Shakespeare and Star Trek

“Ménage à Troi.” By Fred Bronson and Susan Sackett. Perf. Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, LeVar Burton, and Michael Dorn. Dir. Robert Legato. Star Trek: The Next Generation. Season 3, episode 24. Syndicated television. 10 June 1990. DVD. Paramount, 2002.

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Image Caption: 

Worf is uncertain about Shakespearean love poetry.

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I was attempting to clean out a folder of images, and I came across these. At some point, we may have to have "Shakespeare and Star Trek week" at Bardfilm (there's enough material, believe it or not, for a large number of posts), but that will have to wait. In the meantime, I have these screenshots of Jean-Luc Picard quoting Shakespeare sonnets to establish his love for Deanna Troi's mother.

A slight misquotation. Sonnet 147 begins with these lines: "My love is as a fever, longing still / For that which longer nurseth the disease."

Back on track, Picard continues the line in perfect iambic pentameter.

Switching to Sonnet 141, Picard quotes with greater accuracy.

Picard counts backward to see if he has quoted the lines with precision. He's checking for pentameter while ignoring iambs at this point.

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Links: The Episode at Wikipedia.  Sonnets at The Works of the Bard.