On the Chorus, Soliloquy and Crowd-Speeches in the Drama

Abstract

The drama mainly consists of the dialogues between two or three persons. In the classical drama, however, we can also find the chorus and the soliloquies. Though the popular Elizabethan playwright had no chorus, he could have almost as many characters as he chose. And sometimes 'single one of these might suffice by himself to do much of the work the chorus once performed'. Shakespeare wrote many excellent crowd scenes, which are interpreted by Dr. W. Lohmeyer in his interesting book called "Die Dramaturgie der Massen". We wish to examine the soliloquies and crowd-speeches in Shakespeare's works and try to find out some common feature to those particular forms of expression.