Patrick Stewart Reads Daily Sonnet During Coronavirus

PARK SLOPE, NEW YORK — Shall we compare Patrick Stewart to a summer's day? The Shakespearean, Star Trek captain and Park Sloper proffers a season more lovely and temperate than that wrought by the new coronavirus.

Stewart's daily readings of Shakespeare's sonnets on Twitter, dubbed #ASonnetADay, have gone almost as viral as the not-so-fair coronavirus. His reading last week of Sonnet 116 — "Let me not to the marriage of true minds..." — drew 1.3 million viewers by Twitter's dial.

Delighted, Stewart decided to bear out more readings to listeners eager for something to ease their anxiety and distract them from staying at home.

"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,'" he wrote. "How about, 'A sonnet a day keeps the doctor away'?"

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And with little end to the coronavirus in sight, Stewart may well continue his readings until — as Sonnet 116 reads — rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.

Stewart, who is currently reprising his role as Star Trek's Captain Jean-Luc Picard on "Picard," has owned a condo in Park Slope since 2012, according to city records. One could even argue he's the neighborhood's number one fan.

He has taken GQ writers on walking tours of the neighborhood and bemoaned the closure of a local pharmacy he and his wife, the singer Sunny Ozell, frequented. His move to the neighborhood also prompted a good-natured Tumblr account called "Park Slope Patrick Stewart" in which the thespian tackles matters of great concern to neighborhood residents like kale chips and good weather for stoop sales.

"BECAUSE LAURENCE OLIVIER COULDN'T HANDLE BROOKLYN," reads the account's masthead.

A Patch reporter reached out to Stewart by Twitter for an interview and this story will be updated if he responds. Until then, his readings can be seen at @SirPatStew.

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