Kirsten Shepherd-Barr

This book provides a scholarly overview of various and sundry plays that are about science or scientists. Rereading my notes, I wonder if these plays aren't so much about science per se as history; a lot of them are about historical scientists or historical events. I found the discussion of medicine-based plays the most interesting, particularly Shepherd-Barr's reading of Wit, which she argues is about a body being studied the same way literary scholars study text-- thus saying something interesting about the dehumanizing effects of that kind of gaze, on body and text alike. I think the book struggles to have a focused argument about a number of plays that don't really have much in common, but I enjoyed it, and I'd like to check out several of the one plays discussed that I haven't seen.… (més)

A discussion of science depicted on stage. The author is not a scientist, so might be expected to have a different view than scientists about the accuracy. She does consult some scientists about the depiction of science (mostly physics), but doesn't really account for the wide range of opinions. It is mostly well written, but there are a few poorly edited areas, and some statements that are less than factual, such as the idea that ideas are irreversible. To be totally fair, she is here looking at what the plays themselves are saying, that what is known can never be unknown, but she applauds this as an accurate statement. It doesn't take to in depth a study of history to realize that this fact is extremely inaccurate. One of the most useful things about this book is the appendix, where she lists a great many plays about science, some of them dating back to the Renaissance. This is good source material, and would make the price of the book worth it without even the rest of the book, if you're interested in researching plays about science. Unfortunately, she does not include publication data, which makes it difficult to track down some of these works. Overall, not bad, not sublime, but a fairly competent work.… (més)