Staff Pick – William Shakespeare’s Star Wars by Ian Doescher

William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: verily, a new hope (M) by Ian Doescher is the ultimate in fan fiction. Really! Can it get any better than this?

Doescher has lovingly translated this epic story into Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter creating a play which is crying out to be read and performed in the homes of geeks all over.

Verily, a new hope has all the fantastic qualities of Shakespearean drama: valour, villainy, mistaken identities, long detailed death soliloquies, magic, political intrigue and a chorus to fill in the visual gaps.

All the great lines of George Lucas and William Shakespeare are here – the iconic “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for” becomes “True it is, that these are not the droids for which thou search’st.”

Hans Solo: “Is this an asteroid field I see before me”.

C-3PO frightened on Tatooine: “Hark, over hear! Hey nonny, non! Please help!”

And Luke channels Mark Antony with his “Friends, rebels, starfighters, lend me your ears.”

R2D2 steals the show with his interior soliloquies masked by his beeps, squeaks and meeps. Who know the impish little droid had such depths?

Apparently there are plans to publish The Empire Striketh Back and The Jedi Doth Return in the next year or so. I hope to see this book on the high school English curriculum. What a great way to introduce Shakespeare!

William Shakespeare’s Star Wars was published by Quirk Books (publisher of the now classic Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: the classic regency romance now with ultra violent zombie mayhem (M) by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith) which has also offered up these delights: