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To Be or Not to Be: Shakespeare's Soliloquies

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If you want to study Shakespeare's construction of the soliloquy -- a speech in which one character speaks his thoughts aloud, "to himself" and not to any other character onstage -- then this book may serve you well. Every soliloquy given by every character, male and female, is here.

But Shakespeare's great one-character speeches are often not true soliloquies; they're delivered to another character onstage. (Think "Friends, Romans, countryment, lend me your ears" from Julius Caesar, or Portia's "The quality of mercy is not strained" from Merchant of Venice.) Because Kerrigan's book is limited to the soliloquy subcategory, none of these are here. Nor are any of the alone-on-stage speeches by non-characters, like the Chorus in Henry V ("Now entertain conjecture of a time . . . ).

The layout of the book is inconvenient for flipping through or for getting an overall mental picture of each speech. Presumably to save space -- it's an attractive, smaller-than-normal paperback -- the editor hasn't bothered to start each soliloquy on a new page.

If what you want is to read or to learn Shakespeare's great monologues -- not just the soliloquies -- I'd definitely recommend instead "Soliloquy! The Shakespeare Monologues: The Men" and the corresponding book for "The Women" (both edited by Michael Earley and Philippa Keil). Nice layout, good notes and brief commentaries, and many more of the striking speeches.