With the recent turn to science studies and interdisciplinary research
in Shakespearean scholarship, Shakespeare and Science: A Dictionary,
provides a pedagogical resource for students and scholars. In charting
Shakespeare's engagement with natural philosophical discourse, this
edition shapes the future of Shakespearean scholarship and pedagogy
significantly, appealing to students entering the field and current
scholars in interdisciplinary research on the topic alongside the
non-professional reader seeking to understand Shakespeare's language and
early modern scientific practices.
Shakespeare's works respond to early modern culture's rapidly burgeoning
interest in how new astronomical theories, understandings of motion and
change, and the cataloging of objects, vegetation, and animals in the
natural world could provide new knowledge. To cite a famous example,
Hamlet's letter to Ophelia plays with the differences between the
Ptolemaic and Copernican notions of the earth's movement: "Doubt that
the sun doth move" may either be, in the Ptolemaic view, an earnest plea
or, in the Copernican system, a purposeful equivocation. The Dictionary
contextualizes such moments and scientific terms that Shakespeare
employs, creatively and critically, throughout his poetry and drama. The
focus is on Shakespeare's multiform uses of language, rendering
accessible to students of Shakespeare such terms as "firmament,"
"planetary influence," and "retrograde."
