This paper reports on a study of (im)politeness in soliloquies in Shakespeare’s plays. I
argue that classic theories of politeness such as Brown and Levinson (1987) cannot fully
account for politeness phenomena in soliloquies. There is therefore a need for a model
of self-politeness such as that proposed by Chen (2001) which can compensate for some
of the deficiencies in the Brown and Levinson model. I apply Chen’s model to
soliloquies and provide examples of self-politeness output strategies. Shakespeare’s
characters use a variety of impolite and self-impolite forms in their self-talk, which I
discuss using Culpeper’s (2011) typology of conventionalised impolite formulae. I
conclude that aspects of soliloquies can be described in terms of self-politeness; that the
motive for soliloquy may be a threat to self-face as soliloquies often involve internal
conflict; and that for Shakespeare impoliteness proved to be a particularly useful device
in soliloquy.