More than three and half decades since its release, Star Wars is more popular than ever. News of the series reboot means a new round of earnest excitement, but for now, blind fandom has been replaced among aficionados with a new level of ironic appreciation for the universe: Family Guy and Robot Chicken have celebrated the trilogies; the ill-fated Star Wars Christmas Special that features Chewbacca racing across the galaxy for the holidays has millions of YouTube views; one-man Star Wars performer Charlie Ross has been on this very show; and actors like Simon Pegg and Nick Frost reportedly began their comedy partnership when one recognized the other’s droid sound effect at a dinner.
All of which is to say it’s surprising that it took this long to bring the ivory tower gravity of Statford-On-Avon to the swamps of Dagobah.
But novelist Ian Doescher has done just that in his new book, William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope, out now from Quirk Books.
And before you curse the ghost of Thomas Bowdler, think about it for a second: Star Wars and Shakespeare is not such a stretch. There’s the Falstaffian comic relief of C-3PO and R2D2, the questions over legacy and progeny that consume Darth Vader like an interstellar King Lear, the underworld of a Shylock known as Jabba the Hutt.
So before he exits, pursued by a Wookie, it's our pleasure to welcome Ian Doescher to the Roundtable.
