Shakespeare and Ecocritical Theory by Gabriel Egan, and: Shakespeare and Ecology by Randall Martin, and: Shakespeare and the Natural World by Tom MacFaul (review)

The three books under consideration cohere around the study of Shakespeare and nature. They are each written by an advanced Shakespeare scholar and published by a reputable press. Each also treats in a dedicated chapter the subject of nonhuman animals. Here, however, any large points of resemblance end. By methodology and content, these books differ as widely as any on the same general topic and published in the same year can. Not all of them, for example, suit the definition of "ecocriticism" to which Gabriel Egan adheres: "It does not encompass all critical writing about the natural world, since we must exclude criticism that is avowedly non-presentist" (28 passim). As he explains, ecocriticism "ought, then, to be an exciting synthesis of the latest thinking about science and culture, our place in the world, and how the greatest literary artists have reflected upon and represented these things" (38), to the extent that these things can help us fulfill the "obligation upon humankind to use its rare if not unique ability to predict the future and prevent the coming, and foreseeable, environmental disaster" (39). In his introduction, Egan offers a Shakespearean analogue for disaster in the use of the word "undone to mean the state of having suffered a calamity that cannot be fixed" (8) and analyzes Shakespeare's staging of reflection on such change by examination of a host of characters who see it coming—the question being whether radical change can be avoided. Such staging, Egan suggests, speaks to our ecological moment and the reason for a presentist imperative by which we might find Shakespeare's plays able to help us think about—and maybe even do—things differently. In the first chapter of his book, Egan offers a review of prior, book-length ecocritical studies of Shakespeare, tersely calling out ones that "soun[d] promisingly like ecocriticism [but] tur[n] out to be something else" (27). In the chapters that follow, he considers familiar binaries: nature and nurture; human and nonhuman animals; and individuals and crowds. When focusing on animals in chapter 3, for example, Egan opens with a discussion of the DNA selection processes common to human and nonhuman animals, concluding that "Shakespeare's prime interest in humans' attitudes towards animals is the light that they shed on our sense of what it is to be human" (116) but that "there remains an unalterable hard reality to the existence of animals, howsoever we try to co-opt their characteristics to our ideological ends" (119). In his last chapter on "Crowds and Social Networks in Shakespeare," Egan considers the microbiome in concert with the insect colony—groups functioning as assemblages "without central control" (123); these nonhuman crowds align, he suggests, with pre-Cartesian thinking about human crowds as reflected in Shakespeare's plays, implying that examination of such groups might teach us how to rethink our current interactions as humans. Egan attends to the letter (associated with a network) versus the book (associated with individuals) in Shakespeare and extends this thinking into the volume's conclusion, taking up the World Wide Web, the cloud, and the weather before offering a final word from Shakespeare on our future, on "what is going to become an increasingly common experience for many of Earth's inhabitants: 'A tempestuous noise of Thunder and Lightning heard'" (161). Meeting the objectives for the series of which it is a part and amply demonstrating its presentist methodology, this volume is an ardent speaker for ecocriticism as Egan has defined it. Unfortunately, one result is also the sacrifice of the...