[Christopher Whitby]

I haven’t been on this site for a few years – life’s routines change – but I am on a mission to spread the word that on 30 December 2023 I completed a project to make YouTube films of 37 fully performable dramatic monologue sonnets, one for a character in each of the plays in Shakespeare's First Folio plus Pericles.

A key aspect of each sonnet is also to address some loose ends in the plays or to examine what might be sometimes a more realistic reaction of a character than what we are given in a play’s denouement: e.g. after 33 years does Emilia (Comedy of Errors) really find her returned twin sons and husband a wonderful restoration or does she feel 'I live with strangers now'? Macduff ten years on – at peace with himself or restlessly asking about his family 'Could I have saved them? Got them out somehow?' Well, each sonnet addresses ‘an issue’ in some way, rather than simply parroting its source play. Pairing with (perforce inexpensively available) music has also been interesting.

The easiest link to watch them in a playlist – which you can do in First Folio order as now arranged or you can jump about in the list at will – is http://www.chriswhitby.org.uk/shakespeare which is a 'forwarder' that takes you to the YouTube site. If you are concerned about clicking links, they can also be found by websearching these terms together: “@christopherwhitby youtube” , clicking on the christopherwhitby YouTube result, choosing ‘playlists’ in the menu above the sample videos and selecting the ‘Exfoliation’ playlist.

A 'test drive' of any single film will usually take under 3 minutes of your time. Incidentally, as the order of filming was driven by factors other than the First Folio 'index', it is purely a coincidence of the order of plays in the First Folio that the first 5 films all have voice-overs rather than a 'fully live' performance, though it will be fairly obvious why they do – e.g. Launce's dog Crab has many thoughts but his vocal ability is limited. 14 lines of iambic barking is not very attractive.

The collected written texts can be downloaded at http://www.chriswhitby.org.uk/exfoliation.pdf and there are a few 'bonus' character sonnets in an Appendix there.

I hope you may enjoy them.