Ford. Hum! ha! is this a vision? is this a dream? do I sleep? Mr Ford, awake; awake Mr Ford; there’s a hole made in your best coat, Mr Ford! this ’tis to be married! this ’tis to have linen and buck baskets! Well, I will proclaim myself what I am; I will now take the leacher; he is at my house, he cannot ’scape me; ’tis impossible he should; he cannot creep into a halfpenny-purse, nor into a pepper-box. But lest the devil that guides him should aid him, I will search impossible places; though what I am I cannot avoid, yet to be what I would not, shall not make me tame.
Merry Wives of Windsor, act 3. sc. last.
These soliloquies are accurate copies of nature. In a passionate soliloquy one begins with thinking aloud; and the strongest feelings only, are expressed. As the speaker warms, he begins to imagine one listening, and gradually slides into a connected discourse.
How far distant are soliloquies generally from these models? They are indeed for the most part so unhappily executed, as to give disgust instead of pleasure. The first scene of Iphigenia in Tauris discovers that princess, in a soliloquy, gravely reporting to herself her own history. There is the same impropriety in the first scene of Alcestes, and in the other introductions of Euripides, almost without exception. Nothing can be more ridiculous. It puts one in mind of that ingenious device in Gothic paintings, of making every figure explain itself by a written label issuing from its mouth. The description a parasite, in the Eunuch of Terence[70], gives of himself in the form of a soliloquy, is lively; but against all the rules of propriety; for no man, in his ordinary state of mind, and upon a familiar subject, ever thinks of talking aloud to himself. The same objection lies against a soliloquy in the Adelphi of the same author[71]. The soliloquy which makes the third scene, act third, of his Heicyra, is insufferable; for there Pamphilus, soberly and circumstantially, relates to himself an adventure which had happened to him a moment before.
Corneille is not more happy in his soliloquies than in his dialogue. Take for a specimen the first scene of Cinna.
Racine also is extremely faulty in the same respect. His soliloquies, almost without exception, are regular harangues, a chain completed in every link, without interruption or interval. That of Antiochus in Berenice[72] resembles a regular pleading, where the parties pro and con display their arguments at full length. The following soliloquies are equally destitute of propriety: Bajazet, act 3. sc. 7. Mithridate, act 3. sc. 4. & act 4. sc. 5. Iphigenia, act 4. sc. 8.
Soliloquies upon lively or interesting subjects, but without any turbulence of passion, may be carried on in a continued chain of thought. If, for example, the nature and sprightliness of the subject prompt a man to speak his thoughts in the form of a dialogue, the expression must be carried on without break or interruption, as in a dialogue betwixt two persons. This justifies Falstaff’s soliloquy upon honour:
What need I be so forward with Death, that calls not on me? Well, ’tis no matter, Honour pricks me on. But how if Honour prick me off, when I come on? how then? Can Honour set a leg? No: or an arm? No: or take away the grief of a wound? No: Honour hath no skill in surgery then? No. What is Honour? A word.—What is that word honour? Air; a trim reckoning.—— Who hath it? He that dy’d a Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. Is it insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No: Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore, I’ll none of it; honour is a mere scutcheon, and so ends my catechism.
First part Henry IV. act 5. sc. 2.
And even without dialogue, a continued discourse may be justified, where the soliloquy is upon an important subject that makes a strong impression, but without much agitation. For if it be at all excusable to think aloud, it is necessary that the language with the reasoning be carried on in a chain without a broken link. In this view that admirable soliloquy in Hamlet upon life and immortality, being a serene meditation upon the most interesting of all subjects, ought to escape censure. And the same consideration will justify the soliloquy that introduces the 5th act of Addison’s Cato.