Q-tips, just slathered with history!

Science, it turns out, is gross.

Hey, get this: since 2015, researchers at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. have been furiously swabbing the pages of their collection in search of DNA. It's called Project Dustbunny, and the idea is to collect and eventually analyze genetic samples from their books. The Library has the world's largest collection of Shakespeare manuscripts and folios, some of which date from his lifetime and may contain his some of his skin flakes, eye gunk or-fingers crossed-dried sneeze. Note: may. 

Look, I don't want to tell them how to science, but it strikes me as a little like swabbing the program from Hedwig and the Angry Inch on the off-chance that Neil Patrick Harris might have licked it.

Which, ok, bad example. Like, he might have.

If only there was some way to be sure
that Shakespeare touched-oh. Right.

So super-big waste of time, right? Yes. But also no. Sure, the Folger Library has a ton of stuff he could have touched, but lots of other people probably touched that stuff too. Also, he was a writer and loved to sue people so his name's all over things, plays, lawsuits that kind of thing, so I guess we can be reasonably sure he touched those. But ok, say someone at the Folger Library wants to know if some four-hundred year old eyelash wedged between acts II and III of Much Ado or something is from the man himself. I suppose Project Dustbunny could step in. 

Assuming they have a sample of Shakespeare's DNA. Luckily Shakespeare, despite what some conspiracy theorists say, was a real person and is buried in Startford-upon-Avon. Well, most of him is anyway. The point is that if we need some DNA for comparison all we really need is a shovel.

He said don't move his bones, he didn't say anything
about retrieving samples for autosomal DNA testing.
Although in fairness, not many things rhyme with autosomal.

That baby is Shakespeare's 14th great
niece. So really anything less than 39
timeless masterpieces of playwriting
 from her will be a huge let down.

Ok, of course Shakespeare handled his own documents. What does Project Dustbunny do that you can't accomplish by looking at a signature? Folger Library director Micheal Witmore says that crazy sci-fi nonsense aside, DNA is valuable new tool for archeology. With it, you can learn a lot about an era and the people who lived it through their genes. Who were they? Do they have any living descendants? Did they cover their mouths when they sneezed? The possibilities are...well, those are the only ones I can think of, but then I'm not a researcher, so I'm take it as read that Witmore's not just making this up.

Anyway I think the real question here, the thing on every reasonable person's mind here is how far away are we from cloned literary figures once again roaming the Earth? And, to take that thought to its logical conclusion, how long until they break out of whatever elaborate containment pens we build for them and run amok?

"Clever girl..."

-Game warden Robert Muldoon, 

moments before being devoured 

by the clone of Aphra Behn