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A tirade (French: tirade, from Italian: tirata, meaning a pull) is a brief and powerful monologue, typically in a drama. It is a long phrase delivered in an elevated tone, notable for its resonance and calculated for external success.^[1][2] In a broader sense, a tirade is any long train of words or sequence of expression on a single theme, especially if it contains censure or reproof.^[3]

Due to its loose connection with the development of the drama’s action and acting as an extraneous element, the tirade met with condemnation from the ancients. They strictly adhered to the principle of unity of action (semper ad eventum festinat, always hastening to the resolution). However, it found a place in the oratorical addresses of the ancient parabasis.^[1]

French tragedy is imbued with a rhetorical element and filled with brilliant tirades. These provided an opportunity for the author to display new aspects of their talent, for the actor to showcase their declamatory art, and for the audience to greet a resonant commonplace with sympathetic applause.^[1]

Within a play, certain tirades serve as “bravura pieces” for both the author and the actors, and are anticipated by the audience as a dramatic climax of the performance.

• The tirade where Phaedra declares her love for Hippolytus in act 2, scene 5 of Jean Racine‘s Phèdre:

  Yes, Prince, I languish, I burn for Theseus (…)

• Don Juan‘s tirade on hypocrisy in act 5, scene 2 of Molière‘s Don Juan:

  There is no longer any shame in it now; hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtues. (…)

• The “tirade of the nose” in act 1, scene 4 of Edmond Rostand‘s Cyrano de Bergerac:

Ah! no! that is a bit short, young man!
One could say… Oh! God! … many things in short…
By varying the tone, -for example, look
Aggressive: “Me, Sir, if I had such a nose,
I would have to amputate it at once!”
(…)

• In William Shakespeare‘s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, spoken by Puck to a fairy in act 2, scene 1:

I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale.
(…)

• Khlestakov: The tall-tale tirades of the dandy Khlestakov regarding his imaginary life in Saint Petersburg.^[4]

• Arkady Gornfeld (1890–1907). “Тирада” [Tirade]. Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary: In 86 Volumes (82 Volumes and 4 Additional Volumes) (in Russian). Vol. XXXIII. St. Petersburg: F. A. Brockhaus. p. 224.

• Koshel, P. (2002). Bolshaya shkolnaya entsiklopediya. Gumanitarnye nauki [Great School Encyclopedia: Humanities] (in Russian). Moscow: OLMA Media Group. p. 222. ISBN 5-224-03215-6.
• Prokhorov, A. M., ed. (1976). “Тирада” [Tirade]. Great Soviet Encyclopedia (in Russian). Vol. 25 (3rd ed.). Moscow: Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya.
• This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1911). “Tirade”. The United Editors Perpetual Encyclopedia: A Library of Universal Knowledge.