Ian DoescherCritiques

Our family has a serious Thing with Star Wars. I do not always share the enthusiasm, except this book is AMAZING. This is hilarious and well executed. I absolutely recommend it to nerds everywhere.

Review otherwise I did thou really thinkst would, hmm?

PURE AWESOME.

such fun to read!

Shakespeare's best. Way ahead of its time.

Over-the-top silly and just plain awesome!

Hilarious. Hi-lar-i-ous.

I think anyone who loves Star Wars and/or Shakespeare will get an immense kick out of this book. There are dozens of highlighted passages all over my book(/Kindle) and notes attached to them. It's wonderful getting to see the author makes asides with knowledge we know having seen Episodes 1-6 as a populace.

We can see where Beru and Obi-Won are both coming from with so much more drastic clarity, as well as asides from Vadar that reference his entire life. We can cringe and giggle at the whole of Leia and Luke, and every little reference to the word "sister."

Not to mention that the whole thing has taken quoted pieces from all over Shakespeare's plays and dovetailed them together, so that you're laughing at Star Wars, but also flailing happily about a line from Romeo & Juliet, MacBeth, Twelfth Night, and on and on. I'm definitely going to advise this for anyone who loves these ideas.

As is necessary as an English Master and a geek, I'm going to give you two ratings, the way I do when these two intersection.



As a Star Wars --> Shakespeare book
I'd rate it: Perfect Five Stars


As a Shakespeare Play --> Star Wars
I'd rate it a 3.9 Stars (It drags a little in Act IV-V for Shakespeare's liking)

Ian Doescher delivers the goods again with this follow-up to [b:William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope|17262540|William Shakespeare's Star Wars Verily, A New Hope (William Shakespeare's Star Wars, #1)|Ian Doescher|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1363364801s/17262540.jpg|23859346]. As in the first book, Doescher puts a Shakespearean spin on familiar lines from the movies. Here are a couple of my favorites.

LEIA: I know not whence thy great delusions come, thou laser brain.
CHEWBACCA (laughing): Gihut, gihut, gihut!
HAN: Aye, laugh indeed, thou furball large.

C3PO: Now Captain Solo, pray, a word with thee.
HAN (aside): A word from thee belike means hundreds more.

R2D2 is still doing asides to the audience in perfectly good English, and even the monsters have soliloquies. Both the wampa, who hangs Luke up in his cave at the beginning of the movie, and the exogorth, whose unfortunate belly was a temporary parking spot for the Millennium Falcon, get a chance to explain that they're just trying to get some dinner and to bemoan the fact that their dinner fought back and got away.
Doescher adds singing to the story, with the ugnaughts singing merrily as they dismantle C3PO and anticipate carbon freezing a human. Chewie and Leia get in on the action too, when they "sing a song of lament" after Han is frozen.
The above, plus Luke's famous denial of "Nay!!!" when Vader says he's Luke's father and Vader's reaction of "Fie fie" as our heroes make their escape, made me giggle a lot.
Star Wars and Shakespeare fans-take an hour or two and read this-it's big fun. The Afterward is worth taking an extra few minutes to read too.

Clever clever. I had so much fun with this-the author wrote it all in iambic pentameter, here and there borrowing from Shakespeare's plays.(Luke started one speech with a nod to Julius Caesar, and by the end had moved on to Henry V). When C-3PO thinks he hasn't turned off the trash compactor soon enough to save Luke and co., he says "A plague on 3PO for action slow, a plague upon my quest that led us here, a plague on both our circuit boards, I say!"

Hee hee.

For people who know the movie by heart, or have at least seen it a few times, the famous lines are still recognizable in their Shakespearean form, often to hilarious effect- When Luke comes to rescue Leia, she says, "Thou truly art in jest. Art thou not small of stature, if thou art a stormtrooper?" The book is filled with gems like this.

The author also came up with some swell plays on words of his own, like Luke's response when Han tells him he won't be fighting in the last big battle-"Then take thou care now, Han, thou Solo act, For certain 'tis the part thou best dost play."

But my favorite thing that Doescher did was to cast R2D2 as the wise fool, making asides to the audience in perfectly good English, while beeping and whirring to everyone else. That R2D2's a sassy bloke.

Very entertaining.

Fantastic! I must say, though, when Ian gets it right, it's when he stayed closest to the original.

Things I liked:
- R2's color commentary in glorious iambic pentameter
- the asides: that first fateful meeting between ObiWan and Luke, the thought Han, the snarky Tarkan...
Things I hated:
- Han shot first. Period. The End.
- Why was it necessary to bring Jabba to the Millennium Falcon on Tatooine?
- Luke's "Friends, rebels, starfighters, lend me your ears" speech

Well, this was...... interesting.
So basically, Ian Doescher has taken the story of Star Wars 'A New Hope' & set it to iambic pentameter.
I actually did mostly enjoy this, it was pretty funny in places eg:
Luke: Pray whither goest, thou naughty droid?!
R2-D2: Beep, meep, beep, squeak!
I don't really think there's much more to say except that if this had been published while I was in high school, I might actually have wanted to study Shakespeare lol!

Excellent writing. However, I have up reading it because I really don't care much about Star Wars. I had read the previous six. I like Shakespeare and thought the previous six books worked well but like I said, not really a fan of Star Wars. Good for Star Wars fans who also like Shakespeare.

Hilarious. And yet when Solo comes back from being tortured, the speech he gives is excellent at conveying his pain and what Leia means to him. The author truly gets the heart of Shakespeare and places it well in Star Wars. An excellent read especially since I was only vaguely familiar with the movies this was an excellent introduction. And Yoda in haiku is still very Yoda.

《The closer we become, the more I ache,
To be sans you would steal my very breath.》

★★★★½
Basically, this is an intergalactic version of Romeo and Juliet.
Doescher did an amazing job, I liked The Clone Army Attacketh a lot more than The Phantom of Menace 💜 I hope it will be a crescendo with the next books, too 😍

★★★½☆

《To the dark side of the Force,
Fear’s the surest path.
Fear leads to anger,
Onward leads anger to hate,
Hate to suffering.
A bounty of fear
Is present in thy spirit—
Fear beyond measure.》

Overall I liked this book but I'm still not quite sure about the rating.. Should I take some time, maybe? :P

I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher (Quirk Books) for promotional purposes.

This book is pure genius!

I’m a huge MCU fan (I’ve seen every movie and tv show) and I enjoy reading Shakespeare so I knew I needed to read this. I’ve also read the author’s Shakespearean Mean Girls retelling (aptly titled Much Ado About Mean Girls) and loved it.

This book is all 4 Avengers movies written as Shakespearen plays. It includes stage directions, a list of characters, and even full color illustrations (loved seeing the Avengers dressed Shakespearean style). All the iconic lines and scenes are translated perfectly.

However, the most genius aspects are the Prologue and the characters’ speech patterns. The Prologue recaps the previous movies (i.e. Iron Man, Captain America) and is written in an acrostic that spells out the movie titles. How smart is that?

The author gave all the main Avengers characters (20 in total) unique speech patterns. For example, Hawkeye’s dialogue features bird related terms for obvious reasons and Ant-Man’s dialogue contains both a one syllable word and a 4 syllable word since he can shrink small and grow very large. The fact that the author came up with patterns for 20 different characters is insane. Major kudos to him.

Overall, this is a must read for Marvel and Shakespeare fans! It would make a great gift as well.

A delight to read. Doescher really knows how to work the pentameter.

The tragedies that we have seen do reach
Beyond the pale of what we humans should
Endure, far worse than mine imagination...

Well thank the Midi-chlorians thats over with. I really reget reading these in chronological order. At least i can move on to the original books now.

On its own i might have only rated this a high 3 but grading on a curve its much better. Although for almost every big soliloquy added by the adaptor, giving much needed depth or clarity to the plot, there will inevitably follow something clunky from the film that the adaptor couldn't change.

I'm not even sure i've ever watched this one... i mean i've definitely seen parts of it but not sure if i've ever sat down and watched it start to end.
The opening with the chancellor already kidnapped by General Grievous, who's i've barely heard of. I know he's from the cartoon but i mean who the hell thought that was a good idea?

Anyway, the adaptor really tries but can't entirely pull the Darth Vader plot thread out of its tailspin. Still overall, the best of the worst.

..When some gross fault of theirs is then expos’d,
They throw their hands unto the sky and cry,
“O, now ’tis us who sorely are oppress’d!”
Thus do the dominating twist the tale
And make themselves the subject of their pity,
Whilst turning blind eye to those truly plagued..

This is a REALLY good adaptation, unfortunately even shakespeare can't save this plot.
This isn't a straightforward translation to the shakespearian either, there are various injokes and pop culture references too, most of which i could have done without but i didn't mind them much.

I was mildly distracted at times trying to picture how they would actually stage this at the new Globe theatre etc. There is a LOT going on in some scenes with a lot of people in different locations.

The characters are a big improvement on the original, you can do a lot with asides and soliquays. I also like the addition of Rumour, who added some useful exposition.

Couple of quibbles, towards the end i couldn't figure out if Jar-Jar was on the field of battle or in the palace, also i have no idea what happened in the throne room it was a bit messy on the page.
The alien gibberish and droid speak seems even more annoying to my ears despite many asides and translations.

The main issue though is the original plot. Even with Rumour to help i still don't know how the Trade Federation and Senate actually function.
Also you spend an inordinate amount of time on what is essentially a side-quest to get the ship fixed so you can get to the senate... where nothing happens and they go home again :| .
And there are other plot issues but my point is that the improvement in many areas tended to highlight some of the underlying problems.

Anyway as an adaptation at least 4 stars, maybe even 5 out of 5. However this is still the Phantom Menace.

This book was pure nerdy fun... I'd love to see a production of this parody, either film or stage!

Doescher knows his Shakespeare and his Star Wars. I was thoroughly amused.

Just my kind of nerdiness. Very amusing.

The best part about this book is not the "translation" of the Star Wars script into Shakespearean poetry, but how Doescher uses the conventions of Shakespeare to enhance the script. The first time I read an "[aside]" by R2-D2 I laughed with delight. Most of the characters have at least one added moment of private musing which is shared with the audience: Luke on his loyalty to his family vs his desire for adventure, Obi-Wan pondering how much of the truth he should tell Luke, Tarkin about his relationship with Vader, and etc.

For readers who are familiar with Shakespeare, there are familiar (slightly twisted) lines sprinkled liberally throughout the text: "What light through yonder flashing sensor breaks?" Some are a bit awkwardly melded, as when Luke jumps from "Friends, rebels, starpilots, lend me your ears" (Julius Caesar) to Henry V's Crispin Day speech, but even those are more amusing than jolting.

I suspect that Society for Creative Anachronism events and Science Fiction conventions of all sizes will witness a lot of productions of the text -- which will simply add to the hours of fun and pleasure that are the legacy of Star Wars.