Getting Past Your Fear of a Shakespearean Aside

In the world of Shakespeare, not all words spoken by his characters are directed toward other characters. You are probably familiar with the soliloquy; familiar enough to be distressed by it, in fact. A soliloquy is a longish interior monologue heard by no other characters and usually spoken when a character is completely alone on stage. There is another technique that Shakespeare uses in which the words spoken by a character are not heard by anyone else on stage, however, and it is known as the "aside." The aside allows Shakespeare to let a character make a comment that is heard by the audience, but none of the other players on the stage. The point of the aside is to allow one character to make a quick off-hand commentary about what is taking place during the scene. Actors very often used to telegraph an aside by actually placing their hand to the side of their mouth in such a way as to indicate that nobody could hear what they were saying but the audience. Today, however, such a gaudy display is typically eschewed, the result sometimes being that it is difficult for some to realize what has just been said was not heard by anyone else on stage.