Verily, A New Hope (Book Review)

I love Shakespeare. One of my favorite classes in high school was an English class focusing exclusively on the bard and his plays. We studied Hamlet thoroughly in the lead up to the film release of the play starring Mel Gibson (yes I am old). I'll never forget the time when we had a class field trip to see the movie that as we were laughing at Shakespeare's jokes, I overheared a pair of elderly ladies trying to understand what was funny.

So when I heard of Shakespeare's Star Wars - it was a truly Reese's Peanut Butter Cup moment - chocolate and peanut butter? Awesome! Now having read the book, I must say author Ian Doescher delivered a fantastic work!

All of the hallmarks of a Shakespeare play are clearly evident even to the non-scholar like me:

• The play is in five acts
• There is minimal stage direction
• Rhyming couplets close each scene
• Characters have "asides" (what we call "breaking the fourth wall" now)
• Soliloquies (asides that are delivered alone on stage)
• Use of iambic pentameter

He references several of the tragedies, namely Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, King Lear, and MacBeth. He also refers to several histories: Henry V, Richard III, and Julius Caesar. There is also a bit from As You Like It and even a few sonnets in there too!

But you can tell that Doescher is not just a Shakespeare fan but is truly a Star Wars fan as well. He didn't simply take the Episode IV script and shakespeare-ize it, he truly did an interpretation of it. There are extended scenes, like the tragic tale of stormtrooper TK-421 who correctly theorizes that the droids they are looking for are hidden the Falcon. His partner talks him out of it and they are called up the gangplank to give some help - and the rest is history!

He employs R2-D2 as a character like the Fool from King Lear in that he speaks truth but no one believes or understands him. This is done wonderfully when Artoo  has spoken "asides" in English.

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In closing, I thought I would take a moment to describe what iambic pentameter is. Many people know that is how Shakespeare wrote his plays but few really understand what the heck this phrase means! Iamb means two syllables in a soft-STRESSED arrangement, such as "en-JOY". Pentameter means there should be five iambs in a line.

Here is an example of iambic pentameter:

I'd RATHer BE a HAMmer THAN a NAIL

Note though that Shakespeare did not exclusively use iambic pentameter in his plays. When it came to words spoken by characters of a lower social class, he would use regular prose instead. He would also sometimes intentionally break the rules of iambic pentameter: "to BE or NOT to BE that IS the QUESTion.". That last "-ion" is a weak ending that extends past the five iambs. The author, Ian Doescher, stated that even though he was much more rigorous in following iambic pentameter than Shakespeare ever was, he still has about a dozen lines that break this pattern in his book.

To learn more about Shakespeare and how Ian Doescher wrote this book, be sure to read the excellent Educator's Guide on the Random House website!