“I often talk to myself,” says Mr. G. K. Chesterton, speaking in defense of the stage soliloquy. “If a man does not talk to himself it is because he is not worth talking to.”

The deduction is obvious, but it is based upon false premises. If Mr. Chesterton is worth talking to, it is certainly not because he talks to himself. It is impossible to imagine a more foolish waste of energy than that expended in talking to one’s self. The man who talks to himself is twice damned (as a fool). First, for wasting speech on an auditor who knows in advance every word he will utter. Second, for listening to a speaker whose every word he can foretell before it is uttered.

Mr. Chesterton’s argument, failing as it does to prove that he is worth talking to, is still less happy as a defense of the stage soliloquy.

A character in a play talks to himself not, as Mr. Chesterton would have us believe, because he is worth talking to, but to enlighten the audience on points which the inexpert playwright has otherwise failed to make plain.

The stage soliloquy is only permissible as an indication of the character of one who talks to himself in real life. For instance, if I wished to dramatize G. K. Chesterton, since he often talks to himself, I should have him soliloquize upon the stage. I might make it a double part with two Mr. Chestertons dressed as the two Dromios. As a stage device the soliloquy is only a confession of weakness on the part of the playwright, and has been justly sentenced to death.

Its only hope for a reprieve is to retain (at great expense) an ex-president or an eminent K. C. who might argue that since the “fourth wall” of a stage interior is removed in order that the audience may view the actions of the players, it is therefore permissible to remove the “fourth wall” of the players’ heads so that the audience may view the action of their brains.

And the ex-president or the eminent K. C. would probably “get away with it.”