Fish and Cherries Productions

Title: William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh Back
Author: Ian Doescher
Type: Play
Genre: Science Fiction, Parody

Summary: On the surface, combining Shakespeare and Star Wars sounds like an idea that a lazy student would do to try and get an easy A in his literature class. However, despite its inherent silliness, there is a sort of cleverness and, dare I say, dignity with the execution. It isn’t just The Empire Strikes Back run through a Shakespeare translator, there are whole new scenes between incidental characters to match the Shakespeare style, different characters are given entire soliloquies, and there’s even a chorus that takes over when it serves the purpose. The real cleverness, though, comes with what the author did with Yoda; rather than just keep his backwards dialogue the same and make it more Shakespearian, they have him speak entirely in haiku. That’s pretty ingenious. Personally, I think it was a good read and I can’t wait for The Jedi Doth Return.