William Shakespeare's Star Wars (16 page)
GHOST
O use the Force, dear Luke. Let go and trust!
VADER
I sense the Force in this one here, almost
As if I did my younger self espy.
GHOST
I prithee, trust me, Luke. All shall be well.
LUKE
The hearing of these words is like a balm
Unto my soul. So shall I trust the Force
And not this fallible computer here.
[Luke turns off computer
.
COMPUTER
What is this, Luke? Thy targeting machine
Hath been turn’d off. What can be wrong? Pray tell!
LUKE
Nay, all is well. Fear not, good friends.
R2-D2
—Beep, squeak.
[Darth Vader shoots. R2-D2 is hit
.
Ahh hoo!
LUKE
—Small R2-D2 hath been lost!
COMPUTER
The Death Star now has come within our range.
TARKIN
Commander, thou may’st fire when thou hast made
All goodly preparation thereunto.
VADER
Now face thy death, thou rebel.
PILOT
—Sir, take heed!
CHORUS
Now in a trice brave Han is on the scene!
The smuggler hath return’d on errand kind.
With sly approach he makes his way unseen
And slays th’Imperi’l pilots from behind.
[Enter Han Solo with Chewbacca, firing on
Darth Vader and Imperial Pilots. Explosion
.
Imperial Pilots 1 and 2 die
.
VADER
But how?—
[Darth Vader exits in confusion, his ship spinning out of control
.
HAN
—Thy path is clear, young Luke. Now do
Thy deed and let us all make way back home.
LUKE
I stretch my feelings out and use the Force,
And on the instant seems the porthole vast—
Not small or difficult to strike, but large.
The ship is arm’d, and now I take the chance—
The blast’s away, and with it all our hopes!
[Luke shoots and hits the target
.
CHORUS
The laser hits its mark with certain aim,
And as the Death Star arms to strike the base
The chain reaction sets the orb aflame:
The Death Star hath exploded into space.
HAN
Thy timely blast hath hit the perfect mark—
One in a million was thy Force-fill’d shot!
GHOST
Remember me, O Luke, remember me,
And ever shall the Force remain with thee.
[Exeunt
.
The rebel base on Yavin IV
.
Enter
L
UKE
S
KYWALKER
from ship, with
P
RINCESS
L
EIA
and various rebels
.
REBELS
Hurrah!
LUKE
—O Leia!
LEIA
—Luke! Thou didst succeed!
Enter
H
AN
S
OLO
.
HAN
Heigh-ho!
LUKE
—Good friend! I knew thou wouldst return.
I knew thou must, ’twas in thy spirit good.
HAN
Nay, should a pirate let another take
His own reward?
LEIA
—Thou gentle soul, I knew
Thou wert of sterner stuff than money made.
Enter
R
2
-D
2
,
injured, and
C-
3
PO.
C-3PO
O R2, R2, canst thou hear me? Speak!
Canst thou repair him? Say thou canst, I beg!
If any of my parts may be of use,
Pray say the word!
LUKE
—Fear not, he’ll be made whole.
REBEL 2
We shall at once begin our best repair.
[Exeunt C-3PO with R2-D2 and Rebel Leader 2
.
LUKE
Now ends a noble quest, a battle won.
Now hath a true adventure reach’d its goal.
Now hath the good Rebellion fac’d its foe
And triumph’d though it seem’d that all was lost.
LEIA
Along the way, dear friends were lost and made,
Along the way, strange creatures have we found.
The stories have been told, the villains met,
The griefs and exultations all play’d out.
HAN
A chance for new beginnings we have made,
Directing hearts unto the rebels’ cause.
These are the star wars we have fought and won—
For now our battles and our scenes are done.
Enter
CHORUS
as epilogue
.
CHORUS
Now dawns a new day with the sun of Peace,
The day whereon the rebels welcome Fate.
For from their enemies they find release
And now with mirth they come to celebrate.
Young Luke, strong in the Force, doth walk beside
The noble Han, whose valor won the day.
The rebels form an aisle and rise with pride,
As Luke and Han march forth in grand display.
Now Leia smiles and gives them their reward,
As each bows low with hope and joy sincere.
C-3PO and R2, now restor’d,
Look on as brave Chewbacca sounds the cheer.
There let our heroes rest free from attack,
Till darkness rise and Empire striketh back.
[Exeunt omnes
.
END.
William Shakespeare’s Star Wars
.
At first glance, the title seems absurd.
But there’s a surprising and very real connection between George Lucas’s cinematic masterpiece and the thirty-seven (give or take) plays of William Shakespeare. That connection is a man named Joseph Campbell, author of the landmark book
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
.
Campbell was famous for his pioneering work as a mythologist. He studied legends and myths from throughout world history to identify the recurring elements—or archetypes—that power all great storytelling. Through his research, Campbell discovered that certain archetypes appeared again and again in narratives separated by hundreds of years, from ancient Greek mythologies to classic Hollywood westerns. Naturally, the plays of William Shakespeare were an important source for Campbell’s scholarship, with brooding prince Hamlet among his cadre of archetypal heroes.
George Lucas was among the first filmmakers to consciously apply Campbell’s scholarship to motion pictures. “In reading
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
,” he told Campbell’s biographers, “I began to realize that my first draft of
Star Wars
was following classic motifs … so I modified my next draft according to what I’d been learning about classical motifs and made it a little bit more consistent.”
To put it more simply, Campbell studied Shakespeare to produce
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
, and Lucas studied Campbell to produce
Star Wars
. So it’s not at all surprising that the
Star Wars
saga features archetypal characters and relationships similar to those found in Shakespearean drama. The complicated parent/child relationship of Darth Vader/Luke Skywalker (and the mentor/student relationship of Obi-Wan Kenobi/Luke Skywalker) recalls plays like
Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, The Tempest
, and
Hamlet
. Like Sith lords, many of Shakespeare’s villains are easily identifiable and almost entirely evil, with notable baddies including Iago (
Othello
), Edmund (
King Lear
), and Don John (
Much Ado about Nothing
). Still others, like Darth Vader, are more conflicted and complex in their malevolence:
Hamlet
’s Claudius and the band of conspirators in
Julius Caesar
. Destiny and fate are key themes of
Star Wars
, as they are in
Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, and
Macbeth
.
Shakespeare’s plays and
Star Wars
also feature a host of colorful supporting players. C-3PO and R2-D2 observe and comment on the action like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Chewbacca is as untamable as Caliban. Lando is as smooth and self-interested (at first) as Brutus. Obi-Wan Kenobi is like a wise Prospero (before death) or a haunting King Hamlet (after). Jabba the Hutt enjoys a diet worthy of Falstaff. Boba Fett is like
Richard III
’s murderers 1, 2, and 3, but with a jetpack and blaster instead of a knife. Yoda’s speech is as backward as Dogberry’s but as wise as Polonius’s.
The works of Shakespeare and the
Star Wars
movies also share a comparable level of popularity and relevance. All well-rounded postmodern cultural connoisseurs are expected to have at least passing familiarity with both sets of stories, and both have percolated into our everyday language: you’re as likely to hear one of Shakespeare’s enduring phrases (“good riddance,” “faint-hearted,” “elbow room,” and many others) as an encouragement to “use the force.” If
Star Wars
were an actual Shakespearean play, we would most likely classify it as
a fantasy, in the vein of
The Tempest
. However, it also has elements of a history (the story of the Galactic Empire with all the intrigue of
Richard III
), a comedy (all’s well that ends well, after all), or, taken as a six-movie arc, the Tragedy of Anakin Skywalker.
I had the idea for
William Shakespeare’s Star Wars
after watching the original trilogy for the millionth time and (soon afterward) attending four shows at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I’d already committed every scene and speech of the
Star Wars
saga to memory, but the Shakespeare festival introduced me to something new:
The Very Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa
, an adaptation by Alison Carey of the classic comedy set in contemporary Iowa among a populace happily embracing gay marriage. I saw the appeal of applying the Shakespearean tradition to surprising and nontraditional story elements, and the next morning I woke up with the idea for this book.
My interests in language and wordplay came in handy while attempting to translate so much classic movie dialogue into iambic pentameter. For those unfamiliar with the phrase, iambic pentameter is the metrical form that Shakespeare uses in his plays and sonnets. An
iamb
is the syllable pattern unstressed-stressed, and
pentameter
means each line has five iambs, so a line of iambic pentameter sounds like this: da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM (Simon and Garfunkel’s “I’d rather be a hammer than a nail” is a perfect example). The rhythm of iambic pentameter feels natural and intuitive to me, so I had a lot of fun writing 3,076 lines of it. Geeky trivia: this puts
William Shakespeare’s Star Wars
at an average length for a Shakespearean play (
A Comedy of Errors
is the shortest, at 1,786 lines;
Hamlet
is the longest, at 4,024).
This has been a labor of love, and I’ve enjoyed every syllable.
The process of writing this, my first book, has been a thrilling journey into the publishing world, and I am grateful to all those who made the way clear. Thank you to Jason Rekulak, my editor at Quirk Books, for believing in this book and for encouraging me to write it in the first place. Thank you to Adriann Ranta, my agent, for guiding me through the maze of contracts and answering the thousand questions of a first-time author. Thanks to both Jennifer Heddle and Carol Roeder at Lucasfilm for making the editorial process a smooth one, to Nicolas Delort for his amazing illustrations, and to the rest of the Quirk and Lucasfilm staff for their wonderful contributions.
Great thanks to my literal and metaphorical brothers Erik Doescher, Josh Hicks, and Ethan Youngerman for being early readers of the manuscript and constant cheerleaders along the way. Thank you to my parents, Beth and Bob Doescher, for their unconditional love and for making
Star Wars
a part of my reality since before I can remember.
