A monologue is a speech by one person directly addressing an audience. An opening monologue is often a segment of stand up comedy, such as at the beginning of The Tonight Show.
In a monologue, the actor need not be alone, however, none of the supporting cast (in theatre or film) speaks. When the actor is alone, perhaps thinking out loud, this is a soliloquy, not a monologue.
There are two basic types of monologues:
Exterior monologue: This is where the actor speaks to another person who is not in the performance space or to the audience.
Interior monologue: This is where the actor speaks as if to himself or herself. It is introspective and reveals the inner motives to the audience.
The monologue is an artform in and of itself, but it has always been part of larger, dialogue-based, plays for its provision of another angle in relating to the audience and getting inside a character's inner life.
The theory of the monologue is that the audience overhears the thoughts of one who believes himself to be alone, and who thus informs them of what would otherwise be unknown to them.
There is something of a lyrical character about the monologue in verse; and this has been felt by some of the classic poets of France so strongly, that many of the examples in the tragedies of Corneille are nothing more or less than odes or cantatas.
The monologues of Shakespeare, and those of Hamlet in particular, have a far more dramatic character, and are, indeed, essential to the development of the play.
Monologue is a common feature of opera when an aria, recitative or other sung section may carry out a function similar to that of spoken monologues in the theatre.
The dramatic monologue is a poetic form not to be confused with the monologue in drama.
The term "monologue" is also applied to a form of popular narrative verse, sometimes comic, often dramatic or sentimental, that was performed in music halls or in domestic entertainments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
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