This book, it should probably be said immediately, isn't an actual work of the Bard, but a product of fantastic enthusiasm for both Shakespearean theatre and George Lucas' classic trilogy on part of Ian Doescher, who deserves an enormous amount of credit despite the entire thing being a mishmash of plagiarised content and style. Before I start talking about it though I want to thank my dear housemate Chris Hedges for leaving this book on the coffee table, and apologise to him for my temporary theft of it. You can have it back now.
The book - what is there to say? For any fan of Shakespeare (I am) or fan of Star Wars (I also am), it's truly marvellous, a playful amalgamation of the sublime scripted style of the one and the powerful punchy plot of the other. Doescher has done an amazing job of converting the entire of Episode IV: A New Hope into iambic pentameter, complete with archaic wordage* and all the classic to-be-expected tropes of someone spoofing Shakespeare (straightforward phrases turned amusingly into poetic spurts of "verily", "forsooth" and so on).
Moreover he goes the extra mile to inject theatrical colour and character into this already excellent story: while the plot remains exactly the same, with Luke and Han and C3PO and R2D2 and Leia and Obi-Wan and Chewbacca and Vader et al, he foresaw that the book's primary (or probably only) readers would be people familiar with both Shakespeare and Star Wars anyway. Taking advantage of this, the play (it's written as a playscript so yes I can call it that) is littered with half-quotes from Shakespeare's plays, and full of references both forwards and backwards within the Star Wars saga; perhaps the best added element though are the occasional [aside] monologues, that allow by dint of stage direction the characters to voice their thoughts and feelings in things that are implied but never said in the films (because monologues aren't dialogues so weren't in the film). These often give surprisingly poignant insights into the mindsets and intentions of the characters, especially those of Darth Vader, R2D2 and Han Solo. Well, R2D2's are just funny, but the others definitely show a lot of depth through these parts.
The illustrations are definitely worth a mention too. The characters are easily recognisable but styled in as close to 16th century dress as their costumes can go - rendering Stormtroopers in suits of armour, Grand Moff Tarkin in a full lace ruff, and Jabba the Hutt with a feathered Jacobean cap. I can't say a great deal about them because by convention of clichéd wisdom it takes 1000 words to describe a single picture sufficiently, and I can't be bothered to write that much. They're hilarious though.
I think probably the most enjoyable part of it was how easily it worked. Yes, Star Wars has a great story, and yes, Shakespearean English is an immediately recognisable form of writing, but to bring the two together and mesh them well enough that even the overlaps can be filled in believably and the whole read with casual bursts of mirth is an achievement indeed. If you like Shakespeare and Star Wars even a bit, you'll share my appreciation for this brilliantly quirky combination of the two.
* speaking of wordage, it must be remembered that many of the characters in the films don't even speak English at all - and where they do not, Doescher has transcribed their vocal output. Every consonant-dense garbled utterance in the Tattooine language of Jabba and Greedo, every harsh vowel-burp of the Jawas, every beep, meep, whistle, squeak, whee and whoo of R2D2; these are all written down and nonsensically fun to read.
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