Patrick Stewart put his Shakespearean talents on display in Instagram videos posted just months before his death at age 86.

The actor — who joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966 and went on to perform in more than a dozen stage productions of Shakespeare’s works — announced in April that he had released an audio collection of all 154 of the playwright’s sonnets, titled “Patrick Stewart Performs the Complete Sonnets of William Shakespeare.”

Stewart explained that the idea came from the his wife, Sunny Ozell, following the success of his “Sonnet-A-Day” social media series during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Later that month, to mark Shakespeare’s birthday, Stewart shared a video of himself seated on a couch in a green button-down shirt and brown blazer, reciting lines from what he described as his “most favorite sonnet,” Sonnet 116.

“I’ve converted a few of my friends to its cause, and I’m hoping you’re next. Cheers!” he quipped in the caption.

In May, Stewart returned to Instagram to mark the anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s sonnets in 1609, sharing what he hoped listeners would take away from his audio collection.

“I hope it has brought pleasure and curiosity, but more than anything else, I want it to have communicated all the multiple features that love might have,” he said.

The Instagram posts came nearly two years after what would become Stewart’s final public appearance.

In June 2024, he was photographed on the red carpet at the 84th annual Peabody Awards, held at the Beverly Wilshire hotel in Los Angeles, California.

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