What an aside is in drama

A term you'll meet in drama and theatrical convention.

An aside is a short remark a character makes that the audience (and sometimes one other character) hears, but the other characters on stage are conventionally assumed not to. It's a brief break in the fiction — a character stepping, for a line or two, into private confidence with us.

What it's for

An aside lets the audience in on what a character truly thinks beneath what they're publicly saying. It reveals hidden motives, private reactions, and ironic commentary in real time, without stopping the scene. A character can flatter someone aloud and, in an aside, tell us they despise them.

The engine of dramatic irony

Because the audience hears what other characters don't, the aside is a prime source of dramatic irony. Shakespeare's villains — Richard III, Iago — use asides to share their schemes with us, so we watch their victims walk into traps we've been told about and they haven't.

Aside vs. soliloquy

The two are cousins but different in scale. A soliloquy is a full speech delivered by a character alone on stage, thinking aloud at length. An aside is brief and typically happens while other characters are present — a quick turn to the audience and back. The soliloquy is a private monologue; the aside is a whispered confidence stolen mid-scene.

How to read it

When you hit an aside, mark the gap it opens between what a character says in public and what they reveal in private. That gap is the play handing you knowledge the other characters lack — and inviting you to watch what they do without it.

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