The Shakespeare Connection

My folks have recently watched a 1980 BBC production of Hamlet starring, among others, Derek Jacobi as Hamlet, looking rather like Commander Riker,

Lalla Ward as Ophelia,

Whoops, sorry,

and Patrick Stewart (TV's General Sejanus) as Claudius (left):

I am sorry to have missed such a glorious sight as that wig on Patrick Stewart. He had a rather better one as Sejanus:

In the course of my perambulations about the Web today, I learn that thirty years later, Patrick Stewart is still playing Claudius, only this time Hamlet is being performed by David Tennant, late of Doctor Who:

Now, all of these actors, with the exception of Patrick Stewart, had larger or smaller roles in Doctor Who, Derek Jacobi only lately as the Master, and Stewart played some kind of role in some little-known knockoff of Star Trek or something, I'm not sure what. But anyway, not everyone who has trod the boards playing Shakespeare has had roles in scifi, but a lot of British scifi actors have trod the boards playing Shakespeare at some point. There's a paper in there, somewhere, but it probably shows that such actors are either actually good at what they do, or they have large egos. Beyond my pay grade, anyway.