Another Hamlet!!!

Suffering from great walloping amounts of big spitty excitement today because today at Shakespeare, my friend Dwan (no, not DAWN, it's DWAN) told me that the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Hamlet with David Tennant as the tormented prince and Patrick Stewart as Claudius CAME OUT YESTERDAY ON DVD!!!

I am too excited and very, very glad that tomorrow is payday because I AM GOING TO OWN THIS VERSION, oh yes I am. Especially since this fall's Shakespeare Workshop has already been announced as -- you guessed it -- Hamlet.

I don't think I could ever have enough versions of this play: they're all really good, even the Hollywood version starring Mel Gibson and Glenn Close, directed by Franco Zeffirelli. A lot of people pan that version because so much script-cutting was done to pare the three-hour script down to a screenplay length suitable for the cinema instead of the stage, but Glenn Close is excellent as the guilty-as-sin Gertrude and Mel Gibson brings his Lethal Weapon twitchiness to his portrayal of Hamlet -- you keep expecting him to re-locate his dislocated shoulder on the dank wall of Elsinore Castle -- and I think the people who don't like it are just a bunch of ol' snobs.

But enough about Mel. David Tennant! David! Tennant! And PATRICK STEWART! I can hardly wait to get my hot little hands on that DVD.