Will at Work with the Lord Chamberlain's Men (2017)

As a performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" is ending, as we hear "Robin" delivering his famous Epilogue, all-purpose peasant costume seamstress Nell is pulling the tooth of Augustine Phillips, the member of The Lord Chamberlain's Men who had just played Bottom. The rest of the cast, including one William Shakespeare, enter back stage and begin to change to head off to The Mermaid Tavern. But the once-wigged balding Bard, who has just performed as "Titania, Queen of the Fairies," requests the services of the aging Thomas Pope ("Oberon" ) and Robert Armin ("Robin") to do a first reading of a scene from his newest play, "The Life of Henry the Fifth." The scene is in French, Act IV, scene iii, between Katherine, the Princess of France who is to become Queen of England, and her aging maid servant Alice who is attempting to provide English language lessons to her mistress. Pope and Armin deliver their lines in a poor falsetto, and very bad French, until Shakespeare asks Nell to sit in who to not everyone's surprise and delight grows her performance from fearful to hesitant to brilliant.