The Force Doth Awaken

   William Shakespeare’s The Force Doth Awaken was great fun to write because I was able to revisit favorite characters from the original trilogy and introduce new characters to the Shakespeare’s Star Wars series. Of course, a new cast cast of characters means new opportunities to play with language.

   I won’t give everything away, but here are some hints to what I did: Rey’s longer soliloquies reference the many fan theories of her heritage; every line Finn speaks includes letters of his stormtrooper name; each of Poe’s lines includes a phrase from the verses of a famous Poe-t; and all of BB-8′s lines can be deciphered if you know the (skip) code.

   Among the new characters are new villains. A while back, Erik Didriksen (author of Pop Sonnets) and I tossed around the idea of a collection of “Villain Villanelles,” that is, a group of poems written about or from the perspective of various well-known villains from literature and film, each conforming to the structure and rhyme scheme of a villanelle. We didn’t get very far with the project, but I resurrected the idea in William Shakespeare’s The Force Doth Awaken. Each of the three main villains in this book—Kylo Ren, General Hux, and Supreme Leader Snoke—speaks one villanelle during the story.

vaderito wrote:It's getting better:



Shakespeare ships it.

Cowgirlsamurai wrote:  

Oh my god, I can't get off of Tumblr today. This is all gold  

Mrs Ben Solo wrote:I’ve read Han’s dying soliloquy on Tumblr and Leia’s about wanting Ben to come home, both are nicely done. http://starwarsnonsense.tumblr.com/post/166012510529/yet-how-can-i-ever-be-content-when-i-have

Mrs Ben Solo wrote:Here’s an interview with the author, sounds like he’s a Kylo fan! http://www.starwars.com/news/ian-doescher-singing-rathtars-the-force-doth-awaken

Kylo Ren is a fascinating character, because he is so conflicted. Unlike Darth Vader in A New Hope or Emperor Palpatine, he’s not just entirely evil. He’s trying to be a bad guy, but can’t quite get all the way there. So you have to maintain that tension with him. It’s similar to the tension Anakin feels in Revenge of the Sith or Vader in Return of the Jedi. I’m interested to see where The Last Jedi takes Kylo Ren, and what that will mean for his future soliloquies!

   REY
   Where am I?

   KYLO
   —Thou art welcome as my guest.

   REY
   Where are the others, all my comrades true?
   What hast thou done with them? Are they herein?

   KYLO
   The comrades, ha! Thou meanest all the thieves,
   The murtherers and traitors thou call’st friends?
   Their treachery doth mock thy loyalty,
   Their gross dishonor doth negate thy honor.
   Thou shalt be wholly comforted to know
   I have no knowledge of their whereabouts.
   Yet let us speak of them no more. Instead,
   ’Tis thy mind that doth bring me interest:
   Much like an open book, I look inside
   And scan its contents like so many words.
   Thy thoughts are clear: thou’d happ’ly see me dead.

   REY
   If ’tis the story thou dost read therein,
   ’Tis but the consequence of being hunted
   By one who hides beneath a coward’s mask.

   [Kylo Ren removes his mask.

   KYLO
   No craven I: I’ll show my letters all,
   Thou shalt, belike, find them a novel treat,
   A text too heavy for thine intellect.
   Tell me all thou dost know about the droid.

   REY
   This tale I shall unfold in simple prose:
   A BB unit color’d white and orange,
   A drive made of selenium withal,
   A thermal hyperscanning vindicator—

   KYLO
   Would that thy script were sharp as thy foul tongue.
   Pray, let me tell thee of thy literature:
   The droid doth hold a navigating chart—
   We have a fragment—’twas recover’d from
   The archives of the Empire virtuous—
   Yet we require the piece that doth remain.
   Thou somehow didst convince the errant droid
   To show the map to thee, a scavenger—
   Of lowly birth and even lower class.
   Thou canst see, by this knowledge I’ve obtain’d,
   That I’d become the author of thy fate.
   I shall procure what I desire from thee
   And thy weak mind, pathetic as it is.

   [Kylo Ren uses the Force to extract thoughts from Rey’s mind.

   I see the narrative that thou dost pen:
   How sad thou art, in misery enwrapp’d—
   Thou art alone, of leaving most afeard.
   At night, thou art so desperate to sleep.
   Within thy mind an ocean, and an isle
   Plac’d in the ocean’s vast expanse—I see’t.
   Han Solo: he is in thy mind as well.
   To thee he seemeth like the father whom
   Thou ne’er didst know. Hear thou my words most true:
   The man, I’ll warrant, would but disappoint.
   Thy chronicle is tragic in the height.

   REY
   Avaunt, thou knave! Get hence—close thou my book!

   KYLO
   Yet ’tis a tome whose end I long to see,
   Although it is a simple one to scan:
   I know thou hast laid eyes upon the chart.
   Tis in thy head, and thou shalt give it me.
   Anon it shall be mine. Be not afraid,
   I feel the strange connection ’twixt us, too.
   [Aside:] Her mind is far more strong than I bethought,
   A volume of some weight, I do confess.

   REY
   Naught shall I show thee.

   KYLO
   —This remains to see.

   REY
   [aside:] I sense wherein he entereth my mind—
   Perchance I may his ruse turn back on him.
   The man hath entered th’archive of my mind;
   Mayhap I may assail his library.
   [To Kylo Ren:] Yet even as thou read’st, thou shalt be read:
   Thou art afraid thou ne’er shalt be as strong
   As he thou dost admire: the Sith, Darth Vader.
   Ha! Ope again, for I would fain read more!

   [Exit Rey as Kylo Ren makes his way to the assembly room.

   KYLO
   Nay, nay, it cannot be. It must not be!
   How did this wretched girl of simple stock
   Refocus my direction of the Force?
   Have I grown feeble, soft, or witless? Nay!
   She turn’d the trick on me with seeming ease.
   Perforce the lady is instinctively
   Strong in the Force, though she may know it not.
   This failure, still, is unacceptable,
   An errant step along my path of dark.
   I shall consult wise Supreme Leader Snoke,
   Confessing my mistake and her resolve.