This past summer, Ian Doescher took Joseph Campbell’s heavy influence on George Lucas’ finest film and connected it back to William Shakespeare, publishing a five-act stage play adaptation of Star Wars in iambic pentameter. It’s a delightful diversion that should prove a great holiday gift for anyone who falls within that large overlap between Star Wars fan and Shakespeare obsessive. (No doubt there are a lot of college and community theater productions to come—because who doesn’t want to give a soliloquy as Darth Vader, or deliver a Hamlet-inspired monologue as Luke while musing on a Stormtrooper helmet substituted for Yorick’s skull?)
Based on the success of that first play, Quirk has announced that Doescher will finish out the original trilogy in Elizabethan verse. The Empire Striketh Back will debut next March, followed by The Jedi Doth Return in July. Both will translate their respective sequels onto a hypothetical Elizabethan stage, divided like the two parts of Henry IV, with a bunch of stylistic references to other Shakespeare works. Those Ewoks are either going to be some strange Welshmen, or Jedi will have a bit of a mystical Tempest thing going on. If all goes well, Doescher will stop there, because nobody needs to read The Clones Doth Attack. There’s already one Titus Andronicus.