If Shakespeare Wrote "Mean Girls"

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.7 • 837 Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2019

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What would it be like if Shakespeare had written Mean Girls? How about Back to the Future: "Be ready for audacious episodes. Whither we go we have no need of roads." In 2013, Quirk Books began releasing a series of books by Ian Doescher that reimagined the Star Wars films as if they had been written by Shakespeare, featuring iambic pentameter and all the other literary devices we associate with the Bard. Doescher has run out of Star Wars films for now, so he’s left the “galaxy far, far away” and turned his attention to two different films. Doescher’s newest books are William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Mean Girls and William Shakespeare’s Get Thee Back to the Future. We talk to Doescher about how he chooses films to adapt, his writing process, and how his kids react when he points out naturally-occurring iambic pentameter (they aren’t impressed). Ian Doescher is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev. From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published July 23, 2019. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This episode, “What Imitation You Can Borrow,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano and Andrew Bates at Voice Tracks West in Studio City, California and from Ryan Mock, Kelsey Woods and Laurilee Stapleton at Digital One Studios in Portland, Oregon.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Marty McFly drives off in the DeLorean and Doc Brown exclaims.
0:04.7	A crash of drums, a flash of light, my time machine flies out of sight.
0:09.1	It worked. It works.
0:10.9	All that remaineth are two fiery streaks, and of triumph, all creation speaks.
0:17.2	And you know one thing.
0:19.5	The king of pop Shakespeare is writing again.
0:27.5	From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.
0:35.8	I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folgerscher's director. In 2013, Quirk
0:40.2	books began releasing a quixotic but remarkably clever series written by a marketing executive
0:46.3	from Portland, Oregon. The books reimagined the Star Wars films as if they had been written
0:52.0	by William Shakespeare, not only an iambic pentameter,
0:56.5	but featuring all the other literary devices we associate with Shakespeare's work.
1:01.8	The writer was Ian Desher.
1:04.7	But for all its vastness, Star Wars is a finite universe.
1:10.1	And so Ian has had to turn from a galaxy far, far away, to a world much closer to home.
1:16.6	In 2019, he published the first two books in a series called Pop Shakespeare,
1:22.6	that transforms the scripts of other classic movies into Shakespearean-style drama.
1:28.9	Those two books are titled,
1:31.0	William Shakespeare's Get The Back to the Future,
1:34.2	and William Shakespeare's Much Adieu About Mean Girls.
1:38.2	We talked with Ian in 2015,
1:40.1	and we've invited him back to talk about his process
	...

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