Watch Sir Patrick Stewart Read Shakespeare While Social Distancing: “A Sonnet A Day Keeps The Doctor Away”

As a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company for over 15 years, Sir Patrick Stewart knows and loves The Bard more than most; and he’s using his talents to soothe us all with some sonnets. The Star Trek and Macbeth actor, 79, treated his fans and followers to a reading of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 on Saturday, sharing the famous playwright’s words on love.

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments,” he recited. “Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or bends with the remover to remove.”

“I was delighted by the response to yesterday’s posting,” he said in a tweet on Sunday, as well as hinting at more sonnets to come.

Stewart followed up his original post by starting from the very beginning and launching into Shakespeare’s Sonnet 1. “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’?” the actor posted.

Although some fans may know him best as Captain Picard from Star Trek, the actor is returning to familiar territory with his sonnet recitations. Since Stewart first joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966, he’s taken on countless roles from the playwright’s celebrated works. His most famous include King Claudius in “Hamlet”, Lord Macbeth in “Macbeth” and Othello in “Othello.”

Shakespeare has 154 sonnets in total, and if Stewart’s choice to begin with the very first one is any indication, it looks like there will be many more Twitter readings to come. Fingers crossed we won’t all be watching from our homes when he reaches Sonnet 154.