Shakespeare's Soliloquies. Dir. Scott Mansfield. Perf. Not Worth Mentioning. 2001. DVD. Monterey Video, 2004. In part, we know good Shakespearean acting by knowing bad.
Though it’s extremely painful, hearing a few minutes of the video listed above will make good acting more apparent. It’s a kind of a way to “by indirections find directions out.” And if you’re a Netflix subscriber, you can play it instantly to know instantly how insanely bad it is.
Brief let me be. The film is a collection of bad actors perfoming Shakespeare badly. I should have known with introductoy lines such as these:
The script for our lives has already been written . . . in the words of William Shakespeare . . . . And what wonderful words . . . . Webster defines “soliloquy” as . . . .
But what confirmed its incompatible badness is the utter flippancy of the script. To one actor’s intriguing announcement that, during this film, “. . . you’ll hear many phrases which have become an integral part of our daily conversation, he says the following:
I think I used one yesterday—“The first thing we do--let’s kill all the lawyers”—which I believe was originally from Henry IV, Part One. Used more recently by myself . . . a little irate . . . on the telephone.
He thinks he used one yesterday? He believes it from 1 Henry IV, does he? Preposterous!
The quote is from 2 Henry VI, not 1 Henry IV, first of all. Second of all, good grief.
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