Patrick Stewart is slammed for skipping un-PC Shakespeare sonnets
Patrick Stewart is slammed for skipping Shakespeare’s sonnets that ‘aren’t politically correct’: Actor, 81, is told he should have let people ‘make up their own minds’ about poems on ‘Dark Lady’ and ‘woman colour’d ill’
Actor, 81, skipped several of Shakespeare’s poems about the Bard’s ‘Dark Lady’ He also avoided one referring to a ‘woman colour’d ill’ during his recitation Sir Patrick read a sonnet a day for online videos during first Covid lockdown But St Andrews chief says it wasn’t ‘right to skip a couple in a rather PC way’
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The head of one of Britain’s top universities has criticised Sir Patrick Stewart after he refused to read some of Shakespeare’s sonnets because of ‘political correctness’.
The actor, 81, skipped several poems about the Bard’s ‘Dark Lady’ and one referring to a ‘woman colour’d ill’ during his recitation of a sonnet a day for online videos during the first Covid lockdown.
Sir Patrick, celebrated for his Shakespearean performances, explained that he disliked the attitudes conveyed in these verses – or struggled to make sense of them.
Professor Sally Mapstone, 64, the principal of St Andrews University in Scotland, praised the actor’s decision to read the sonnets, which she found ‘very salutary’.
But speaking on a podcast for the Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance she added: ‘I didn’t think he was right to skip a couple in a rather politically correct way, frankly.
Sir Patrick Stewart and wife Sunny Ozell at the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, September 2021
‘I think he should have just read them and let people make up their minds but, as he said, it was his choice.’
Some of the Shakespeare poems that Sir Patrick skipped are among a group known as the Dark Lady sonnets.
Although the subject of the verses is unknown, and still sparks debate, it has been suggested by some scholars that she may have been a woman of African or southern European heritage.
Other theories suggest that Shakespeare’s ‘Dark Lady’ could have been Mary Flitton, who was known for having several affairs with Elizabethan nobleman.
Professor Sally Mapstone, 64, the principal of St Andrews University in Scotland, said she did not think Sir Patrick was right to ‘skip a couple in a rather politically correct way, frankly’
In one of Sir Patrick’s videos he told viewers: ‘I am skipping [sonnet] 131 because I don’t like it’.
Sonnet 131 features a description of a dark-skinned woman as the ‘fairest and most precious jewel’ and continues: ‘Thy black is fairest in my judgment’s place. In nothing art thou black save in thy deeds.’
He also missed out sonnet 66, which includes the line ‘maiden virtue rudely strumpeted’.
The actor, who is best known for his appearances in Star Trek: The Next Generation and the X-Men superhero films, justified his avoidance of the ‘complex’ sonnets from 133 to 136 saying he couldn’t understand them.
Some of the poems by William Shakespeare (depicted above in a painting from around 1612) that Sir Patrick skipped are among a group known as the Dark Lady sonnets
He said: ‘I’ve struggled and struggled and failed to make sense of them. I’m not going to pretend that I do make sense of them. I’m just going to leave them unsaid.’
In 2020 Sir Patrick, a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, described how he started the daily sonnet readings to ‘help people get through this terrible time’.
‘I remember my mother cutting up fruit for me when I was a little boy saying ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’ – so I thought, ‘why not a sonnet a day?’ he said.
