When I first saw the cover for this book, I thought it was just someone’s clever illustration of Darth Vader drawn in Shakespearean clothing in a wood-cut style. I thought it was very pretty. Then I noticed the amazon link and realized that it’s a real book. Ian Doescher rewrote Star Wars, the entire movie, in Shakespearean English. And lo, mine eyes did stop and stare in awe!
(Okay, I’ll quit that now, and leave the iambic pentameter to the experts. Verily.)
The author didn’t just take lines from Star Wars and throw in a bunch of “thee”s and “thou”s and “forsooth”s, he rewrote the entire film. Every line from the movie is still recognizable, but completely changed. C3P0 still fusses at R2D2 when he doesn’t show Luke the entire recorded message, but now the lines are in meter:
R2D2: Hoo.
C3P0: –Reconsider, thou, if thou shalt play
the message back for him.
R2D2: –Beep, meep, hoo, whee?
C3P0: Nay, I do not believe he liketh thee.
R2D2: Beep, squeak?
C3P0: –Nay, thee I like not either.
R2D2: –Hoo.
I know some things about Shakespeare, but I felt like half the cleverness of this book was going right over my head. Doescher’s obviously an expert, so I 
consulted another expert: my sister Hannah, who taught several classes about Shakespeare.
(She’s also quick to say she’s not an expert, but she knows more than anybody else I know personally, with the possible exception of my dad. And Dad doesn’t do e-mail or facebook chat, so Hannah was easier to consult. All the correct information in this review is thanks to her, any mistakes you can blame on me.)
After quoting several passages to her, she confirmed that the entire book is in iambic pentameter. That’s a term that sounds really complicated, but a simplified explanation is that each line has ten syllables, and every other syllable is stressed. That’s why you’ll see some character’s lines start in the middle of the line, because two people are sharing those ten syllables. It doesn’t have to rhyme, but it occasionally does.
It’s a simple idea, but it’s really hard to write a story that sticks to those limitations while staying coherent.
In Shakespeare’s day, lots of people wrote in iambic pentameter. Shakespeare was just one of the people who could do it and still make the actors sound like they’re having a natural conversation. Doescher says in his afterwards that the rhythm of that meter feels intuitive to him, so he had “a lot of fun writing 3,076 lines of it.” He certainly didn’t have any trouble converting the lines we know so well into something you could have heard in the 1500’s.
Owen: Take thou these droids unto our vast garage.
My wish it is they clean’d be ere we dine.
Luke: But unto Tosche Station would I go,
And there obtain some pow’r converters. Fie!
For anyone who was wondering, spelling “cleaned” as “clean’d” is a little trick to make a two-syllable word into one syllable, so it fits into the meter. Shakespeare did it all the time.
You can see from several places in the book that Doescher is working from the newer version of Star Wars; Han has a little chat with Jabba, and it’s not exactly clear who shot first in the Cantina. But Doescher has written both scenes with subtle humor. When you watch the newer movie you’ll notice that a lot of Han’s conversation with Jabba are a repeat of what he just said to Greedo. Doescher has Han acknowledge this in an aside, wondering to himself why the conversation feels so familiar. And I won’t spoil the ending of the scene with Greedo, except to say that I approve of how Doescher handled it.
I almost thought of the book as a game in certain places, a sort of “what line am I quoting” kind of exercise. It made reading the book even more fun to come across a favorite line in a new format:
Han: A slight malfunction of the weapons here.
But all is well, and we are well, and all
Within are well. The pris’ners, too, are well,
‘Tis well, ’tis well. And thou? Art also well?
Doescher didn’t stop at using iambic pentameter, he used a lot of Shakespeare’s other styles as well. Clever word-play comes up regularly, as when Luke is trying to convince Han to help him rescue Leia.
Luke: Hast thou no heart? She sentenc’d is to die!
Han: My sentence is: ’tis better she than I.
In addition to all the lines that are actually in the movie, Doescher also has the characters speaking in asides, another habit of Shakespeare’s. They elaborate on what they’re thinking, and it adds a whole new level to the story. One of my favorite parts (too long to quote here, but it’s on page 102 of the book) is when two Stormtroopers have a conversation about how strange everything is on the Death Star lately. It’s a hilarious scene that could have come straight out of one of Shakespeare’s comedies.
The asides aren’t always meant to be funny though. Another of my favorite passages was when Obi-Wan talks to himself about meeting Luke for the first time (using another one of Shakespeare’s favorite devices, metaphor, comparing life to the stage):
So many hours and days of my life spent
In hopeful expectation of this one.
In his beginning I shall find my end;
This business shall reveal my final stage.
Yet in my closing scenes perhaps I’ll write
A worthy ending to my mortal days:
‘Tis possible that in this gentle one
The dream I’ve long awaited shall come true.
So I’ll compose a final act that shall
Accomplish two most worthy ends: to set
The world aright and save this old man’s soul.
Something I don’t usually include in my reviews is the book itself, how it’s made, and what it looks like. 
It’s a nicely made hardback, and under the dust jacket the book has been made to look like a well-worn older edition, complete with scuff-marks and wrinkles in the spine. Plus the wood-cut illustrations by Nicolas Delort look very 16th century.
This is a book I’d want to give as a gift to either a Star Wars fan or a Shakespeare fan, provided they have a sense of humor. The book as a whole is a great opportunity to see Star Wars in a whole new light. This isn’t a parody of Star Wars, it’s not poking fun at it. It’s obvious right from the beginning that Doescher isn’t just a Shakespearean expert, he’s a real Star Wars fan as well.