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Patrick Stewart Is Reciting Shakespeare’s Sonnets to His Online Fans While in Self-Isolation

By Emma Taggart on March 25, 2020

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A post shared by Patrick Stewart (@sirpatstew) on Mar 23, 2020 at 2:41pm PDT

While we sit at home in an attempt to curb the spread of COVID-19, many of us are taking to social media to… well… socialize. From online art challenges to virtual home gigs, the Internet allows us to come together and show support to one another during the current crisis. One person to recently share something special with his followers is Sir Patrick Stewart. He’s been soothing our worried minds by reciting daily Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Stewart was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company for over 15 years, so the words of the English poet have a special place in his heart. In the first video of his now ongoing series, the legendary actor read aloud Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, and was surprised by the positive response from his followers. “I was delighted by the response to my posting of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116,” he writes on Instagram. “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?’”

Since then, Stewart has been delivering a new sonnet reading each day—much to the delight of his followers. One person commented, “Thank you for the medicine our souls need most right now,” while another wrote, “Thank you so much for being such a light!” Shakespeare wrote a total of 154 sonnets, so hopefully, Stewart will continue to bring calmness to our social media feeds for many more days to come.

Check out some of Stewart’s Shakespeare sonnet readings below, and follow him on Instagram and Twitter for more.