Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee’s INHERIT THE WIND
Blog 23
November 7
This blog comes from my book, Theatre Is My Life! I was writing a new one, but when I read this entry from November 4 in my work, I wondered: have we progressed from the Scopes Trial in 1925 — almost a century ago? People still really aren’t thinking very much.
“You see, I haven’t really thought very much. I was always afraid of what I might think — so it seemed safer not to think at all. But now I know. A thought is like a child inside our body. It has to be born. If it dies inside you, part of you dies, too!”
Rachel in Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee’s Inherit the Wind
I have never designed Lawrence and Lee’s great play, Inherit the Wind. Every time I read it, I think: How in the world did this trial happen in Tennessee instead of Alabama? It seems like my home state is always the one caught up in battles over whether to teach scientific evolution or Biblical Creationism in our schools. And really, should we educate our children at all? Mightn’t they begin to use their minds and slip into some progressive thought patterns?
Freedom of thought and the pursuit of Truth are the great themes of this play, based on the famous Scopes (or Monkey) Trial, actually called The State of Tennessee versus John Thomas Scopes which took place in 1925. In the dramatization, Bert Cates, like Scopes, is accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, a law that made it illegal to teach Darwin’s theory in a state-funded school.
One of the great aspects of the play is the battle between the two lawyers, who somewhat resemble the famous attorneys on the actual case, Clarence Darrow (counsel for the defense) and William Jennings Bryant (counsel for the prosecution). In the stage version, prosecutor Matthew Harrison Brady (a three-time losing presidential candidate) is an arrogant, condescending, self-proclaimed prophet of God, who wants to impose what he believes religion to be on the rest of the world.
The Baltimore Herald newspaper steps in to hire an equally prominent attorney, recognized for his accomplished defense strategies, Henry Drummond to defend Cates. Serving as the playwrights’ voices throughout, Drummond tirelessly upholds a human’s right to think, and battles censorship of learning. At one point, Brady says that all Drummond wants is to destroy “...everybody's belief in the Bible, and in God.” To this accusation, Drummond retorts, “You know that's not true. I'm trying to stop you bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States.”
Rachel, whose quote started this whole meditation today, is the daughter of the fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist preacher in town, Rev. Jeremiah Brown. A second-grade teacher herself, she risks the ire of her father by falling in love with Cates. In talking to Cates and Drummond near the end of the play, she says how she has come to understand that whether ideas are good or bad, they have to be uncovered. And people should be able to listen to all opinions, think about them, and perhaps change their minds about issues.
Through Rachel, Lawrence and Lee are able to illustrate how education can open humans to new thoughts. Fearful people in control, like the preacher Brown and the political figure Brady, would rather restrain the masses through ignorance, thinking that otherwise, their positions — and even all of society — will be threatened.
I was just reading yesterday about English priest and influential theologian Richard Hooker, the “saint” for November 4. From his masterpiece work Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, published in 1594, came the Episcopal Church’s idea that philosophy and personal theology should be based not only on the scriptures and tradition, but also upon reason and first-hand experience. Today, there are a number of really intelligent scientific people who talk about Consciousness as the Mastermind behind the Big Bang and a number of really insightful theologians who see evolution as part of the Divine’s generation of creation.