Book Review: 'William Shakespeare's The Force Doth Awaken: Star Wars Part the Seventh'

Cover illustration by Nicolas Delort. (C) 2017 Quirk Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)

TO BB-8 OR NOT TO BB-8? THAT IS THE QUESTION!

The curtain rises on a galaxy-wide drama! New characters take the stage as Rey, Finn, BB-8, and Poe Dameron clash with Kylo Ren and the vile First Order. Star-crossed lovers reunite, a lost knight is found...and tragedy befalls the house of Solo. 

The fault, dear Brutus, is in our Starkiller...What's past is prologue! A new chapter of the Star Wars saga begins, with The Force Awakens reimagined as a stage play from the quill of William Shakespeare - featuring authentic rhyme and meter, woodcut-style illustrations, and sly asides that will delight pop culture fanatics and classic-literature lovers alike, Join the adventure in a galaxy far, far away, penned in the style of the Bard of Avon. There has been an awakening in the verse! - Dust jacket inner flap blurb, The Force Doth Awaken: Star Wars Part the Seventh

On October 3, 2017, Quirk Books, a publishing company based in Philadelphia, released Ian Doescher's William Shakespeare's The Force Doth Awaken: Star Wars Part the Seventh. This 168-page hardcover volume reimagines director J.J. Abrams' 2015 Star Wars - Episode VII: The Force Awakens as a stage play in five acts written by none other than William Shakespeare himself.

As in his six previous William Shakespeare's Star Wars adaptations, Doescher takes his cues from the movie written by J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan, but presents the story of The Force Awakens in iambic pentameter, the style of writing Shakespeare used in his 36 canonical plays (comedies, histories, and tragedies).

Take for instance, the traditional "crawl" that opens every Star Wars "saga" film, written as a Prologue before Act I:

Enter CHORUS.

CHORUS: Luke Skywalker hath sadly disappeared,
And in his absence come most wicked foes. 
The cruel First Order hath made all affeard -
Like phoenix from the Empire's ash it grows.
They shall not rest till Skywalker is dead,
Yet others seek to rescue him from harm.
By Leia - General Organa - led, 
Th' Republic doth a brave Resistance arm.
Her brother she doth earnestly pursue, 
Thus may he help bring peace to restoration.
She sends a pilot to Jakku,
Where one old friend perchance knows Luke's location.
In time so long ago begins our play,
In yearning galaxy far, far away. 

The Force Doth Awaken begins, as the film does, on the desert world of Jakku. However, instead of the traditional pan down from the vanishing crawl to a planet or starship, Doescher's Shakespeare follows the Bard's convention of starting his first act with a monologue. In this instance, the speaker is the mysterious Lor San Tekka, an old adventurer and friend of Leia Organa who understands that without the Jedi Order, there can be no balance in the Force.

SCENE 1. 
On the planet Jakku.
Enter Lor San Tekka

Alas, you do not meet a man but frowns, 
Or so it seems within our galaxy. 
For with the rise of the First Order fierce, 
The stars cast but a dim and feeble light. 
Or thus it is to one as old as I,
Who hath seen much within my span of years:
The phantom menace, which did shake each soul,
The vast clone army, which made bold attack,
The Sith's revenge upon the Jedi true,
The small but bold new hope the rebels brought,
The way the vicious Empire did strike back, 
The grand return the Jedi then did make.
Mine eyes were witness to the fair result: 
Decline and fall of the Galactic Empire.
What followed, though, did beggar all belief:
The swift destruction of the chronicles 
Wherewith the New Republic would bring calm,
Suppression of the Jedi history
And ev'ry story of their gallantry,
The rise of the most vile First Order, which,
E'en now, doth move upon my home, Jakku.
Their mighty ships I spy beyond the skies,
Like doomsday keenly waiting in the wings. 
Our galaxy doth exorcism need
From this pernicious blight upon its face.
My hope is that the brave Resistance shall
Make landing ere the cruel First Order doth. 
May it be so, else all is lost indeed.

Kylo Ren contemplates, Hamlet-like, the badly disfigured breath mask of a long-dead Sith Lord. Illustration by Nicolas Delort. (C) 2017 Quirk Books and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) 

Ian Doescher's William Shakespeare's The Force Doth Awakens follows several new characters in the Star Wars saga, including:

• REY, a maiden of Jakku
• FN-2187/FINN, a former stormtrooper
• POE, a pilot for the Resistance
• BB-8, Poe's droid
• SUPREME LEADER SNOKE, of the First Order
• KYLO REN, a dastardly villain of the First Order
• GENERAL HUX, of the First Order
• CAPTAIN PHASMA, of the First Order
• MAZ KANATA, a pirate of Takodana

Of course, like its cinematic inspiration, The Force Doth Awaken also features some old friends from the Classic Trilogy, including Han Solo, General Leia Organa, See-Threepio, Chewbacca, and Artoo-Detoo. And, as in Star Wars - Episode VII: The Force Awakens, the two generations of brave heroes face many trials and tribulations, including encounters with First Order TIE fighters, battles with Captain Phasma's legion of stormtroopers, vengeful gangsters, and rathars that sing and dance!

My Take

Although William Shakespeare's The Force Doth Awaken is not really a work written in the 17th Century by poet-dramatist William Shakespeare, it has all of the basic features common to the Bard of Avon's immortal plays.

The basic plot, characters, and conflicts may come from the screenplay by J.J. Abrams, Michael Arndt, and Lawrence Kasdan, but Ian Doescher, a long-time lover of all things Shakespeare, borrows the style and themes from real plays written by the legendary playwright.

The structure and tenor of William Shakespeare's The Force Doth Awaken closely resembles Henry V, one of Shakespeare's Histories. Not only because it is a play set during a time of conflict, but because some of Doescher's soliloquies, his use of the Chorus, and many of the asides and speeches deliberately echo those in Henry V. 

The Force Doth Awaken also borrows from several of the Tragedies, especially Hamlet; it's hard not to read Doescher's Star Wars Part the Seventh and not see a resemblance between the tormented Danish prince and The Force Awakens' conflicted Kylo Ren, the First Order's "dastardly villain" and a member of the star-crossed Skywalker family. Once known as Ben Solo, Kylo Ren has fallen under the influence of Dark Side user Snoke and turned against everything Han, Leia, and his Uncle Luke stand for. 

Although I'm not a devoted fan of the works of the real William Shakespeare, I enjoyed The Force Doth Awaken: Star Wars Part the Seventh. I like the way that Doescher adds layers of complexity and emotional depth to all of the characters, including the aforementioned Kylo Ren, BB-8, and even the mighty Chewbacca. (Speaking of the Wookiee, Doescher finally takes us into the heart and mind of everyone's favorite "walking carpet." For the first time in the William Shakespeare's Star Wars saga, the author translates Chewie's grunts, growls, and yips in footnotes whenever he has dialogue. And, considering how grievously a certain plot point affects Chewbacca, it's an important new wrinkle in a literary series that has been around for half a decade.) 

The Book

Quirk Books once again gives readers a nicely designed hardcover volume that looks like a well-loved and often-read book. The dust jacket features Nicolas Delort’s woodcut portrait of BB-8 in Elizabethan era garn. Delort, who also provides 20 delightful illustrations for the play, surrounds the rotund astromech with images of Poe’s X-wing fighter, the Starkiller Base, the Millennium Falcon, and Kylo Ren facing off against his new nemesis, Rey.

As a literary work, William Shakespeare’s The Force Doth Awaken is a well-written, highly-enjoyable tribute to the works of George Lucas and the greatest dramatist/poet in English literature.

Like its Star Wars Trilogy stablemates, William Shakespeare’s The Force Doth Awaken is a parody, full of humorous dialogue that begs to be read out loud. Doescher packs his play with references and homages to Star Wars, many of Shakespeare’s plays, including Henry V), and even references to, as Doescher wryly explains, “a certain Poe-t.”  Witty and stylish, The Force Doth Awaken is neither campy nor silly.