O, vile! These tauntauns have an awful stench outside, But nothing did I know of wretchedness, Disgusting rot, and sick’ning filth till this New smell hath made attack upon my nose.

Thou man of scruffy looks, thou who heard’st nerfs, Thou fool-born wimpled roughhewn waste waste of flesh!

“LEIA O, I do love thee wholly, Han. HAN – I know.”

Try thou not. But do thou or do thou not, For there is no.

“LUKE – But O, what now? What light through yonder flashing sensor breaks? HAN It marks the loss of yon deflector shield.”

“Fie! One point twenty-one in gigawatts! Foh! Gigawatts of one point twenty-one! Great Scott! What have I done? How can it be?”

Our cause is for the truth, for righteousness, For anyone who e’er oppression knew. ‘Tis not rebellion for the sake of one, ‘Tis not a cause to serve a priv’leg’d few – This moment shall resound in history For ev’ry person who would freedom know! So Biggs, stand with me now, and be my aide, And Wedge, fly at my side to lead the charge – We three, we happy three, we band of brothers, Shall fly unto the trench with throttles full!

O, let it go – fear not, but be at ease: The heat ne’er bother’d R2 anyway.

“LEIA Ah! Gov’nor Tarkin, scurvy knave art thou.”

“DAMIAN She doth not even go here!”

“ACKBAR – O knavery Most vile, O trick of Empire’s basest wit. A snare, a ruse, a ploy: and we the fools. What great deception hath been plied today – O rebels, do you hear? Fie, ’tis a trap!”

Twas on October third he ask’d the date – By calendar, not for a date, I mean. ‘Twas two weeks later when we spake again.

R2-D2, where art thou?

“LEIA Thou truly art in jest. Art thou not small Of stature, if thou art a stormtrooper? Does Empire shrink for want of taller troops? The Empire’s evil ways, I’ll grant, are grand, But must its soldiers want for fear of height?”

“At early morn, with eager wills they rise, A shar’d endeavor binding them anew. The fast landspeeder o’er the desert flies – They go to find the errant droid R2.”

REGINA Come hither, folly-fallen Cady, come! We shall anon unto the shopping mall.

There are no rules within this house of mine – I am no mother regular, forsooth! A cool mom I, ’tis so, Regina, yea?

When thou dost put thy mind unto the task, Thou mayst accomplish nearly anything.

“LEIA – O help Me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, help. Thou art Mine only hope. LUKE – I wonder who she is. Whoever she may be, whatever is Her cause, I shall unto her pleas respond. Not e’en were she my sister could I know A duty of more weight than I feel now. It seemeth she some dreadful trouble hath – Mayhap I should replay the message whole.”

“KAREN On Wednesdays, we array ourselves in pink!”

REGINA – Nay, Gretchen, “fetch” shall never catch, Stop hosting an event no one attends. It shall not hap – the zeitgeist thou art not. The fad is bad; I’m mad and thou art sad.

In time so long ago begins our play, In star-crossed galaxy far, far away.

I watched the Star Wars trilogy with some good friends of mine for the first time in a few years, I read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies-one of those first mashup books-and then I went to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with my family.

“I do a lot of writing in my capacity as the creative director for a marketing agency. These days, though, I’m trying to write a little bit most evenings just to keep the creative juices flowing.”

Trying to write while I’m distracted definitely doesn’t work for me. I’m also a compulsive saver of my files, so every writing session ends with me emailing what I’ve written to myself, just in case.

My favorite play is Hamlet. It was my first love when it comes to Shakespeare, and I’ve read it and seen it performed more than just about every other Shakespeare play. I’ve had the “To be or not to be” monologue memorized since I was 15, and it’s just really close to my heart.

If flurries be the food of quests, snow on.

In many ways, ‘William Shakespeare’s Star Wars’ is modeled on Shakespeare’s Henry V, which relied on a chorus to explain in words the battles of Harfleur and Agincourt that could never be captured on the Elizabethan stage.

In writing ‘William Shakespeare’s Star Wars,’ I had the freedom to go beyond the original script and add asides, soliloquys and even new scenes. The main characters all get a soliloquy or two – or in Luke’s case, several.

Writing ‘William Shakespeare’s Star Wars’ was a fun exercise in mixing just the right amount of the Bard with just the right amount of everyone’s favorite galaxy far, far away.

People ask me whether I see ‘Star Wars’ as a comedy or a tragedy, but it’s really neither – it’s partly a history, like ‘Henry V,’ and partly a fantasy, like ‘The Tempest.’

The Ewoks were definitely a challenge of writing ‘The Jedi Doth Return.’ After having done so many things with characters who don’t speak English, how was I going to make them stand out? Jedi is also rich with emotional material, particularly Darth Vader’s transformation from the dark side back to the good.

I grew up with the ‘Star Wars’ movies since before I have many memories. We had them on VHS back in the day, so they were part of the fabric of growing up in my family.

I always wanted Han Solo’s confidence and swagger. My personality is way more C-3PO, but Han was always who I wanted to be.

I’ve spent so much time with iambic pentameter that I can now recognize it when I hear it in conversation or a movie – it’s like a weird, useless superpower.

I had great English teachers in high school who first piqued my interest in Shakespeare. Each year, we read a different play – ‘Othello,’ ‘Julius Caesar,’ ‘Macbeth,’ ‘Hamlet’ – and I was the nerd in class who would memorize soliloquies just for the fun of it.

The hardest part of writing ‘William Shakespeare’s Star Wars’ was probably the sheer amount of iambic pentameter and tiptoeing around certain scenes I knew would be hot-button issues for ‘Star Wars’ fans.

Visually speaking, nothing calls Shakespeare to mind like Hamlet holding Yorick’s skull.