Picard’s toast to his crewmates might have surprised Shakespeare

NOTE: This post about Picard’s toast contains spoilers for the Star Trek: Picard series finale.

The series finale of Star Trek: Picard gives Sir Patrick Stewart one final chance to quote William Shakespeare—whose birthday (in 1564) and death day (1616) are both observed on April 23—in character as Jean-Luc Picard.

Gathered with the senior crew of the Enterprise-D for, presumably, the last time, Picard offers lines from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (Act III, Scene IV) as a toast. (He does so after Data begins but does not finish revisiting his “young woman from Venus” limerick from “The Naked Now,” a limerick actually written by David Gerrold.)

Picard’s toast is:

"There is a tide in the affairs of menWhich taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;Omitted, all the voyage of their lifeis bound in shallows and in miseries.On such a full sea are we now afloat,And we must take the current where it servesOr lose our ventures."

Picard uses the Bard’s lofty language to elevate the Enterprise crew’s gathering in Guinan’s bar at 10 Forward Avenue from simply, as Riker calls it, “the end of the road” to a celebratory commemoration of past adventures survived and shared. As Riker also says, after Picard’s toast, “We’re grateful to have ridden the tide with you.”

The moment is a lovely one. One can’t help but feel Patick Stewart’s castmates aren’t having to act at all as they watch him with affectionate gazes. And there’s no question Stewart, a star associated with the Royal Shakespeare Company for some 27 years, speaks the speech trippingly on his tongue (as Hamlet would say).

But in its original Shakespearean context, Picard’s toast sounded quite different.

Picard’s toast presaged a great defeat in Julius Caesar

In Julius Caesar, the lines comprising Picard’s toast (lines 218-224) are spoken by Brutus to Cassius. These two men and their fellow conspirators have long since assassinated Caesar. By Act IV, Scene III, Brutus and Cassius are at war against Mark Antony, Octavius, and Lepidus—the “Second Triumvirate”—for control of the Roman Republic.

Word reaches Brutus and Cassius at the Triumvirate are marching toward them. Cassius advocates remaining in defensive posture, but Brutus believes the tide of events has turned in favor of their own armies. His famous lines to Cassius—so famous, Jean-Luc Picard quotes them in the 25th century—are, in effect, making the case to Cassius that their armies should strike against the Triumvirate while the iron is hot.

As students of ancient history or of Shakespeare know, however, Brutus misreads the tide of events quite badly. Isaac Asimov, in Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare, wrote: “Throughout the play, Brutus consistently misjudges when the tide is at the flood, and to place this passage in his mouth seems to intend irony” (Volume I, page 308).

Is it odd, then, for Picard, a student of both ancient history and Shakespeare, to offer this lyrical but ironic speech, a speech that preceded a great defeat, as a toast to his loyal companions?

It might have been, had Picard’s toast come before, say, the Enterprise-D’s assault on the Borg in the heart of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. But by speaking these words after victory has been won, Picard recontextualizes them, giving them a valedictory quality they did not originally possess, but which now sounds appropriate.

Incidentally, Star Trek: The Next Generation fans have heard Picard recontextualize Shakespeare on at least one previous occasion.

In the first-season episode “Hide and Q,” Picard took a speech from Hamlet out of context for magnificent effect—and he openly acknowledged he was doing so. “Oh, I know Hamlet,” Picard told Q, “and what he might say with irony, I say with conviction: ‘What a piece of work is man . . .’”

The original context of quotes from great literature matters. But sometimes, when placed in new and different contexts, the same words can take on new and different but equally valid meanings. So it is with Shakespeare, as Picard’s toast in the series finale of Star Trek: Picard, and the great Shakespearean thespian who delivers it, remind us.