“Tickle us, do we not laugh

prick us, do we not bleed

and wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

The juxtaposition of Starfleet’s finest captain, James T Kirk, the paramount of human exploration and accomplishment in space, with the arch enemy Chang (with Chang doing the taunting muttering the human author Shakespeare under his breath) is simply brilliantly executed. Chang:

“Our revels now are ended, Kirk”

as he fires a volley of torpedos at the Enterprise, inflicting significant damage. Reveling in this momentary victory, he bursts out:

“Cry ‘havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war”

Of course, as in all Star Trek storylines, the Enterprise must have the last, and final, blow. Chang, in the moments before his destruction, concedes victory:

“To be,

or

not to be”

There are other appearances of Shakespeare throughout the TV series and films. This site: Shakespeare and Star Trek does a good job of listing most of the references. But it isn’t until we get to the Star Trek: The Next Generation series that we learn the new captain of the Enterprise, Jean Luc Picard, has a particular fondness for the ancient literary genius. A rather poignant relationship develops between Capt. Picard and his second officer, an android named Data. In the episode “The Most Toys”, we see a red, leather-bound book that at first glance is the size of a Bible, being carefully lifted out of a drawer after it is presumed that Data has died. The book had been a gift from Picard, and later in the episode we see Picard reading from it.

“He was a man, take him for all in all: I shall not look upon his like again.”

Even the greatest resource for Star Trek trivia, Memory Alpha could not precisely identify the edition of Shakespeare’s collected works represented by the mysterious leather-bound book. I decided to endeavour to find this book and acquire it used, if I could.

Where did I look first? Why Amazon.com of course. Also, Ebay and Barnes and Noble booksellers. The first thing I discovered is that there are a lot of publishers who have printed a collection of William Shakespeare. Some contain just his sonnets, others just the plays. There are quite a few that boast being the “complete” works of Wm Shakespeare. They were available in paperback and hard cover, even library versions. I did find two leather bindings, but they were essentially hard cover with padded leather over it.

I then took my search to some of the used booksellers that are lesser known, but useful if one is a college student looking for a bargain textbook – like abebooks.com and alibris.com. Still no results bore any resemblance to the mystery book in the show.

Then I found it in a shop that is located in Ireland. http://www.rareandrecent.com. Oh, you won’t find it there now. I bought it with my birthday money. Pictures will be provided when it arrives in a few weeks. *so excited*