2.  Not Merely an Entertainment by One Person

There are all sorts of entertaining talking acts in vaudeville presented by a single person.  Among them are the magician who performs his tricks to the accompaniment of a running fire of talk which, with the tricks themselves, raises laughter; and the person who gives imitations and wins applause and laughter by fidelity of speech, mannerisms and appearance to the famous persons imitated.  Yet neither of these can be classed as a monologist, because neither depends upon speech alone to win success.

3.  Not a Disconnected String of Stories

Nor, in the strictest vaudeville sense, is a monologue merely a string of stories that possesses no unity as a whole and owns as its sole reason of being that of amusement and entertainment.  For instance, apropos of nothing whatever an entertainer may say: 

I visited Chinatown the other evening and took dinner in one of the charming Oriental restaurants there.  The first dish I ordered was called Chop Suey.  It was fine.  They make it of several kinds of vegetables and meats, and one dark meat in particular hit my taste.  I wanted to find out what it was, so I called the waiter.  He was a solemn-looking Chinaman, whose English I could not understand, so I pointed to a morsel of the delicious dark meat and, rubbing the place where all the rest of it had gone, I asked: 

    “Quack-quack?”

    The Chink grinned and said: 

    “No.  No.  Bow-wow.”

Before the laughter has subsided the entertainer continues: 

That reminds me of the deaf old gentleman at a dinner party who was seated right next to the prettiest of the very young ladies present.  He did his best to make the conversation agreeable, and she worked hard to make him understand what she said.  But finally she gave it up in despair and relapsed into a pained silence until the fruit was passed.  Then she leaned over and said: 

  “Do you like bananas?”

  A smile of comprehension crept over the deaf old man’s face and
  he exclaimed: 

  “No, I like the old-fashioned night-gowns best.”

And so, from story to story the entertainer goes, telling his funny anecdotes for the simple reason that they are funny and create laughter.  But funny as they are, they are disconnected and, therefore, do not meet the requirement of unity of character, which is one of the elements of the pure monologue.

4.  Not a Connected Series of Stories Interspersed With Songs and the Like

If the entertainer had told the stories of the Chinaman and the deaf old gentleman as though they had happened to a single character about whom all the stories he tells revolve, his act and his material would more nearly approach the pure monologue form.  For instance: