Patrick Stewart Completes His Sonnet a Day Videos

Patrick Stewart has been reading one of William Shakespeare’s sonnets each day on Twitter for his fans to enjoy during the coronavirus quarantine. Along the way, he’s had help from some special guests, including Star Trek co-star Jonathan Frakes and X-Men co-star Ian McKellen. Now he’s come to an end. Stewart has read all 154 Shakespeare sonnets. He marked the occasion of reading the last one by dressing in a tuxedo and making himself a martini. In the video, he thanks everyone who had watched the videos as he released them. You can watch his final sonnet reading embedded below.

Before he became Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Stewart was best known as a Shakespearian actor. He returned to those roots by reciting Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 on Twitter one day during the quarantine. The strong response he received to that sonnet reading is what led him to recite all 154 of them.

“I was delighted by the response to yesterday’s posting of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, and it has led me to undertake what follows…” he tweeted. “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.”

There was a point when Stewart took a break from reading the sonnets. When he returned, he announced that he is writing his memoirs.

“The idea of writing a memoir based on my life and career has been in my mind for several years, but always the demands of work have pushed it into the background,” Stewart said in a statement about his memoirs. “Today there are no demands, nor is there a prediction when there might be. ” am caught in the middle of shooting a new series, ‘Star Trek: Picard,’ and I passionately want to see it through, but in the meantime … what? Well, I have a beautiful study in our house in Los Angeles, sunny and peaceful. I am 80 in a little over two weeks’ time. I have just treated myself to a gorgeous office chair. And … I have the time. But most important, I am loving what I am doing, even though I never thought I would or could.”

Photo by Paul Zinken/picture alliance via Getty Images