Life of Galileo
| Life of Galileo | |
|---|---|
 1971 Berliner Ensemble production | |
| Written by | Bertolt Brecht |
| Characters | Galileo, Andrea Sarti, Mrs Sarti, Ludovico Marsili, Virginia, Sagredo, Federzoni, Mr Priuli, Cosimo de Medici, Father Christopher Clavius, Cardinal Barberini, Fillipo Mucius, Mr Gaffone, Vanni, Senator, 1st Monk, Puppeteer, Rector |
| Date premiered | 1943 |
| Original language | German |
| Subject | Social responsibility of scientists |
| Genre | Historical drama |
| Setting | Renaissance Italy |
Life of Galileo (German: Leben des Galilei), also known as Galileo, is a play by the twentieth-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht. The first version of the play was written between 1937 and 1939; the second (or 'American') version was written between 1945–1947, in collaboration with Charles Laughton. The play received its first theatrical production at the Zurich Schauspielhaus, opening on 9 September 1943. This production was directed by Leonard Steckel, with set-design by Teo Otto. The cast included Steckel himself (as Galileo), Karl Paryla and Wolfgang Langhoff.
The second version opened at the Coronet Theatre in Los Angeles on 30 July 1947. This was directed by Joseph Losey and Brecht, with set-design by Robert Davison. Laughton played Galileo, with Hugo Haas as Barberini and Frances Heflin as Virginia. This production opened at the Maxine Elliott's Theatre in New York on 7 December of the same year. A third production, by the Berliner Ensemble with Ernst Busch in the title role, opened in January 1957 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and was directed by Erich Engel, with set-design by Caspar Neher.[1] The play was first published in 1940.[citation needed]
A screen adaptation of the play, directed by Joseph Losey for American Film Theatre, was produced in 1975 under the title Galileo with Topol in the title role.
The plot of the play concerns the latter period of the life of Galileo Galilei, the great Italian Baroque natural philosopher, who was persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church for the promulgation of his scientific discoveries; for details, see Galileo affair. The play embraces such themes as the conflict between dogmatism and scientific evidence, as well as interrogating the values of constancy in the face of oppression.
Versions of the play
After emigrating to the United States from Hitler's Germany (with stopovers in various other countries in between, among them the USSR), Brecht translated and re-worked the first version of his play in collaboration with the actor Charles Laughton. The result of their efforts was the second 'American version' of the play, entitled simply Galileo, which to this day remains the most widely-staged version in the English-speaking world.[citation needed] The same version formed the basis for Losey's 1975 film adaptation as part of the American Film Theatre series.
In September 1947, Brecht was subpoenaed in the US by the House Un-American Activities Committee for alleged communist connections. He testified before HUAC on 30 October 1947, and flew to Europe on 31 October. He chose to return to East Germany and continued to work on the play, now once again in the German language. He felt that the optimistic portrait of the scientific project present in the first two versions required revision in a post-Hiroshima world, where science's irrational and harmful potential had become far more apparent.[citation needed] The final German version premiered at Cologne in April 1955.[citation needed]
Matej Danter offers a readily-accessible and detailed comparison of the early, the American, and the final German versions.[2]
Synopsis
Galileo is short of money. A prospective student tells Galileo about a novel invention, the telescope ("a queer tube thing"), being sold in Amsterdam. Galileo replicates it, but then sells it to the Venetian Republic as his own creation.
Galileo uses the telescope to substantiate Copernicus' heliocentric model of our solar system, which is highly incompatible with both popular belief and church doctrine, and which he publishes in vernacular Italian, rather than traditional scientific Latin, so that it is accessible by the common people. His daughter's marriage to a well-off young man (with whom she is genuinely in love) fails because of Galileo's reluctance to distance himself from his unorthodox teachings.
Galileo is brought to the Vatican for interrogation. Upon being threatened with torture, he recants his teachings. His students are shocked by his surrender in the face of pressure from the church authorities.
Galileo, old and broken, living under house arrest, is visited by one of his former pupils, Andrea. Galileo gives him a book (Two New Sciences) containing all his scientific discoveries, asking him to smuggle it out of Italy for dissemination abroad. Andrea now believes Galileo's actions were heroic and that he just recanted to fool the ecclesiastical authorities. However, Galileo insists his actions had nothing to do with heroism but were merely the result of self-interest.
Historical background
The play stays generally faithful to Galileo's science and timeline thereof, but takes significant liberties with his personal life. Galileo did in fact use a telescope, observe the moons of Jupiter, advocate for the heliocentric model, observe sun spots, investigate buoyancy, and write on physics, and did visit the Vatican twice to defend his work, the second time being made to recant his views, and being confined to house arrest thereafter.
One significant liberty that is taken is the treatment of Galileo's daughter Virginia Gamba (Sister Maria Celeste), who, rather than becoming engaged, was considered unmarriageable by her father and confined to a convent from the age of thirteen (the bulk of the play), and, further, died of dysentery shortly after her father's recantation. However, Galileo was close with Virginia, and they corresponded extensively.
Allusions
There are a number of allusions to Galileo's science and to Marxism which are not further elaborated in the play; some of these are glossed below.
The discussion of price versus value was a major point of debate in 19th economics, under the terms "value in use" (value) versus "value in exchange" (price). Within Marxian economics this is discussed under the labor theory of value.
More subtly, Marx is sometimes interpreted as advocating technological determinism (technological progress determines social change), which is reflected in the telescope (a technological change) being the root of the scientific progress and hence social unrest.
The mention of tides refers to Galileo's theory that the motion of the earth caused the tides, which would give the desired physical proof of the earth's movement, and which is discussed in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, whose working title was Dialogue on the Tides. In the event this theory was a failure - Kepler's suggestion that the moon's gravity caused the tides instead being correct.
The bent wooded rail in scene 13 and the discussion that the quickest distance between two points need not be a straight line (the path of fastest descent of a rolling ball being a curve, not a straight line (which is the shortest path)) alludes to Galileo's investigation of the brachistochrone (in the context of the quickest descent from a point to a wall), which he incorrectly believed to be given by a quarter circle. Instead, the brachistochrone is a half cycloid, which was only proved much later with the development of calculus.
Works cited
- Brecht, Bertolt. 1952. Galileo. Trans. Charles Laughton. Ed. Eric Bentley. Works of Bertolt Brecht Ser. New York: Grove Press, 1966. ISBN 0802130593. p. 43–129.
- Brecht, Bertolt. 1955. Life of Galileo. In Collected Plays:Five. Trans. John Willett. Ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim. Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry and Prose Ser. London: Methuen, 1980. ISBN 0413699706. p. 1–105.
- Danter, Matej. 2001. "History of changes of Brecht's Galileo". Online: New Mexico State University. (accessed 18 March 2006)
- Willett, John. 1959. The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht: A Study from Eight Aspects. London: Methuen. ISBN 041334360X.
- British Royal National Theatre's web page about its production of Galileo
