'William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope' book review

(C) 2013 Quirk Books/Lucasfilm Ltd.

We three, we happy three, we band of brothers,Shall fly unto the trench with throttles full! - William Shakespeare’s Star Wars

Since 1976, writer-producer-director George Lucas’s Star Wars (aka Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope) has been adapted in various forms. Alan Dean Foster’s novelization of Lucas’s screenplay was published six months before the film opened on May 25, 1977. Marvel Comics’ adaptation also preceded the movie’s premiere by a month. And in 1981, National Public Radio aired a 13-part radio drama scripted by the late science fiction novelist Brian Daley that expanded Lucas’s 124-minute space fantasy into a richer, more detailed six-and-a-half hour audio epic.

Of course, Star Wars has inspired a plethora of parodies spanning a wide spectrum of of venues. Lucas’s tale of “a boy, a girl, and a galaxy” has been spoofed countless times on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, lampooned in humor magazines Crack’d and Mad, and by Mel Brooks in 1987’s Spaceballs.

Return once more to a galaxy far, far away with this sublime retelling of George Lucas’s epic Star Wars in the style of the immortal Bard of Avon. The saga of a wise (Jedi) knight and an evil (Sith) lord, of a beautiful princess held captive and a young hero coming of age, Star Wars abounds with all the valor and villainy of Shakespeare’s greatest plays. ’Tis a tale told by fretful droids, full of faithful Wookiees and fearsome Stormtroopers, signifying...pretty much everything.

Reimagined in glorious iambic pentameter—and complete with twenty gorgeous Elizabethan illustrations--William Shakespeare’s Star Wars will astound and edify Rebels and Imperials alike. Zounds! This is the book you’re looking for. - from the dust jacket blurb

In July 2013, several months before the public announcement that George Lucas was retiring and selling his production company, Lucasfilm Limited, to the Walt Disney Company, Philadelphia’s Quirk Books published fiirst-time author Ian Doescher’s William Shakespeare’s Star Wars.

Subtitled Verily, A New Hope, this 174-page volume is a loving tribute/parody that re-imagines Lucas’s seminal space-fantasy as if William Shakespeare had written it in the Elizabethan Age.

Doescher started working on this ambitious project in the summer of 2012. According to the author, he was inspired by Seth Graham-Smith’s 2009 parody novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, repeated viewings of Lucas’s Star Wars trilogy, and Alison Carey’s gay-themed play The Very Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa.

William Shakespeare’s Star Wars follows the narrative of Lucas’s 1997 Special Edition re-release of A New Hope. As in the movie, the story begins “a long time ago in a galaxy far,far away.”  A galaxy-spanning democratic Republic has become an Empire ruled by the tyrannical Emperor Palpatine. The Jedi Knights which once protected the Republic are all but extinct, betrayed and hunted by Palpatine’s main minion, a Knight-turned-Sith Lord named Darth Vader.

Now, as civil war rages across the galaxy, the Empire is building a superweapon code-named the Death Star. Capable of destroying entire planets. this moon-sized space station spells certain doom for the daring Rebel Alliance. Now the galaxy’s best hope lies in the destiny of Luke Skywalker, a farm boy from a desert world farthest from the center of the Universe.

Using Shakespeare’s five-act structure and distinct literary techniques (a chorus to describe some of the action, prologues and epilogues in the form of sonnets, asides that break the “fourth wall”) Doescher cleverly blends Lucas’s modern update of 1930s serials with the Bard’s immortal poetry.

Take, for instance, the Flash Gordon-inspired title crawl that sets the scene for Star Wars:

It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.

Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy…

In William Shakespeare’s Star Wars, Doescher re-imagines the text-only crawl as a prologue delivered by the omniscient Chorus:

Chorus: It is a period of civil war.The spaceships of the rebels, striking swift From base unseen, have gain’d a vict’ry o’er The cruel Galactic Empire, now adrift. Amidst the battle, Rebel spies prevail’d And stole the plans to a space station vast, Whose pow’rful beams will later be unveil’d And crush a planet: ‘tis the DEATH STAR blast. Pursu’d by agents sinister and cold, Now Princess Leia to her home doth flee,Deliv’ring plans and a new hope they hold: Of bringing freedom to the galaxy. In time so long ago begins our play, In star-crossed galaxy far, far away.  

William Shakespeare’s Star Wars brilliantly depicts the adventures of Luke, Leia, Han Solo, Chewbaca, Obi-Wan (Ben) Kenobi, R2-D2, and C-3PO as they face off against Darth Vader, the Iago-like Grand Moff Tarkin, and a legion of stormtroopers. From the desert wastes of Tatooine to the space around the planet Yavin, the heroes and villains of Star Wars strut and fret onstage as if they were at England’s Globe Theater.

My Take

Two of the most creative minds in the universe collide with spectacular, hilarious and surprisingly touching insight into the original classic. This truly is Star Wars as you like it. - dust jacket blurb by Joe Schreiber, author of Star Wars: Death Troopers

Although I’m more of a Star Wars fan than I am a Shakespeare aficionado, I was intrigued by this literary mashup almost as soon as I spied it while browsing through Amazon’s Star Wars book section. I’d just watched part of Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 adaptation of Henry V, so I was primed to see how Ian Doescher translated a late 1970s film into a 17th Century stage drama.

In the hands of a lesser writer, this marriage of Lucas’s post-modern techno-myth and Shakespeare’s poetic style could have been disastrous. Changing the words of George Lucas and uncredited script doctors Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck to mimic the Bard is no easy task. It requires intimate knowledge of both the movie and the renowned playwright to transform modern prose into iambic pentameter.

Luckily, Doescher has been a Star Wars fan since he saw 1983’s Return of the Jedi when he was six years old. He also fell in love with Shakespeare’s works in middle school. With his talent for writing in iambic pentameter and ability to draw on many of the Bard’s works, Doescher is particularly suited for this enterprise.

Doescher borrows themes and adapts dialogue  from such plays as Richard III, Othello, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, and Hamlet to fit into George Lucas’s space-fantasy tale. \He channels some of Shakespeare’s most iconic soliloquies and speeches, including Hamlet’s skull-holding “Alas, poor Yorick” scene and King Henry V’s martial St. Crispin’s Day exhortation to his troops before the Battle of Agincourt.

Shakespeare buffs who aren’t into the Star Wars saga might scoff at Doescher’s seemingly sacrilegious mashup and resist any link between the Bard and George Lucas’s space opera.

However, as the author notes in the book’s afterword, the two artists’ works are interconnected in various ways:

The works of Shakespeare and the Star Wars movies...share a comparable level of popularity and relevance. All well-rounded post-modern cultural connoisseurs are expected to have at least passing familiarity with both sets of stories, and both have percolated into our everyday language: you’re as likely to hear one of Shakespeare’s enduring phrases (“good riddance,” “faint-hearted,” “elbow room,” and many others) as an encouragement to “use the force.” If Star Wars were an actual Shakespearean play, we would most likely classify it as a fantasy, in the vein of The Tempest. However, it also has elements of a history (the story of the Galactic Empire with all the intrigue of Richard III), a comedy (all’s well that ends well, after all), or, taken as a six-movie arc, the Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker.

The Book

The slim hardcover volume is a book-lover’s treat. Quirk Books designed William Shakespeare’s Star Wars to look as if it has been in the reader’s  bookshelves for several decades. The dust jacket features a 17th Century version of Darth Vader as the central figure of artist Nicholas Delort’s woodcut cover drawing. (Luke and Leia are also on the cover, as well as the Death Star, a Rebel X-Wing and an Imperial TIE Fighter.)

William Shakespeare’s Star Wars also features 20 illustrations by Delort; these are mashups of iconic Star Wars characters or scenes from A New Hope rendered in a fashion that evokes the visual style of Shakespeare’s time. (In a clever homage, Act IV, Scene 6 is illustrated with a graphic that shows Luke holding a stormtrooper’s helmet in contemplation. a la Hamlet-with-Yorick’s skull.)

William Shakespeare’s Star Wars works well on several levels. As a parody, Doescher’s 3,076 line-long translation is smart and witty; there’s plenty of wordplay similar to that in The Taming of the Shrew and other Shakespearean comedies.

The book is also a loving tribute to Lucas’s now-classic movie; Star Wars fans will likely appreciate Doescher’s faithful adaptation of the screenplay, as well as references to the other movies in the saga that serve to give readers some of the backstory or foreshadow plot twists in The Empire Striketh Back and The Jedi Doth Return..

English teachers are likely to find humor and inspiration in Doescher’s Star Wars works. The writer’s use of Shakespeare’s style and narrative devices (including the use of prose in lines spoken by “lower classes), as well as his choice to adapt one of the most popular films of all time, makes William Shakespeare’s Star Wars gives educators a fun means to introduce students to one of the English language’s greatest dramatists.

Doescher lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and two children. His latest books,  William Shakespeare’s The Phantom of Menace: Star Wars Part the First (April 2015), William Shakespeare's The Clone Army Attacketh: Star Wars Part the Second (July 2015) and William Shakespeare's Tragedy of the Sith's Revenge: Star Wars Part the Third (November 2015) do to the Prequel Trilogy what the William Shakespeare's Star Wars series did to the Original Trilogy.

Teachers: Quirk Books has a useful (and cool) downloadable Educator's Guide to William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope  in its website. It's full of information about William Shakespeare, the various plays that inspired Ian Doescher when he adapted George Lucas's screenplay. The Educator’s Guide includes a discussion on Elizabethan dramatic structure, the use of iambic pentameter, and other interesting topics.

To read or download the Educator's Guide, visit http://www.quirkbooks.com/ShakespeareStarWars and click on the apple-shaped Teachers' Guide icon.

George Lucas’s six Star Wars films are currently available from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment on Blu-ray and DVD.  In addition, Walt Disney Pictures/Lucasfilm/Bad Robot Productions’ Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital download on April 6, 2016.

Book Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Quirk Books
• Language: English
• Release Date: July 2, 2013
• ISBN-10: 1594746370
• ISBN-13: 978-1594746376
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 0.7 x 8.3 inches