse, echoing the soliloquy that she overheard in 2.2:

who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

(39-40)

What, will these hands ne'er be clean?

(43)

All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

(50-52)

Like the soliloquy they echo, hers too are overheard. In the earlier episode Macbeth's habit of speaking to himself allowed his wife to overhear him and chastize him. In 5.1 Lady Macbeth inadvertently reveals her secrets to a Doctor and a Gentlewoman. The incident seems designed to complicate a playgoer's response to Lady Macbeth. We cannot forget her earlier complicity in murder, but in this episode, we witness her intense suffering. Macbeth's conscience-stricken moments occurred early in the play. He becomes more cold-blooded as the play progresses. Lady Macbeth has moved in the opposite direction. All of this is made more intense and complex because it comes in the form of overheard soliloquies. That she is overheard by eavesdroppers makes her seem vulnerable in a way that would have been unimaginable until this development actually occurs. Like many playgoers, the characters who hear Lady Macbeth have mixed reactions to what they are witnessing. The Doctor expresses sympathy for the queen, “What a sigh is there! The heart is sorely charg'd” (53-54). But he also realizes that Lady Macbeth has participated in a horrible crime and that it is dangerous to know what he now knows about the Queen: “I think, but dare not speak” (79). The Gentlewoman earlier exhibited a similar fear: she refused to tell the Doctor about what she overheard on earlier occasions. The convention whereby soliloquies represented speech here provided Shakespeare with an opportunity to do two things at once: to complicate the characterization of Lady Macbeth and simultaneously to dramatize the dangerous position of subordinates who know too much. It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of this episode, the last appearance of Lady Macbeth in the play.

In 2.5 of 3 Henry VI, Henry VI overhears the soliloquy of a Son bearing the body of his father as well as the soliloquy of a Father bearing the body of his son. Later in the same play two gamekeepers overhear Henry's own soliloquy (3.1).

In All's Well That Ends Well 4.1, the Second French Lord and five or six other soldiers lie in ambush for Parolles as part of a plan to expose him as a braggadocio. When Parolles enters, he immediately begins a soliloquy. The hidden characters do not immediately come forward; instead they eavesdrop on Parolles's self-addressed speech, in which he formulates a scheme to deceive others into believing he has actually fought in battle.

In Antony and Cleopatra the dying speech of a major character is an overheard soliloquy. In 4.9, a Sentry and his entire Company overhear the soliloquy in which Enobarbus bitterly reproaches himself for having left Antony. Enobarbus dies with a literally heart-rending apostrophe to Antony on his lips.

In Cymbeline 4.2 Belarius alerts Guiderius and Arviragus to the entrance of Cloten. Cloten at first fails to notice the presence of other characters, and he speaks to himself:

I cannot find those runagates, that villain
Hath mock'd me. I am faint.

(62-63)

Belarius comments on Cloten's soliloquy in an aside addressed to his two companions:

“Those runagates”? / Means he not us?

(63-64)

Only one scene after mentioning in passing that he speaks to himself, Cloten suffers the consequence of such behavior.

One of the most memorable episodes in Love's Labor's Lost involves an elaborate sequence of overheard soliloquies that will be analyzed in detail later in this chapter.

Because even offstage soliloquies represent speech, they are vulnerable to being overheard, and overheard they are, on numerous occasions. In As You Like It a Lord reports to Duke Senior that he and Amiens have eavesdropped on Jaques's encounter with a wounded deer. The Duke assumes that Jaques spoke to himself:

But what said Jaques? / Did he not moralize this spectacle?

(2.1.43-44)

The Lord proceeds to give the Duke a detailed account, including verbatim quotations, of Jacques's soliloquies. Fewer than fifty lines later, Adam warns Orlando to flee Oliver's house—Adam has learned of Oliver's intention to murder Orlando:

I overheard him.

(2.3.26)

Adam mentions no confederate to whom Oliver was speaking and implies that Oliver intends to act alone: “this night he means / To burn the lodging where you use to lie” (22-23). Oliver has already had three soliloquies in the play (1.1.85-87, 93-94, 163-173), and in all three, he has commented on his plots against his brother. When Adam says he “overheard” Oliver, Renaissance playgoers would have assumed that Adam overheard yet another of Oliver's soliloquies.

In an offstage incident recounted onstage in Titus Andronicus 5.1, Aaron addressed a soliloquy to his uncomprehending infant son. The shrewd and cold-blooded Aaron weakens for a moment to express fatherly tenderness and thereby runs the unnecessary risk that someone will overhear him, and he pays for this moment of weakness. His soliloquy is indeed overheard—by a Goth soldier, who takes Aaron into custody and quotes Aaron's entire ten-line soliloquy verbatim to Lucius. An overheard soliloquy thus has a decisive effect on Aaron's fate.

In Julius Caesar, Caesar mentions in a soliloquy of his own that he overheard his wife speak to herself, to figments of her own dreaming imagination:

Thrice hath Calphurnia in her sleep cried out,
“Help, ho! they murther Caesar!”

(2.2.2-3)

Calphurnia's speech to a figment of her dreaming imagination becomes a major focus of the ensuing episode.

In 1 Henry IV Lady Percy informs Hotspur that she has overheard him speaking to himself in his sleep. He has apparently done this often and at great length:

In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watch'd,
And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars,
Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed,
Cry “Courage! to the field!” And thou hast talk'd
Of sallies and retires, …
And all the currents of a heady fight.

(2.3.47-55)

Hotspur has been so eagerly anticipating the coming warfare that his preoccupation bursts forth in the form of speech when his conscious guard is relaxed.

In Henry V the Duke of Exeter gives King Henry an account of a soliloquy that he has overheard offstage. He came upon the Duke of York apostrophizing the corpse of the Earl of Suffolk during the battle of Agincourt:

He cries aloud, “Tarry, my cousin Suffolk!
My soul shall thine keep company to heaven; …”
Upon these words I came and cheer'd him up.

(4.6.13-20)

In Othello 3.3, Emilia describes Desdemona's spoken apostrophes to the handkerchief given her by Othello:

she reserves it evermore about her / To kiss and talk to.

(295-96, emphasis added)

As they wait for the arrival of sleep-walking Lady Macbeth, the Gentlewoman gives the Doctor a detailed account of previous circumstances:

Since his Majesty went into the field, I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her night-gown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon't, read it, afterwards seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this while in a most fast sleep.

(5.1.4-8)

As detailed as this account is, the Doctor questions her about something that he expects to have occurred as a matter of course. It then becomes clear why she left this detail out of her account and why she wanted a second witness:

DOCTOR.
… In this slumb'ry agitation, besides her walking and other actual performances, what, at any time, have you heard her say?
GENTLEWOMAN.
That, sir, which I will not report after her.
DOCTOR.
You may to me, and 'tis most meet you should.
GENTLEWOMAN.
Neither to you nor any one, having no witness to confirm my speech.

(11-18, emphasis added)

Like many other characters, the Doctor assumes as a matter of course that a lone character under observation would speak to herself. After the departure of Lady Macbeth, the Doctor suggests that it is not unusual for troubled people to speak to themselves:

infected minds / To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.

(72-73)

The Doctor's diagnosis is borne out by many other situations in Shakespeare's plays.

Caliban describes his compulsion to give voice when alone to his hatred of Prospero even though he knows that his speeches will be overheard and that he will be punished for them:

His spirits hear me, / And yet I needs must curse.

(The Tempest, 2.2.3-4)

Even though Caliban knows that these spirits sometimes make themselves invisible in order to eavesdrop on him, he cannot guard his speeches from them in asides. By convention, a character cannot guard a soliloquy from another character unless he is specifically aware of the presence and location of the other character. If this had not been the way the convention operated, characters would always guard soliloquies on the mere chance that eavesdroppers might be present.

A description of a soliloquy overheard offstage provides an explicit, succinct statement of the basic operations of the conventions governing soliloquies in Shakespeare's plays. In All's Well That Ends Well the Steward reports to the Countess that he has overheard Helena's offstage soliloquy:

Madam, I was very late more near her than I think she wish'd me. Alone she was, and did communicate to herself her own words to her own ears; she thought, I dare vow for her, they touch'd not any stranger sense. Her matter was, she lov'd your son.

(1.3.106-11)

This episode invites an ironic comparison with the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet. In each case, a woman expresses her love in a soliloquy for a young man, and her soliloquy is overheard by another character. But in Romeo and Juliet, the character who overhears Juliet's declaration of love is the man she loves; he returns her love; and the lovers are at odds with their parents. Here the eavesdropper is an agent of the mother of the young man; the man the woman loves does not return her love and later flees from her; and the parent of the young man has a higher regard for the young woman than does the young man himself.

The establishment and maintenance of the conventions governing soliloquies did not require the distribution of a document in the theater at each performance explaining the conventions to playgoers. The conventions were established and maintained simply because they operated explicitly so often that playgoers became extremely familiar with their operation. They had been overtly spelled out so often that they did not have to be overtly spelled out in every case. They could operate implicitly. They were assumed to be in operation unless explicitly overridden. Any prevailing convention can be overridden in a particular instance, if and only if some overt feature of this particular situation clearly and unambiguously dramatizes that the convention is being overridden. A prevailing convention cannot be overridden implicitly. The fact that eavesdroppers do not specifically comment on an unguarded soliloquy by the character on whom they are spying in no way suggests that the soliloquy somehow is governed by the convention of the interior monologue, a convention which was not introduced into drama until the middle of the seventeenth century. It would be naive and anachronistic to presume that, unless the dialogue of an Elizabethan play explicitly called attention to a pervasively employed convention of the period, the conventions of post-Renaissance theatrical verisimilitude somehow retroactively came into effect. Lack of comment by an eavesdropper merely indicates that the soliloquy did not provoke a specific comment, not that the soliloquy was inaudible to the eavesdropper. Shakespeare exploited the dramatic potential of these conventions throughout his career in a wide variety of situations in all genres and for a wide variety of particular dramatic purposes. Many of these episodes have been misinterpreted because the implicit operation of the conventions have not been understood by post-Renaissance readers.

Several soliloquies are implicitly overheard in Romeo and Juliet. In the Second Quarto, the most authoritative text of the play, as well as in the Folio, Romeo's entrance in 2.3 is located a full eight lines before Friar Lawrence finishes the 30-line soliloquy that opens the scene. It is unlikely that a stage direction would have been inserted in the middle of a speech in this fashion if Romeo were merely supposed to enter at the end of the Friar's speech. Although Romeo does not explicitly comment on the Friar's soliloquy either to the Friar or to himself in an aside, Renaissance playgoers would have assumed that Romeo overheard the final lines of the Friar's soliloquy. Even modern playgoers should realize this after having witnessed the immediately preceding episode, the balcony scene, in which Romeo eavesdropped on Juliet's soliloquies. Indeed, this episode seems designed to serve as an ironic complement to the preceding one. In 2.2 Romeo overheard the woman he loves express passionate love for him and compare him to a rose. Here he overhears his spiritual adviser compare “man” to a “weak flower” (23-30). Elsewhere in the play, the Friar's actions have unintended consequences. It is a dramatic irony that Romeo overhears the Friar speak of “Poison” (24) and later gets the idea to use poison to end his life.

In the final scene of the same play occur a number of soliloquies that are implicitly overheard. Warned by his servant of the approach of other characters, Paris hides with the specific purpose of eavesdropping on the newcomers. Those newcomers are Romeo and his servant Balthasar. Romeo shortly sends Balthasar away. As he is leaving, Balthasar speaks to himself in a soliloquy in an aside that he guards from the hearing of his master:

For all this same, I'll hide me hereabout,
His looks I fear, and his intents I doubt.

(5.3.43-44)

Paris does not comment on this soliloquy in one of his own, but Renaissance playgoers would have been in no doubt that he hears Balthasar's speech. They were familiar with the convention that a character could not guard a self-addressed speech from the hearing of an eavesdropping character. Immediately after Balthasar finishes speaking and takes up a hiding place, Romeo speaks to himself for four lines in which he apostrophizes Juliet's tomb, which he proceeds to force open. Paris reacts to Romeo's desecration of the Capulet tomb with a soliloquy of his own that he guards from both Romeo and Balthasar. He is outraged at Romeo's desecration of the tomb, at the act itself, and a comment on Romeo's spoken words would have been dramatically superfluous. Experienced Renaissance playgoers had encountered so many episodes involving overheard soliloquies, including two earlier in this play, that they would have been in no doubt that Paris could hear Romeo's words. This episode illustrates Shakespeare's delight and virtuoso skill in constructing imaginative applications of the conventions governing soliloquies and asides. In this case he constructed a series of three consecutive speeches that are self-addressed: the first (Balthasar's) is guarded from a second character (Romeo) but implicitly overheard by a third character (Paris); the second (Romeo's) is unguarded and implicitly overheard by two eavesdroppers; and the third (Paris's) is guarded from both the other characters. This passage is by no means the most intricate example of Shakespeare's implicit employment of these conventions. The implicit operation of the conventions in this case is not merely a curious and technical matter. A major theme of this play is privacy, the ability to conduct one's affairs in private, the limitations of privacy, and its vulnerability to violation.

Yet another implicitly overheard soliloquy occurs later in the scene. As Friar Lawrence enters the stage, he speaks to himself and then becomes aware of the presence of someone else and calls out, and then Balthasar responds:

FRIAR.
Saint Francis be my speed! how oft tonight
Have my old feet stumbled at graves! Who's there?
BALTHASAR.
Here's one, a friend, and one that knows you well.

(121-23)

Balthasar must have been awake before the Friar calls out “Who's there?”: the Friar's call is provoked by a prior movement by Balthasar. Balthasar's response indicates that, despite the darkness, he has no trouble identifying the Friar. Renaissance playgoers would have assumed as a matter of course that Balthasar heard the Friar's previous, self-addressed words as well, and that this is the means by which he identifies the Friar.

Another implicitly overheard soliloquy in the episode carries profound artistic implications. The soliloquy is poignant in itself, but that another character overhears it greatly intensifies the poignancy of the episode. Shortly after the exchange just discussed, Balthasar tells the Friar,

As I did sleep under this [yew] tree here,
I dreamt my master and another fought,
And that my master slew him.

(137-39)

Balthasar's account is suspect. In the first place, it is suspicious that his dream corresponds to what actually happened. And it is extremely doubtful that Balthasar would fall asleep almost immediately after deciding to eavesdrop on his suicidal master. He would have had to fall asleep immediately because if he had been awake for even a moment, he would have seen his master breaking into a tomb and declaring that he will “cram” it “with more food.” Only four lines later Paris steps forward and threatens Balthasar's master. If Balthasar had not fallen asleep, why did he not intervene at some point? and why did he say he fell asleep? Balthasar loves his master and is concerned about his welfare, but he is not a fighter. Romeo sent him away with the following warning:

                    if thou, jealous, dost return to pry
In what I farther shall intend to do,
By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint,
And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs.

(33-36)

Balthasar shows some courage in disobeying his master by prying into what Romeo intends to do. He stayed behind with no clear plan about what action he might take to prevent Romeo from killing himself. Instead of deciding to take a nap in these circumstances, Balthasar remained awake and witnessed the death of Paris at Romeo's hands. Romeo's warning to Balthasar, it seems, was no idle threat. If Balthasar, unarmed, tried to interfere with Romeo, Balthasar would be sure to meet the same fate as Paris, a clearly experienced swordsman. In light of the conventions governing soliloquies at the time, the whole episode makes dramatic sense only if Balthasar is fully awake the whole time but is too fearful to interfere with Romeo. He lies to the Friar about falling asleep because he feels cowardly and ashamed about failing to stop his beloved master's suicide.

Like the death of the unrequited lover Paris, Balthasar's situation intensifies the poignancy of an already tragically poignant episode. Awake, alert, and within earshot throughout the episode, not only does Balthasar witness the death of Paris but, according to the conventions of the time, he overhears Romeo's 47-line soliloquy, one of the longest in the canon, a soliloquy in which Romeo expresses his intention to commit suicide and at the end of which he does so. During this episode playgoers hear Romeo's agonized speech about the death of his beloved Juliet and simultaneously witness the agonized reactions of Balthasar as he helplessly overhears the suicide speech of his beloved master. Balthasar does not comment in asides because he has been rendered speechless by his shock and horror at the situation he is witnessing, as well as by his fear and sense of guilt. No such commentary was necessary for experienced playgoers in Shakespeare's theater to understand what was happening. In a way, Balthsar is a stand-in for playgoers, who are likewise speechless and likewise helpless to prevent the tragic events from unfolding in the fictional world onstage.

Balthasar's situation in this episode not only mirrors that of playgoers but ironically parallels other situations in the play. Balthasar's failure to act to save his master's life is paralleled by Friar Lawrence's abandonment of Juliet in the tomb even though he is aware of the likelihood that she will commit suicide. This ironic parallel is reinforced by the fact that Balthasar tried to conceal from the Friar his own failure to prevent Romeo's suicide. Both Balthasar and the Friar are sympathetic characters, yet neither acts heroically in a crisis. Balthasar's failure to intervene to prevent Romeo from killing himself is only one of countless missed opportunities to avert the tragedy that occur in the play. The episode in which Balthasar eavesdrops on Romeo's suicide speech also sets up ironic and poignant parallels with the balcony scene. In that episode Romeo trespassed in the Capulet garden; in this case he trespasses in the Capulet tomb. In that case Juliet apostrophized Romeo who (unbeknowst to Juliet) was present, in this case Romeo apostrophizes Juliet, who (unbeknownst to Romeo) is alive. In that episode Romeo eavesdropped on another character's soliloquies with elation and eventually made his presence known to the speaker, who then shared his elation. In this episode Romeo is the speaker, and both he and the eavesdropper are in agony during the speech, and the eavesdropper never makes his presence known to the speaker, and as a result his agony will last as long as he lives. If Balthasar had truly been asleep, he would be curious about the fate of his master in the tomb. Balthasar already knows what the Friar will discover when the Friar enters the tomb and cannot bear to enter it himself. He runs away but is apprehended offstage by the Watch and is brought back to the scene of Romeo's death, the scene of what he regards as his own shameful inaction.

In 3.1 of A Midsummer Night's Dream, after the other craftsmen have fled because of Bottom's transformation, Bottom speaks to himself and then sings in order to show that he is not afraid. Unbeknownst to Bottom, Titania has been onstage asleep. She now awakens and says to herself in an aside: “What angel wakes me from my flow'ry bed?” (129). She continues for a moment to eavesdrop on the ass-headed angel rather than immediately making her presence known to him. Bottom sings another verse and then comments on the song in a soliloquy (130-36). Titania then makes her presence known: “I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again” (137). Titania does not explicitly comment on Bottom's brief soliloquy after he stopped singing. Playgoers in Shakespeare's theater would not have taken this absence of commentary as implicit evidence that Bottom's words represented his unspoken thoughts. The absence of commentary by Titania merely indicates that Bottom's brief soliloquy did not call for specific commentary by Titania. Several similar episodes, in which soliloquies of human characters are implicitly overheard by eavesdropping fairies, occur in the following scene.

The episode in 5.2 of Troilus and Cressida in which Thersites explicitly comments on a soliloquy by Cressida also illuminates the implicit operation of the conventions governing soliloquies. Troilus and Ulysses eavesdrop on a conversation between Cressida and Diomedes, and Thersites eavesdrops on all the other characters. After Diomedes exits, Cressida believes she is alone and begins her soliloquy with an apostrophe to Troilus, whom she believes is in Troy:

Troilus, farewell! one eye yet looks on thee,
But with my heart the other eye doth see.

(107-8)

The full and immediate impact of the irony that, unbeknownst to Cressida, Troilus overhears her apostrophe in which she figuratively bids him farewell depends on playgoers' awareness of the conventions governing soliloquies. The impact of this irony would be delayed and attenuated for an imaginary playgoer who wrongly assumed that soliloquies spoken by actors gave direct access to the mind of a character and did not represent outward behavior. Such a playgoer would not realize his or her error until after the fact, until after Cressida exits and Thersites, who is standing apart from the two other eavesdroppers and guards his soliloquies from their hearing, comments on her soliloquy. Such a playgoer would then have to apply this information retroactively to a different character, and deduce that Troilus, like Thersites, must have overheard the soliloquy. As opposed to this anachronistic imaginary playgoer who attempts to apply post-Renaissance theatrical conventions to Cressida's soliloquy, actual playgoers in Shakespeare's time would have known while Cressida's soliloquy is in progress that Troilus overhears the words spoken by the boy actor portraying Cressida, and it was for actual playgoers of his own time that Shakespeare designed the episode rather than for imaginary playgoers wholly unfamiliar with well-established dramatic conventions of the period. During their subsequent conversation after Thersites's aside, neither Troilus himself nor his companion Ulysses refers specifically to the soliloquy. Troilus does express his intention “To make a recordation” in his soul “Of every syllable that here was spoke” (116-17). For playgoers at the Globe, Troilus did not need to specify that “every syllable that here was spoke” included the soliloquy spoken by Cressida.

After Edmund's opening soliloquy in the second scene of King Lear, Gloucester enters and does not at first notice Edmund, who does not at first call attention to himself. Preoccupied with the disturbing events dramatized in the opening scene, Gloucester speaks to himself for three lines before he notices the presence of Edmund:

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?

(1.2.23-26)

In his self-addressed speech Gloucester does not reveal any secrets he would not share with Edmund and is not concerned that Edmund has overheard his words. Although Gloucester's speech elicits no commentary by Edmund, playgoers of the time would have assumed without question that Edmund hears it.

Alone onstage in 4.3 of The Winter's Tale, Autolycus notices the approach of the Clown, whom he intends to gull: “A prize, a prize!” (31). Autolycus hides, presumably for the purpose of spying on the newcomer in order to learn something about him before proceeding. As in countless other episodes in plays written during the course of two thousand years, a character assumes that the person on whom he is eavesdropping will speak his mind. The Clown complies. He speaks about the money he and his father will earn at the sheep-shearing and about the items he must purchase for the festival. Autolycus does not state explicitly in an aside what every experienced playgoer would have known, that he can hear the soliloquy spoken by the character upon whom he is eavesdropping.

Alone onstage in 2.2 of The Tempest Caliban notices the approach of Trinculo: “Here comes a spirit of his … I'll lie flat, / Perchance he will not mind me” (2.2.15-17). Trinculo clearly fails to notice the presence of Caliban at first. Only after commenting on the weather for six lines does he say, “What have we here?” (24). Caliban does not explicitly comment on Trinculo's speech in a soliloquy guarded in an aside, but Renaissance playgoers would have been in no doubt that Caliban hears Trinculo's speech.

As in ancient and medieval times, dramatic episodes in Renaissance drama in which a character speaks to himself may not have seemed particularly unrealistic because praying aloud was an everyday activity for many people. Furthermore, because in a prayer one may reveal to one's god actions and feelings that one would not wish to reveal to one's fellow humans, people who prayed aloud understandably may have felt anxiety about the possibility that a spoken prayer might be overheard. This possibility is explicitly raised in Much Ado about Nothing. Margaret says, “I say my prayers aloud,” and Benedick (or perhaps Borachio, as some editors suggest) responds, “the hearers may cry amen” (2.1.104-5). Witnessing situations in plays in which self-addressed speeches of characters are overheard may have effected a catharsis of playgoers' anxiety about their spoken prayers being overheard.

In some episodes in Shakespeare's plays a character onstage fails to hear the soliloquy of another character. In none of these cases is the failure the result of the fact that the soliloquy is meant to represent an interior monologue rather than speech. In every case the failure is a failure to hear a speech. In every case the failure is due to one of two circumstances. Either the speaker of the soliloquy is aware of the presence of the other character and so by convention is able to guard his or her speech from the hearing of the other character, or there is a patently obvious, clearly dramatized reason why the other character is unable to hear the speech. The most common such reason is that the second character is asleep. In 2.2 of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Helena is abandoned by Demetrius and bewails her situation in a soliloquy (88-101). She does not notice that Titania, Lysander, and Hermia are all onstage at the time. Those characters fail to overhear her soliloquy because they are asleep. Several other examples of this kind of situation occur elsewhere in the play. In 5.3 of Richard III, Richmond prays while Richard III is onstage. Later in the same scene Richard speaks to himself while Richmond is still onstage. They do not hear one another's speeches not merely because they are in different fictive locations but because each is asleep during the other's speech.

Some characters become so conspicuously preoccupied or overwrought that they become oblivious to what is going on around them and as a result fail to hear another character's soliloquy. Their preoccupation or emotional distraction is conspicuously dramatized. In 3 Henry VI when a soldier enters the stage in 2.5 carrying a corpse, he does not notice the presence of King Henry and speaks to himself. During the course of his soliloquy, the soldier discovers to his horror that the enemy he has just killed is his own father. Henry overhears his speech and comments on the Son's situation in a soliloquy of his own that he guards from the hearing of the Son in an aside. After Henry speaks, another soldier enters also carrying a corpse. During the course of his soliloquy, this soldier discovers to his horror that the man he has killed is his own son. It is certain that the Father's soliloquy does not represent his unspoken thoughts: his speech is overheard by Henry. The Son does not overhear the Father's speech because he is still in a state of shock, remorse, and grief. Similarly overcome by shock, remorse, and grief, the Father does not overhear the brief subsequent self-addressed comments by the Son. Neither hears the other's speeches because each is “overgone with care” (123), as Henry observes. Aware of the presence of both and not in a state of shock, Henry overhears the soliloquies of both. The operation of the convention in this episode implicitly reinforces a theme that is explicitly dramatized. In the midst of the battle the Son's bloodthirstiness blinded him to the fact that the person he attacked was his own father, and later his horror and grief make him deaf to the spoken words of another man's Father. In the midst of battle the Father was oblivious to the fact that the person he attacked was his own son and in his shock is later oblivious to the words spoken by another man's Son. The episode is superficially quite unrealistic but dramatizes the reality that powerful emotions can overwhelm one's attention to one's circumstances.

By convention, characters fail to overhear another character's self-addressed speech if they are engaged in a conversation of their own. An instance occurs in The Winter's Tale. Florizel and Perdita are onstage with Camillo, who proposes to the desperate lovers that they flee to Sicilia. While discussing the details of his plan, Camillo abruptly interrupts himself: “That you may know you shall not want—one word” (4.4.594). He presumably draws them to the far side of one of the stage pillars, a location of greater privacy, so that a character entering the stage from the rear doors would not be able to see them immediately. That they have so stationed themselves is clear because Autolycus, who then enters, does not notice their presence. After Autolycus exults in a lengthy soliloquy at his success in fleecing the revelers at the sheep-shearing festival, the attention of playgoers is shifted to the other characters, who are still intently discussing the planned escape to Sicilia. Playgoers do not hear the part of this discussion that took place while Autolycus was speaking, and neither does Autolycus, because his own speech by convention drowns out the speeches of the others. As soon as he stops speaking, however, both playgoers and Autolycus are able to hear the conversation of the other characters onstage. Autolycus is struck dumb with fear for a moment because he has been unaware of the presence of these characters within earshot and so has not guarded his incriminating speech from their hearing in an aside. Camillo shortly notices Autolycus, who is still near the rear of the stage, and presumes he has just entered. Camillo says in an aside to his companions, “Who have we here? / We'll make an instrument of this” (624-25). Meanwhile, Autolycus expresses his terror in a soliloquy this time guarded in an aside from the hearing of the other characters:

If they have overheard me now—why, hanging.

(626-27)

Like Olivia, Banquo, and Angelo in episodes discussed earlier, Autolycus here articulates the danger entailed in speaking to oneself. But Camillo's greeting—“How now, good fellow? why shak'st thou so? Fear not, man, here's no harm intended to thee” (628-29)—indicates to Autolycus that, luckily for him, his speech has not been overheard. Camillo, Florizel, and Perdita fail to overhear Autolycus's words not because those words represent Autolycus's unspoken thoughts but for the conspicuously dramatized reason that those characters are completely absorbed in their own intense conversation.

In some episodes a character is prevented from hearing a soliloquy because he or she has been rendered insentient by a magic spell. Some of the sleeping characters who fail to overhear soliloquies in A Midsummer Night's Dream were put to sleep by Puck's magic. In the second scene of The Tempest, Ariel leads Ferdinand onstage with a song. Ferdinand comments on this song and on Ariel's next song (“Full fadom five”) in two soliloquies. Neither Ariel nor Prospero comment on Ferdinand's soliloquies, but playgoers would have assumed that that pair overhear everything Ferdinand says. One character onstage in 1.2 does not overhear Ferdinand's soliloquies. At the entrance of Ferdinand and Ariel, Prospero casts a magic spell on Miranda that makes her temporarily insentient. We know that this must have occurred because later in the episode, Prospero releases Miranda from the spell:

The fringed curtains of thine eye advance,
And say what thou seest yond.

(409-10)

The word “advance” could mean “raise” or “lift up” at the time.⁵ Not until Prospero has had the opportunity to overhear Ferdinand speak to himself does he allow Miranda to become aware of Ferdinand's existence. Only at that point does she finally react to the being who has been on stage for 36 lines:

                                                            What, is't a spirit?
Lord, how it looks about! Believe me, sir,
It carries a brave form. But 'tis a spirit.

(410-12)

Prospero's motive for placing Miranda in a trance at the entrance of Ferdinand is easy to imagine, at least in retrospect. Prospero has already conceived of the possibility of a match between his daughter and the son of his former enemy as a part of a planned reconciliation. But before he allows the young people to interact, he wants some evidence that Ferdinand will be a good son-in-law. Ferdinand's soliloquies supply just such evidence. Ferdinand speaks of “Sitting on a bank, / Weeping again the King my father's wrack” (390-91). Prospero cannot be but impressed by the capacity for deep devotion to a father figure displayed by this prospective son-in-law. The episode would not make dramatic sense if Prospero were unable to hear Ferdinand's soliloquies.

In Shakespeare's plays what does not happen can be as important as what does happen if playgoers are encouraged to believe it might happen. Shakespeare constructed many episodes that encourage or entice playgoers actively to hope or to expect or to worry that a soliloquy will be overheard or to feel relief or disappointment when a soliloquy is not overheard. In some cases these missed opportunities or averted misfortunes are explicitly described in the dialogue, as when Autolycus escapes hanging. In many other instances Shakespeare depended on playgoers' familiarity with the conventions governing soliloquies to recognize the possibilities inherent in the situation. One such episode occurs in King Lear. After Kent has been placed in the stocks (in 2.2) and Kent and Gloucester are alone, Gloucester expresses sympathy for Kent and offers to help him. After Gloucester leaves, Kent speaks in a soliloquy about a letter from Cordelia in which she informs him that she is on the way with help for Lear. Up to this point in the play, the unsympathetic characters have worked together while the sympathetic characters have worked against one another, but now it seems as if the sympathetic characters are starting to work together. Kent then falls asleep. Edgar enters and begins a soliloquy without noticing the presence of Kent. Experienced Renaissance playgoers knew that soliloquies represented speech and that soliloquies are always overheard by other characters within earshot unless there is some dramatized impediment. Kent's sleeping state is such a clearly dramatized impediment in the present circumstance. But Renaissance playgoers would have hoped and even expected that Kent would awaken while Edgar was speaking and hear the remainder of Edgar's soliloquy. Kent would quickly realize that Edgar is innocent of the charges against him and would presumably make his presence known to Edgar—and these two sympathetic characters, who have so much in common, would join forces. When Edgar leaves without interacting with Kent, Renaissance playgoers would have suffered disappointment in response to this lost opportunity. During the course of the play, characters often have their hopes raised only to have those hopes ultimately dashed. In this episode Shakespeare created a situation in which playgoers undergo a similar experience themselves. This profound artistic effect depends on the implicit operation of the conventions governing soliloquies. This effect has been obscured by editors, beginning with Alexander Pope, who have inserted scene numbers before and after Edgar's soliloquy. An analysis of the editorial history of this passage is included in chapter 9.⁶

In 2 Henry IV, 4.5, Hal is onstage alone with his sleeping father and speaks to himself. During the course of his soliloquy. Hal becomes convinced that his father is dead and thereupon eulogizes him in the form of an apostrophe:

Thy due from me / Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood, …

(37)

Hal then spends twice as many lines on the “lineal honor” (46) of the crown as he had on his grief for his father. His grief is not insincere, but it weighs less heavily on him than do the responsibilities that he must shortly assume. Hal takes the crown from Henry's pillow, crowns himself, and exits. But then the King shouts out, “Warwick! Gloucester! Clarence!” (48). Hal's eulogy was premature. What makes this episode in Part Two particularly interesting is that it is a re-enactment of the episode in Part One in which Falstaff overhears Hal's disappointing eulogy for himself while Falstaff is playing dead. The similarities of the two episodes are multiple and conspicuous. In both, Hal mistakenly believes a father figure is dead, delivers a disappointing eulogy in the form of an apostrophe and exits, and the father figure then shouts out. But Shakespeare has not simply replayed the episode in Part One. It turns out that Henry did not hear Hal's soliloquy because he did not awaken until Hal had departed. Like any other speech or form of behavior, soliloquies were subject to contingencies. This made each new situation genuinely suspenseful.

Notes

1. The Riverside Shakespeare, edited by 6. Blakemore Evans, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997).

2. At the end of an impassioned soliloquy in 1.2, Hamlet says, “But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue” (159). This is not an indication that he has been holding his tongue in this passage. He clearly means that he must hold his tongue when in the company of other members of the royal court. When alone, he can give voice to his revulsion at his mother's remarriage, as he has just been doing.

3. See chapter 4.

4. See lines 253, 330, 348; 747, 1044, 1121, 1156, 1464, 1534, 1568.

5. C. T. Onions and Robert D. Eagleson, A Shakespeare Glossary, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).

6. For further analysis of the episode, see my book The Structure of Shakespearean Scenes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 19-22.