Grade: B

At first the idea of combining Shakespeare and Star Wars sound, at best funny, and at worst downright asinine. But if you think about the fact that George Lucas famously, and openly, gutted every myth, fable, and classic story he could find to tell his epic, then why not team him up with the man who is arguably the most classic storyteller ever? In William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope, author Ian Doescher does just that. Turning the original movie into a play and translating all dialogue, and stage directions, into iambic pentameter, this book is at turns inspiring and odd, brilliant and jarring, but always highly entertaining. I imagine the target audience is fans of the films rather than those enamored with The Bard, but that doesn’t cheapen the work Doescher put in here, mostly because in some respects it’s already kind of cheap. Though I don’t mean that as an insult, really.

You know the story, or at least you should, as a matter of fact if you don’t you should just leave and not come back on the internet until you know the story of Star Wars, so I won’t summarize it here. What you should know is that it plays with what we know of the characters, using information we won’t learn until the subsequent films to deepen the likes of Darth Vader and even R2D2. Some of the best parts of this book are when Doescher writes soliloquies for various characters. In addition to having fun with the Star Wars universe and the language therein, they provide us new insights into beloved pop-culture icons. Take R2’s aside in the opening scenes:

“Around both humans and the droids I must
Be seen to make such errant beeps and squeaks
That they shall think me simple. Truly, though,
Although with sounds oblique I speak to them,
I clearly see how I shall play my part,
And how a vast Rebellion shall succeed
By wit and wisdom of a simple droid.”

It’s not a new idea to suggest that the entire saga revolves around the droids, hell that’s kind of what Lucas intended for the first half of A New Hope, but it certainly is new to put such depth and motivation into R2D2. He always seemed cunning, but never plotting, if that makes sense.

The real draw of this book is to read some of the quotes out loud to your nerdy friends though. Here’s my advice on how to enjoy this book (well, read it all the way through of course because if you’ve read this far into the review you’re probably a Star Wars geek and you owe it to yourself to experience such an odd venture, damn it.): Get yourself a case of beer and some buddies, drink and open to a random page and start reading out loud. Everybody will enjoy themselves, and anybody who doesn’t isn’t really your friend anyway.

The downside of this book? There are two things. The first is simple: It’s kind of a novelty. I don’t doubt that Ian Doescher put a lot of effort into this, and I do hope that it’s successful enough for him to do the other two movies, but it’s ultimately going to be forgotten on the bookshelf in a matter of weeks. The second problem is maybe a bit more abstract. This book is going to inspire so many shitty theater productions of Verily, A New Hope that I already want to cut funding for drama programs throughout the country. Don’t believe me? It’s all too real and it’s already started. There will be some who take this too seriously and we’ll all suffer for it.

Buy this book!