Overview

As early as the 1840s, playwrights incorporated evolutionary theory into their work, reacting to a scientific advancement that changed the world. This book follows evolutionary theory in mainstream European and American drama and other theatrical entertainments, including circus, pantomime, and the missing link show. It writes female playwrights into the theatrical record, as they explored biological determinism, gender essentialism, the maternal instinct, and the cult of motherhood in their work.

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9781336033092

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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.--Jean-Michel Rabat?, University of Pennsylvania

Author Information

Kirsten E. Shepherd-Barr is on the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford and is a fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford. She has also taught at the University of Birmingham, North Carolina State University, and the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Ibsen and Early Modernist Theatre, 1890-1900, and her book Science on Stage: From Doctor Faustus to Copenhagen helped establish the field of theatre and science. She has published widely in journals, including Theatre Research International, Modernist Cultures, Nineteenth Century Theatre, Ibsen Studies, Nature, Women: A Cultural Review, American Scientist, and Interdisciplinary Science Reviews.

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