Okay, so, here’s the deal.  The other day…I think it was yesterday…I was playing with my phone, and a new phone mount I’d gotten (they’re very cheap, to my surprise), and I decided to do versions of two of my favorite soliloquys from Shakespeare.  Readers of this blog should not be surprised that I am a HUGE fan of Shakespeare.  Once, while in university, I took two different Shakespeare courses at the same time, and it was the best semester ever.  I had two different versions of the Complete Works of Shakespeare for the two classes, and that was great too, though I had to return them to the NROTC Unit at the end of the semester.

Anyway, it was fun doing the videos, and I uploaded them to YouTube, and I am hereby embedding them below.

The first, the longer of the two, is Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy, which I jokingly said was in response to him having just read The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus.  It fits, if you know the book.  Here it is:

The second is Macbeth’s brief soliloquy, immediately after he learns of his wife’s death, and may even be more famous than Hamlet’s.  Well, probably not.  But it’s more often quoted in its near-entirety than the Hamlet one.  I had Macbeth wear dark glasses because it seemed appropriate to his character at that point.

Anyway, I had such fun doing these that I decided that I want to try “performing” some Shakespeare on my phone and editing it together for YouTube.  I’ve already begun.  I’m starting with Macbeth, which is probably the play that all Shakespeare noobs should start with, since it’s fairly short, has lots of violence and a Darth Vader-like fall into evil (albeit without redemption, alas), and a wonderful bunch of phrases people will recognize that many probably don’t even know came from Shakespeare.  I figure I’ll post one act at a time.  I am not, so far, going to worry about the background, so apologies for that, nor will I worry much about my appearance…there’s only so much I could do about that, anyway*.  But hopefully it’ll be fun, and it’ll be an easily accessible way to enjoy Shakespeare, spoken and “acted” at least facially.

I’ll keep you all “posted” in more senses than one.

*Prison was not kind to me.  What a surprise!