William Shakespeare's Star Wars Trilogy by Ian Doescher

If you like Shakespeare and you like Star Wars, then I have a trilogy for you. Ian Doescher. the Portland, Oregon native, has re-written the entire Star Wars saga, all nine movies, as only William Shakespeare can write and stage them. These books are not considered part of Star Wars cannon, however they are published by Lucas Books, a division of Lucasfilm.

Here, we will focus on the first trilogy (Episodes 4, 5, and 6): William Shakespeare’s Star Wars, William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh Back, and William Shakespeare’s The Jedi Doth Return.

All three books take the original Star Wars stories and make them even better with a Shakespearian style of humor, action, and tragedy. Which is a perfect fit—after all, the Star Wars saga is very Shakespearian.

I have the box set of these three books. It comes with all three books of the first trilogy, along with a poster version of the box’s graphics, which depicts the Star Wars characters dressed in Shakespearian costumes.

While keeping the original story and plot points, the books employ Shakespeare-esque language and stage direction. Text is written in perfect iambic pentameter as all Shakespeare inspired writing should be.

Many of Shakespeare’s plays have a character which acts as a kind of liaison between the audience and the rest of the characters, one that helps the audience to follow the story and provide more context. In this series, R2D2 and C-3P0 fulfill that role. The script has little asides, that actually have R2D2 speaking in English, that push the story along for the audience. This is also where much of the humor in the books come from. The conversations between the two droids—-including what R2 really thinks about his best friend—-is hilarious and makes you laugh out loud.

All the action and character development over the course of the trilogy lends itself to Shakespeare quite nicely. Luke’s journey into the Jedi, the fight between good and evil, “Luke, I’m your father” are all fit very well into Shakespeare.

All in all, William Shakespeare’s Star Wars is a great read. It is also an excellent way of introducing Shakespearian writing while not using Shakespeare. Doescher even provides a educator guides for each of the books, comparing his books with actual Shakespeare writings.

Doescher has provided this treatment to all nine movies of the main story. These are the only three that I have read so far, but am looking forward to reading the rest.