Shakespeare's Empire Striketh Back

Product Description

Experience the Star Wars saga reimagined as an Elizabethan drama penned by William Shakespeare himself, complete with authentic meter and verse, and theatrical monologues and dialogue by everyone from Yoda to a hungry wampa.

Many a fortnight have passed since the destruction of the Death Star. Young Luke Skywalker and his friends have taken refuge on the ice planet of Hoth, where the evil Darth Vader has hatched a cold-blooded plan to capture them. Only with the help of a little green Jedi Master—and a swaggering rascal named Lando Calrissian—can our heroes escape the Empire's wrath. And only then will Lord Vader learn how sharper than a tauntaun's tooth it is to have a Jedi child.

Authentic meter, stage directions, reimagined movie scenes and dialogue, and hidden Easter eggs throughout will entertain and impress fans of Star Wars and Shakespeare alike. Every scene and character from the film appears in the play, along with twenty woodcut-style illustrations that depict an Elizabethan version of the Star Wars galaxy.What light through Yoda's window breaks? Methinks you'll find out in the pages of The Empire Striketh Back!

Top Reviews

A good play that doesn't translate well to film
by Tater (4 out of 5 stars)
September 15, 2014

The place in the canon of Shakespeare's The Empire Striketh Back is, of course, unchallenged. This is one of the most moving stories ever told, and it shows Shakespeare's genius at an early age.

Rather than write YET ANOTHER review of how great this play is, however, I'd like to focus on a less-discussed topic related to ESB. George Lucas' 1980 film adaptation of the play.

Lucas failed in several ways in his film adaptation of the Shakespeare classic. Like many Shakespearean movies from the 80s, the most glaring omission is the verse. The verse is as integral to Shakespeare's Empire as it is to any other of his plays, and Lucas, in a fashion that thankfully disappeared by the mid-90s, follows the contemporary trend to ignore the verse of Shakespeare plays. In fairness, hacks like James Earl Jones and Harrison Ford were likely unable to handle the verse with the same finesse as their more-talented costars (I'm thinking, of course, of Billy Dee Williams and Peter Mayhew). On the other hand, we see that omitting the verse causes eccentricities in Shakespeare's stories that ultimately fail on film. For instance, let's look at the most-obvious example: Yoda. Shakespeare was such a genius that he pioneered the haiku form long before it was rediscovered and employed in Japan almost forty years later. Trying to distinguish Yoda's verse from the other characters with his experimental style, Shakespeare produced such memorable lines as this one:
"I my own counsel

Shall keep on who's to be trained!

A Jedi is wise."

Compare this beautiful work of poetry to the movie's sloppy "translation":
"My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained!"

Losing the verse mangles the line, producing a distasteful effect of anastrophe. I think it's safe to say that no one likes this alteration to the original. Furthermore, the addition that Jedi are wise never even appears in the movie. George Lucas, in adapting the text, seems completely unaware of the importance of this line; cutting "A Jedi is wise" leaves the audience wondering... Shakespeare's influence on such influential theorists such as Kierkegaard comes back to this line, and the audience is left wondering whether Jedi are wise or not. A simple cut changes the film for the worse.

Another omission of the text is the chorus monologue describing the lightsaber fight with Vader. Everyone knows that Shakespeare hated violence more than anything, and never showed weaponry even a little in his plays. Consider, for instance, Romeo's duel with Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, in which the two men *almost* engage in a pillow fight, only to decide that violence, even feathery, fluffy violence, solves nothing. Rather than preserving Shakespeare's pacifistic style, Lucas actually *shows* the lightsaber fight! I know that movies should take dramatic liberties with their sources, but showing violence onstage is so unlike Shakespeare - this text serving as further proof to that effect - that it's like Lucas didn't even read Shakespeare's play before filming.

Perhaps the worst offender is one of Lucas' personal emendations, the groan-inducing lines spoken between Han and Leia at the carbon freezing chamber. "I love you" says Leia, to which Han replies, "I know." While one might argue for the merits of Lucas' writing in places (if one were to forget that the original verse existed for 400 years before the fact), but certainly this line above all others demonstrates that the text was better in iambic pentameter. How could anyone find an exchange like this endearing? It's beyond my ability to reconcile.

If only Lucas had kept his directorial paws off Shakespeare's masterpiece, Empire Strikes Back may have been a good movie. Rumors exist that Irvin Kershner had his sights on directing a film adaptation of Shakespeare's masterpiece, but as it stands, I'm not sure the play even stands up to cinematic presentation. Some things are just better left in text.
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These are the books you're looking for
by Canadian eReader (5 out of 5 stars)
March 22, 2014

William Shakespeare's Star Wars - The Empire Striketh Back by Ian Doescher is the sequel to William Shakespeare's Star Wars, a retelling of George Lucas's space saga in the style of William Shakespeare. I would strongly recommend picking this up as an audiobook rather than ebook or hard copy - Random House Audio's production is top notch with an excellent cast. It is far more like a radio play than an audiobook and the excellent cast does a wonderful job of telling the story.

What I liked

The source material. The original Star Wars trilogy is a darn good story. It contains a lot of strong themes which would have been as relevant in Shakespeare's time as today: love, betrayal, youthful impetuousness, struggle against tyranny. Doescher therefore has a strong base on which to base his adaptation. It also isn't too jarring, for example, when Han rails against Lando's betrayal in Shakespearean language as it is a theme and emotion found in many of Shakespeare's works.

Yoda. On my first listen through I was a little disappointed that Yoda didn't sound too different from the other characters. In the movies, he has a unique speech pattern and I was hoping that this would be reflected in Empire Striketh Back. It was only on reading Doescher's commentary that I realised Yoda was speaking in haiku! Darn I wished I'd picked that up first time. This is intended to reflect Yoda's role as Luke's master - or sensei - in the mystical force giving an eastern feel to it. Brilliant. Appropriate and brilliant.

The production. Random House Audio has gone full out to make this a radio play rather than an audiobook. We have a strong cast, sound effects (including the iconic swish of the lightsabres) as well as snippets of John Williams' memorable soundtrack. It all combines to make it a wonderful listen.

Doescher's Notes and Commentary. I the ebook edition I also possess, Doescher adds some commentary explaining some of the creative decisions he made while writing Empire. This, combined with the teachers notes provides a fascinating new insight into the book.

What I didn't like

There was nothing, I tell you, nothing i disliked about The Empire Striketh Back. I already have The Jedi Doth Return on pre-order. As the trailer says "these are the books you have been looking for."
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Strongly Recommend
by Christopher Whitman (5 out of 5 stars)
June 10, 2014

There really isn't anything that I could say that would influence a decision on purchasing this book. it's Star Wars, but written like Shakespeare! You literally cannot get anything better than that!

Obviously it would help if you have seen the movies before purchasing these books just so you have some baseline on what it originally was, but this is a great read and I am enjoying it immensely. Can't wait for the 3rd book to be released!

Overall: Would strongly recommend to a Star Wars fan looking for a laugh that has a slight appreciation for Shakespearean theater.
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Great follow-up to the original
by Kitten Fluff Knits (5 out of 5 stars)
April 16, 2015

The second installment in Ian Doescher's Star Wars/Shakespeare mash-up is a great follow-up to the original. Doescher has loosened up a little with his form, which is great. One of my biggest complaints with William Shakespeare's Star Wars was the over use and lack of variety of the verse. Shakespeare never wrote a full play ALL in verse and his iambic pentameter wasn't perfect either. In The Empire Striketh Back, Doescher has Bobo Fett speak in prose, and Yoda speaks in haiku! Now, of course, the haiku isn't a form Shakespeare used, but I think Doescher's explanation of his choice in the Afterward is sufficient.

As Empire is the darkest of the original trilogy, it is clearly more difficult to find comedic moments to highlight, yet Doescher has done it. One of my favorite scenes is in fact a commentary on the architecture of the Death Star and Bespin in which two guards discuss Imperial building codes. It's much funnier in verse...

I highly recommend William Shakespeare's The Empire Striketh Back to any Star Wars fan who also has a love for the Bard! (Review also posted on Goodreads.com)
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My students loved this
by Fibonacci (5 out of 5 stars)
June 26, 2015

My students loved this:a familiar and compelling story written in Elizabethan prose as if by the bard himself. Normally, Shakespeare is impenetrable to middle schoolers, but knowing the story made this accessible, even humorous. Yet behind the humor some learning was going on and the Old English began to make just a bit more sense.

I should also point out that I had barely read two pages when my students begged me to let them act the story out. What could be more fun than holding a light saber while pronouncing "forsooth and anon?" Perhaps not everyone's cup of tea, but I do work with advanced students.
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Doescher Strikes Again!
by A. Miller (5 out of 5 stars)
May 17, 2014

I don't remember how I heard about the author's first book, "Verily, A New Hope," but I got ahold of it and loved every minute of it. I'm on to Act II of this one, and again it is sheer genius. For this one, Doescher is riffing pretty hard off of "McBeth," and it totally works. Anyone who is a Shakespeare geek AND a Star Wars geek is going to have a really good time with these books. I'm not sure, however, if you could "get it" with a familiarity with only one genre.

In terms of nuts and bolts, the dust jacket for this book is kinda lame, but the quality of the binding and the pages and the printing is very good.

Anyway, I'm sold on the franchise, and have already pre-ordered "The Jedi Doth Return."
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Erudite and witty fun
by M. Writtle (5 out of 5 stars)
May 10, 2014

I am not actually a big fan of Star Wars, but please don't tell that to my theatrical and sci-fantasy friends who got together to do a table reading of this as we had done for A New Hope. Doescher's Shakespearean meter is almost perfect throughout and the allusions to other works of the Bard are deliciously clear and appropriate. Granting voices to the Bantha, the AT-ATs and even an asteroid rock creature, is a touch of genius. I had huge fun approximating Anthony Daniels vocal mennerisms as C-3PO. We had a wonderful Yoda and it definitely works to have the whole room at once perform most of Chewie's lines.
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LOVE every word Ian Doescher writes
by JoeB (5 out of 5 stars)
May 23, 2018

LOVE every word Ian Doescher writes! My 9th grade daughter recently proclaimed to her English class that she "loves iambic pentameter" because of Mr. Doescher's William Shakespear's Star Wars books. Can't recommend these highly enough!
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Its fun, light reading
by yog1389 (5 out of 5 stars)
July 15, 2014

Its fun, light reading. Finished it in less than an hour while waiting for a delayed flight.

A good read for anyone who either likes star wars, or wants to know the star wars story without sitting through all the movies then this series is perfect.

Note: Its written in Shakespeare's style, but only using the most common and easily understandable words and phrases (thou, shalt, ere) so that anyone can enjoy the book. Do not expect to find proper early modern english which is used in the works of shakespeare.
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May the Force be every unto thee
by Amazon Customer (4 out of 5 stars)
June 18, 2014

I'll start off saying I am a huge Star Wars fan and love the movies deeply. I also love a good, humorous strike at them as well, and this pulls it off in spades. LIke General Chang said in Star Trek VI, "You haven't read Hamlet until you read it in the original Klingon." This has plenty of humorous guffaws, but ultimately, the joke does get a tad old. But it is a fun romp. I would love to see somebody acutally perform it.

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