About the Book:

Using A Midsummer Night's Dream as a case study, Shakespeare's Double Helix draws together questions of early science, examining the way literature and Renaissance theatre, a new technology itself, were used to illustrate and discuss new developments.

What does it mean to make life? Shakespeare's Double Helix focuses on one of the key questions for culture and science in both Shakespeare's time and our own. Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream during a period when the 'new science' had begun to unsettle the foundations of knowledge about the natural world. Through close analysis of the play and reflection on modern genetic engineering, Henry S. Turner examines developments in early modern culture as it sought to come to terms with the new forces of magic, astrology, alchemy and mechanics — fields of knowledge that preoccupied the most adventurous intellects of Shakespeare's period and that promised limitless power over nature. Shakespeare's writing sheds light on current developments in science, ethics, law, and religion in contemporary culture.

Shakespeare's Double Helix reveals the richness and peculiarity of early scientific thought in Shakespeare's time and shows how the questions he poses remain fundamental as the nature of 'life' has become one of the most pressing political, ethical, and philosophical problems for society today.

What people say:

"The conjoined pieces of Turner's book provide a fresh double reading of A Midsummer Night's dream. The book's imbricated left face/right face presentation makes every page mirror, echo or pre-empt themes from the opposite essay. In this year of Darwin's birth, the Globe Theatre's 2009 takes A Midsummer Night's dream on a national tour. Shakespeare Now! seems thus doubtly apt.." — Flux Magazine

"…both an eye-catching attempt to assert Shakespearean contemporaneity and a genuine reflection of aspects of the volume's content…has a definite novelty value in the context of Shakespearean criticism, and it is raised above the merely gimmicky here by the highly apposite image that Turner finds for his title…a very readable, clear and informative quick overview of the development of modern genetic research…there is much interesting and stimulating comment in Turner's study, and the book itself ins undeniably memorable and thought-provoking." — Oxford Journals Clippings: The Year's Work in English Studies

"The ambitious project of the Shakespeare NOW series is to bridge the gap between ‘scholarly thinking and a public audience' and ‘public audience and scholarly thinking'. Scholars are encouraged to write in a way accessible to a general readership and readers to rise to the challenge and not be afraid of new ideas and the adventure they offer. There are other bridges the series is ambitious to cross: ‘formal, political or theoretical boundaries' – history and philosophy, theory, and performance." — English, Vol. 58, 2009

"In Turner's text past, present and the ‘posthuman future' come together and Francis Bacon, Philip Sydney, and Bottom rub shoulders playfully with Richard Dawkins, Roland Barthes, and Puck." — English, Vol. 58, 2009

About the Author:

Henry S. Turner is Assistant Professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He is the author of The English Renaissance Stage: Geometry, Poetics, and the Practical Spatial Arts.