William Shakespeare’s The Jedi Doth Return

A new Imperial Death Star is under construction, and now the Rebels have to watch their meter. William Shakespeare’s The Jedi Doth Return retells Return of the Jedi as an Elizabethan play, with verse, stage directions, and dialogue shaped around Shakespearean rhythms. For a Star Wars fan who enjoys literary jokes, the pleasure is imagining familiar space-opera urgency squeezed into the formal business of iambic pentameter.

Quirk Books’ adaptation includes every scene and character from the film, along with twenty woodcut-style illustrations and Easter eggs. That makes it a full dramatic retelling rather than a handful of speeches dressed up with “thou.” The illustrations are a particularly apt touch for a book that treats lightsaber duels as material for the Elizabethan stage. The story is still Return of the Jedi, though, so buy it for the language and presentation, not for a new adventure.

It also belongs to the William Shakespeare’s Star Wars series, which makes it a clever bookshelf gift for the friend whose movie references occasionally collide with English-class memories. There’s enough commitment to the theatrical format here to reward that overlap. Leave the best verbal surprises for them to discover.