Shakespeare

  • Get Thee Back to the Future

    Whether it’s my podcast-heavy diet or baby-induced reduction in mental bandwidth for extended concentration, I haven’t been doing much book-readin’ lately. Which is OK, as not reading is fine too.

    That doesn’t stop me from trying. While browsing the new releases at a neighboring library I spotted Ian Doescher’s Get Thee Back to the Future, a complete retelling of Back to the Future in Shakespearean verse.

    It’s an incredible literary feat. What plays in the movie as this…

    DOC: Are those my clocks I hear?
    MARTY: Yeah, it’s 8:00.
    DOC: They’re late. My experiment worked. They’re all exactly 25 minutes slow!
    MARTY: Wait a minute. Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me that it’s 8:25?
    DOC: Precisely.
    MARTY: Damn. I’m late for school!

    …Doescher turns into this:

    MARTY: Alas, what ringing! Why hath this commenc’d,
    The tintinnabulations of the bells?

    DOC: Peace! Count the clock.

    MARTY: —The clock hath stricken eight.

    DOC: A-ha! Then mine experiment hath work’d!
    They run as slowly as a tortoise gait,
    Behind by minutes counting twenty-five!

    MARTY: What shocking words are these thou speak’st to me?
    What presage of mine own delay’d arrival?
    What prelude to a future punishment?
    What fable of a race against the clock?
    Is’t true, what thou dost calmly say to me?
    The time is verily eight twenty-five?

    DOC: Precisely—science is not lost on thee!

    MARTY: O, fie upon it! I must play the hare,
    And skip most jauntily upon my path,
    For I am caught up late for school—again.

    DOC: Godspeed, then Marty, on thy merry way!

    And so on for the entire film. It’s essentially a funny gimmick that Doescher takes to the extreme. Such an endeavor requires an intimate knowledge of and skill with Shakespearean style, which consists of a lot more than just adding the occasional “hath” and “thou”.

    Doescher has written several other Shakespearean retellings like Much Ado About Mean Girls and Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope. Here’s hoping for many more.