Read William Shakespeare's The Empire Striketh Back Online
Authors: Ian Doescher
William Shakespeare's The Empire Striketh Back (19 page)
Indeed, my Lord, I shall with joy comply.
The rebels shall be in our grasp anon.
[Exit Admiral Piett, while Darth Vader stares into space.
Enter
C-3PO
and
R2-D2
, who is repairing
C-3PO.
Why have we not to lightspeed flown?
—Beep, squeak!
What dost thou mean that we cannot? How canst
Thou know the hyperdrive disabl’d is?
Beep, meep, meep, beep, squeak, whistle, nee, beep, hoo!
The city’s central processor hath told
Thee so? O, R2-D2, how have I
Oft warnèd thee of talking to a strange
Computer? Now, attend to my repair!
[R2-D2 continues to repair C-3PO.
[
to Luke:
] Luke, well I know that thou canst sense my call.
My father! Word most strange upon my lips.
My son.
—O Ben, why didst thou tell me not?
[Luke walks to the cockpit.
Chewbacca, we must fly or we shall be
Destroy’d!
—It is Darth Vader on that ship.
We are in danger here. When shall we fly?
Luke, come with me, fulfill thy destiny!
[
aside:
] O Ben, I ask, why didst thou tell me not?
What anguish and disorder fill my mind!
[R2-D2 goes to the control panel.
[
aside:
] It falls to me again to win the day,
And rescue the Rebellion from dire loss.
I shall reactivate the hyperdrive,
Thus we shall fly, to fight another time!
O clever droid, great R2, rescuer!
[R2-D2 adjusts the control panel and the
Millennium Falcon
flies into lightspeed. Exeunt all but Darth Vader.
Fie, fie! Yet once again the ship escapes.
I shall devise brave punishments for those
Who put upon our state this grievous blight.
Then shall I seek my son, the Jedi Knight.
[Exit Darth Vader.
Aboard a rebel cruiser.
Enter
L
UKE
S
KYWALKER
.
The medic droid hath fix’d my hand with care,
Though never shall it fully be repair’d.
For though I can this hand use as before,
It shall ne’er truly be a hand of mine.
For now I am machine, though partly so,
Now have I ta’en a step toward the man
Who saith he is my father, yet is wires
And bolts. O hand, I find thee yet so dear.
Pray, serve me well, and prick my memory
That I did once the dark side briefly know—
And fac’d, and fought, and ultimately fail’d.
Then rise once more with me, my true right hand—
Thy rightful place thou shalt take at my side
To right the wrongs that we have sufferèd,
And right now thou and I begin to work
T’ward righteousness in great rebellion’s cause.
Enter
C
HEWBACCA
, P
RINCESS
L
EIA
,
and
L
ANDO
.
Now Lando, shalt thou go?
—Aye, Luke, for all
Hath been prepar’d. When we find Jabba and
The bounty hunter, we shall tell thee all.
I’ll meet thee where we plann’d—on Tatooine—
My homeland that is now estrang’d from me.
Good princess, now farewell. Apologies
Most earnest I convey again, and with
Them come a vow: we shall find Han, I swear.
Dear Chewie, I’ll await thy signal.
—Auugh!
Now take thou care—the Force be with ye both.
[
They move to separate parts of the stage.
Now ends this troubl’d time of Empire’s rise,
Our time of harsh betrayal, painful loss.
Now have we learn’d what friendship truly costs,
And in the learning lost a comrade strong.
Along the way, our hearts were movèd much:
By sacred love, most wondrous to behold,
By bravery that shall outlive the times,
By sacrifice of our most precious friends.
Encounters unexpected we did meet
With masters wise and persons unforeseen.
These are the star wars, yet they are not done—
For sure, the final chapter’s just begun.
Enter
chorus
as epilogue.
A glooming peace this morning with it brings,
No shine of starry light or planet’s glow.
For though our heroes ’scape the Empire’s slings,
The great rebellion ne’er has been so low.
Brave Han is for the Empire’s gain betray’d,
Which doth leave Princess Leia’s heart full sore.
Young Luke hath had his hand repair’d, remade—
The man is whole, but shaken to the core.
Forgive us, gentles, for this brutal play,
This tale of sorrow, strife, and deepest woes.
Ye must leave empty, sighing lack-a-day,
Till we, by George, a brighter play compose.
Our story endeth, though your hearts do burn,
And shall until the Jedi doth return.
[Exeunt omnes.
END.
A Winter’s Tale
, indeed:
William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh Back
. Let me lift the curtain a bit to tell you about four aspects of what you’ve just read.
First of all: what does Yoda sound like in a galaxy filled with Elizabethan speech? This was the question that gnawed at me as I began to write this second
Star Wars
book. Yoda is famous for his inverted phrase order, but many people who read
William Shakespeare’s Star Wars
commented that every character in it sounds a little like Yoda. So what to do? Originally, I had four different ideas:
• Do a complete reversal and have Yoda talk like a modern person: “Stop it. Don’t try, just either do it or don’t do it. Seriously.”
• Have Yoda talk in something like Old English, approximating Chaucer: “Nee, do ye nae trie, aber due it oder due it not.” (My Chaucer admittedly isn’t great.)
• Don’t do anything special, and have Yoda talk like the other characters.
• Repeat Yoda’s lines verbatim from the movie, nodding to the fact that Yoda already sounds a little Shakespearean.
In the end, as you’ve read, I had a fifth idea, which I hope was better than any of these. Yoda is a wise teacher, almost like a
sensei
—he has something of an eastern sensibility about him. Why not express that by making all of his lines haiku? Yes, I know: Shakespeare never wrote in haiku. But he did break from iambic pentameter in certain
cases—Puck from
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
speaks in iambic tetrameter, songs in several Shakespearean works break meter, and so on. And yes, I know: the five–seven–five syllable pattern I adhere to in Yoda’s haiku is a modern constraint, not part of the original Japanese poetic form. Most haiku are simpler than Yoda’s lines and do not express complete sentences as Yoda’s haiku do—I know, I know! Remember, this isn’t scholarship; it’s fun. For you purists:
If these haiku have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended:
That you have but slumber’d here
While these haiku did appear…
Second,
William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh Back
introduces us to the first character in my Shakespearean adaptations who speaks in prose rather than meter: Boba Fett. Shakespeare often used prose to separate the lower classes from the elite—kings spoke in iambic pentameter while porters and gravediggers spoke in prose. In writing
William Shakespeare’s Star Wars,
I did not want to be accused of being lazy about writing iambic pentameter, but with this book it was time to introduce some prose. Who better to speak in base prose than the basest of bounty hunters?
Third, one criticism of
William Shakespeare’s Star Wars
I heard several times—and took to heart—was that I overused the chorus to explain the action sequences. Some argued that I shouldn’t have used a chorus at all, which I disagree with; when I began writing the first book, the chorus seemed like a logical way to “show” the action scenes without actually showing them, and there was precedent in Shakespeare’s
Henry V
. However, by leaning heavily on the chorus, I neglected another Shakespearean device, of having a character describe action that the audience can’t see. Here’s an
example from
Hamlet
, Act IV, scene 7, in which Gertrude describes what happened to Ophelia:
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them:
There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
This device is called on more frequently in
William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh Back
, giving the chorus a needed break.
Fourth, Lando. As much as I like Billy Dee Williams, and as smooth as he was in 1980, in my opinion his character isn’t fleshed out very well. We never know what he was thinking when he was forced to betray his friend, or what made him decide to help Leia and Chewbacca in the end. Filling in some of Lando’s story with asides and soliloquies that show how conflicted he feels hopefully gives him some depth and makes him even more compelling than in the movie.
Once again, writing
William Shakespeare’s The Empire Striketh Back
was a delight. Most
Star Wars
fans agree that
Empire
is the best of the original trilogy, and I hope I’ve done it justice. I say “most
Star Wars
fans” because in fact,
Empire
is not my personal favorite. I prefer
Return of the Jedi
, thanks in large part to two things. First, it is the first
Star Wars
movie I saw in the theater (I was six). Second, when I was growing up we owned a VHS tape of
From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga
, and I loved hearing about the seven puppeteers who made Jabba move, seeing how the rancor came to life, learning how the speeder bike sequences were done, and so on.
That said, of the three movies,
Empire
has the most Shakespearean themes—betrayal, love, battles, destiny, teachers, and pupils. All of those, plus the shocking father–son relationship. In some ways,
Empire
follows an ancient story form that Shakespeare used: a classic tragedy, with Luke Skywalker as the tragic hero. He is like the Greek tragic hero Oedipus, who learns only too late that his mother is his wife and tears out his eyes after she hangs herself. Luke discovers that Darth Vader is his father just after losing a hand—close enough, right? Luke also demonstrates some serious hubris, just like Oedipus: he faces Darth Vader before being truly ready, despite the objections of the two remaining Jedi in the entire galaxy. And he pays the tragic price for it. Along the way, Han Solo is put on ice and Leia’s and Chewbacca’s hearts are broken. All the heroes will, of course, live on, and the tragedy will turn toward Darth Vader’s redemption in
Return of the Jedi
, but when you take
Empire
as a single unit, the tragedy is Luke’s, and the rebels see the worst of things by far.