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What's in a Name?

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šŸ•– Off the Clock

What's in a Name?

A lonely reflection

Scott Monty
Jul 24, 2021
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What's in a Name?

www.timelesstimely.com

This is an entry from our Saturday ā€œOff the Clockā€ edition — a little something that lands somewhere betweenĀ Timeless & Timely.

Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill by Pieter Claesz, 1628 (public domain - Wikimedia Commons)

ā€œThat which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.ā€ — William Shakespeare, 1597


A curious question arose this week — one that I had never given much thought to previously.

But as I was thinking about the subject of this week’s newsletters, it brought to mind one of the most famous speeches on the topic of suicide: Hamlet’s immortal soliloquy that begins ā€œTo be, or not to be, that is the question.ā€

My question was simple: what’s the difference between a soliloquy and a monologue?

I’ve heard them used interchangeably, but as each word has different origins, I wondered about the subtle difference between the two.

Soliloquy is from the Latin solus, meaning ā€˜alone’ and loqui, meaning ā€˜speak’.

Monologue is from the GreekĀ monologos, meaning ā€˜speaking alone’.

Each involves one person giving a speech. The difference is in the audience: to whom the speech is being delivered.

The difference is this: a monologue is a speech given by one person to an audience. A soliloquy is a speech one gives to oneself.

Marc Antony delivered a monologue in his ā€œFriends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your earsā€ speech in Julius Caesar.

Hamlet delivered the best-known soliloquy in the English language.

And if you still struggle with Shakespeare’s verbiage, here’s Hamlet’s soliloquy in modern English.

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What's in a Name?

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