The Soliloquy

Regardless of the medium of a text, a humanism text must illuminate the individual if it wants to be true to its ideology. Shakespeare and bloggers are both masters at pinpointing the individual: they both achieve this through the soliloquy. Humanists placed emphasis on the value of the individual. Since the soliloquy is “the act of talking to oneself,” or “a dramatic monologue that represents a series of unspoken reflections” (as traditionally used in theater), the style of the soliloquy--self-reflexive but accessible to an onlooking audience--gives a genuine, revelatory look into the individual's mind.

Shakespeare used soliloquies masterfully, crafting them as textual oracles through which audiences could “gain access to the whole” of the play (Clemen) because they often showcase the significant thematic and character developing aspects of the play. These speeches are often given by significant characters to him or herself, though the audience is invited to look on and observe that they may be enlightened.

In the same spirit, a single blog post on a personal blog is like a soliloquy. The personal blog stands alone as the self-rewarding, most common type of blog. An individual crafts everything from the aesthetics to the presentation, and just as with a soliloquy, each post is a reflection on the writer’s own thoughts, though his or her audience is invited to “look on” to it. Through posts, observers can gain access to the whole of a person—their thoughts (themes) and desires (developing factors)—through the small windows that are their posts.

This idea is consistent with viewing Shakespeare and bloggers as soliloquists; in both cases, the writers are ordinary people. Though his works are famous, Charles Nauert, in his book Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe, muses that “the literary achievement of this socially obscure man… shows how thoroughly humanistic culture had penetrated English society,” for “Shakespeare was…the son of an undistinguished citizen of a small provincial town. He was no university-trained scholar” (Nauert 185), just as the majority of bloggers today are no-names whose knowledge of life comes from experience. Thus, the soliloquy is one of the most useful tools in revealing the humanist elements in both past and present writers.

Comparing the text of the popular blog Rockstar Diaries, written by Naomi Megan to Shakespeare's "What a Piece of Work is Man", from Hamlet, seen below (from the Ethan Hawke 2000 adaptation), draws interesting conclusions. The Diaries shows the same self-reflexive style Hamlet's "What a Piece of Work is Man" does. In each text, the speaker addresses an ideal: for Megan, it's the ideal wife, where for Hamlet it's man at his best. The cry Hamlet makes,

What a piece of worke is a man! how Noble in
Reason? how infinite in faculty? in forme and mouing
how expresse and admirable? in Action, how like an Angel?

isn't so different from Megan's musings that a good wife does laundry and cooks dinner; however, both speakers kick back against that same ideal. Hamlet refers to man as the " Parragon of Animals" or the "Quintessence of Dust", making a subtle mockery out of the idea of man actually living up to those ideals. Megan, too, notes that she thinks about what a good wife should do, but "then, i open my eyes." Both speakers willingly acknowledge their shortcomings before an audience, but only in the qualification that the ideal they are failing isn't realistic in the first place. Thus we see a return to the "naturalness" that humanists sought, which is discussed here.

Another great example can be found in comparing the rousing speech given by Henry V (in Shakespeare's Henry V) and Stephanie Nielson's post post "Forgetting and Enjoying" her blog NieNie Dialogues. These two texts differ from Hamlet and Diaries because they go beyond self reflection: they use rhetoric to call the audience to action. Henry V, in his speech, rouses his troops to courage, promising a battle to be remembered by; Nielson, a severe burn victim, also reflects on life and reminds her audience to enjoy it as a "battle" of its own. Both texts place emphasis on that importance through repetition. Henry V proclaims that "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers" shall be the remembered, whereas Nielson urges that her readers should remember to "enjoy romance. Enjoy children. Enjoy good food. Enjoy... dreams." Repetition creates an escalating effect, drawing poignant message for the reader to take away. In both cases, these calls to action are almost heart-to-hearts, an exchange of wisdom for the individual on a very personal level.

With such a focus on the individual, shown through both of the comparisons made above, soliloquies become a matter of “biography which, like the portrait in painting, had good reason to be popular in the Renaissance” (Dresden 230); indeed, many of the soliloquies in Shakespeare’s plays, such as Hamlet and Henry V, are essential to their purposes. However, over time “[biography] became autobiography” (Dresden 230).

Champions of the movement toward autobiography, such Michel de Montaigne, an influential writer of the French Renaissance, wanted “to hear his own voice, the voice of an ordinary individual imparting ordinary information rather than profound dissertations,” because, as he reasoned it, “only thus can the private individual display humanity” (Dresden 230). The autobiography of ordinary men, then, is the best “display [of] humanity.” As Shakespeare and bloggers use soliloquy, or "autobiography," they become the crafters of humanist insight into the individual.