A stellar example of interdisciplinary research... this study shines in its effortless balancing of two disciplines and its vivacity of style.
A pleasure to read. Shepherd-Barr ambitiously and fluently covers a remarkable quantity and variety of authors and the text takes it place as an important milestone in this young sub-field within literature and science.
Shepherd-Barr's account of Ibsen's engagement with Darwinism should become a locus classicus.
Impressive... A valuable contribution to the field of theatre and science.
Michael Billington:
Quite outstanding... It relates the issues that have dominated the drama of the last 150 years—nature, heredity, sexuality, the environment—to the evolutionary debate... Destined to be one of those books that will transcend its immediate purpose.
Jean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania:
With remarkable insight and erudition, Kirsten Shepherd-Barr traces a line of descent going from Darwin's theories to plays by Ibsen, Strindberg, Shaw, O'Neill, Wilder, Brecht, Beckett, Albee, and Stoppard, including numerous lesser-known playwrights. This astoundingly original study of the modern theater displays the riches contained in post-Darwinian debates. As Winnie says in Happy Days, 'natural laws... it all depends upon the creature you happen to be.' Such laws, laws we never voted for or understood fully, give rise to concepts like evolution, selection, propagation, extinction, mutation, variation, progression, regression, regeneration, repopulation, recapitulation, and filiation, all of which come alive magnificently on the stage.
Jane Goodall, author of Performance and Evolution in the Age of Darwin :
Shepherd-Barr is one of very few scholars equipped to do authoritative cultural history in this area. She offers new and original perspectives, even on such figures as Ibsen, Shaw, and Beckett, each of whom has spawned a field of critical literature in his own right. This is a distinctive and significant contribution and a work of high-quality intellectual engagement. The scholarship is substantial, and the writing is so lucid and well paced that the book is a pleasure to read.
Martin Puchner, Harvard University:
Shepherd-Barr is the perfect person to write a book on theater and evolution, a long-overdue topic, given the lively debate that has sprung up around the novel and evolution. Her chapters on Ibsen and Shaw are masterful, easily the best writing on these two important playwrights in recent years.
Christopher Collins, author of Paleopoetics: The Evolution of the Preliterate Imagination:
Shepherd-Barr's knowledge of the theater and of theater history is striking. This is manifestly original, deep scholarship.
