How Shakespeare Makes Effective Use of Soliloquy to Increase the Audience's Understanding of Character and Plot in Twelfth Night

How Shakespeare Makes Effective Use of Soliloquy to Increase the Audience's Understanding of Character and Plot in Twelfth Night

A soliloquy is spoken by one character alone on stage. It often shows

a character reflecting on an issue in the play or helps the audience

learn more about how the situation or plot is related to that given

character. It enables an audience to become more involved by

increasing their knowledge of a certain character. Sometimes an object

is used to help express actions and expressions, to act as a dramatic

device. Shakespeare used different soliloquies: to show a developing

character, updating- or summarizing a scene and also to give us a

deeper insight to a personality of a character or its feelings. In

Macbeth we see soliloquies that help us understand about a changing

Macbeth, through the play. Shakespeare uses a number of soliloquies to

show his changing feelings. In 'Twelfth Night' we can clearly see

Viola's personality as a carefree but confident individual that she

is, through reading one soliloquy of hers. We learn about different

people's personalities through reading the soliloquies in Merchant of

Venice.

An audience can learn more from hearing a soliloquy about a certain

character. This is because we can see how they react to situations,

which shows us their character in more depth. We can see this through

Viola's soliloquy:

"O time, thou must untangle this, not I;

It is too hard a knot for me to untie"

We see from this that she is a laid back and calm person because even

though the issue she finds herself in is complicated she remains calm,

relying on fate to see the outcome and hoping for the best. Another

good example of making the understand how the character feels is the

soliloquy in Romeo & Juliet when Juliet debates with herself whether

to drink the poison. You can see she is worried and apprehensive when

she questions herself continuously: "What if this mixture do not work

at all?..". From these continuous questions the audience can see she