In ST:TNG, Picard had a large bound book under a transparency.
What is this book?
The Bible? Collected Works of Shakespeare?
Shakespeare.
Shakespeare. Every day, the set dressers would take the cover off and open the book to a different page. You learn interesting stuff browsing through all the Star Trek materials that Starlog magazine publishes.
Well, according to [this site,](www.spies.com/~nevin/r/www/local/ web/people/nevin/sttng.html ) the book is opened to A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Act III, Scene II, page 36, so I’d assume that, yes, it is the collected works of Shakespeare.
And might I suggest not going to that site above; it’s got a LOUD midi version of the STTNG theme that you can’t turn off.
Shakespeare. Every day, the set dressers would take the cover off and open the book to a different page. You learn interesting stuff browsing through all the Star Trek materials that Starlog magazine publishes.
The Script?
In the episode Hide and Q, you can see clearly see the cover of this book and what is incribed on it as Picard and Q have a discussion about what Shakespeare thought about the human being.
I heard that the Shakespeare book actually had a picture of a much younger Patrick Stewart in one of his RSC productions, and that sometimes the set dressers would open the book to that page as a gag.
“1001 Vulcan Jokes?”
“The Ferengi Handbook of Business Ethics?”
“Passive Resistance Throughout Klingon History?”
“The Scriptwriters’ Guide to Continuity in the Star Trek Universe”?
That would explain why it was under glass.