This chapter concentrates on the emergence of the soliloquy in the vernacular drama of the fifteenth century and the early Tudor period. Although the soliloquy of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period comes to be defined as an isotropic form, walled off from the action and marked by reflexivity and psychological interiority, in fact that definition can be misleading. Just as the use of monologues overlaps with that of soliloquy, the ostensibly isotropic state of the latter more often than not has what can be termed an anisotropic role. The chapter considers plays ranging from the Wakefield Second Shepherds’ Play, to secular works such as John Skelton’s Macnyfycence and Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton’s Gorbuduc.