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A dramatic device in which a character speaks their thoughts aloud while alone on stage (or believed to be alone). The soliloquy allows the audience access to a character’s unguarded inner life. Shakespeare’s soliloquies are the most celebrated in English literature: Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be”, Macbeth’s “Is this a dagger which I see before me”, and Iago’s plotting speeches in Othello.

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