An aside is a brief remark made by a character in a play and intended to be heard by the audience but not by the other characters on stage. It creates a private channel between the speaker and the spectators.

Shakespeare’s villains frequently confide their schemes in asides, letting the audience share knowledge that the other characters lack. The device can be comic as well as sinister; a character may comment wryly on the action while the rest of the cast remains oblivious. Staging conventions usually signal the aside by a turn toward the audience, a change in volume, or a momentary freeze of the other actors.

Asides differ from soliloquies in length and in the continued presence of other characters. They are quick, pointed, and dependent on the theatrical fiction that the other people on stage simply do not hear. When the convention is accepted, the aside deepens dramatic irony and draws the audience into collusion with the speaker.

A character leans toward the audience, speaks a few confidential words, and the rest of the stage pretends not to notice. That is an aside.