Long before he played the captain of the Enterprise-D or the sage leader of the X-Men, Sir Patrick Stewart was a longtime and Olivier Award-winning member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Now Stewart is turning his love of the Bard’s work into a series of social media posts to soothe away worries during these difficult times.
A casually dressed Stewart first recorded himself reading Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 (“Let me not to the marriage of true minds …”), which you can watch below:
— Patrick Stewart (@SirPatStew) March 21, 2020
Encouraged by the outpouring of support from fans, Stewart tweeted the following day: “When I was a child in the 1940s, my mother would cut up slices of fruit for me (there wasn’t much) and as she put it in front of me she would say, ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away.’ How about, ‘A sonnet a day keeps the doctor away’?”
He then posted a video of himself reading Sonnet 1, which you can watch below. This would certainly seem to indicate that we have months of Stewart sonnet posts to look forward to as Shakespeare wrote 154 of them in his lifetime. They were poems on a variety of topics that were published posthumously in 1609.
2. When I was a child in the 1940s, my mother would cut up slices of fruit for me (there wasn’t much) and as she put it in front of me she would say, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” How about, “A sonnet a day keeps the doctor away”? So…here we go: Sonnet 1. pic.twitter.com/kDoMNhdqcI
— Patrick Stewart (@SirPatStew) March 22, 2020
For more Patrick Stewart goodness, check out our review of the latest episode of Star Trek: Picard as well as this exclusive clip from the show.
Meanwhile, here’s how you can help, and stay safe, during the coronavirus pandemic.
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Source: IGN.com Patrick Stewart Reads Shakespeare Sonnets Online for Fans