Charles Dickens was a great coiner of words—over four hundred, according to the Oxford English Dictionary—but “monopolylogue” was not among them. Credit for that particular invention belongs to the English actor Charles Mathews (1776–1835), who devised the term for farcical entertainments in which he played all the parts, each with its characteristic idiolect. The performances were a huge hit. As one contemporary reviewer testified:
The tip-top parts are capitally done—Charles does them;—the secondary parts are capitally done—Charles does them too;—the low parts are magnificently done—Charles does them too!
It should come as no surprise to any reader of Dickens that the future novelist was not only a devoted fan of these performances but a would-be imitator who went so far as to obtain an audition before yet another Charles—the celebrated actor Charles Kemble—in which he proposed to mimic Mathews’s act. Were it not for an ill-timed cold that forced him to cancel the appointment and a subsequent offer to take up work as a parliamentary reporter, the young Dickens might soon have been performing monopolylogues of his own. Instead, of course, he ended up writing them, producing some of the most polyloguist fiction—the adjective is irresistible—that the English-speaking world has ever known.
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