Inherit the Wind by Robert E. Lee
**Overview of "Inherit the Wind" by Robert E. Lee and Jerome Lawrence**
"Inherit the Wind" is a play inspired by the real-life Scopes Trial of 1925, in which a teacher named John Thomas Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution in a Tennessee classroom. The narrative centers on the fictional trial of Bertram Cates, a biology teacher accused of violating local laws against the teaching of evolution. The play contrasts the views of two main characters: the prosecution, represented by the prominent politician Matthew Harrison Brady, and the defense attorney Henry Drummond, who champions intellectual freedom and scientific inquiry. Set in the small town of Hillsboro, the trial becomes a spectacle that draws national attention, highlighting tensions between religious dogma and scientific thought.
The dramatic structure employs a chorus of townspeople that reflects the community's collective mindset, often showcasing their fervent support for Brady and their disdain for Drummond. As the courtroom drama unfolds, themes of anti-intellectualism, mass hysteria, and the struggle for individual rights emerge, with the play drawing parallels to the political climate of the late 1940s and early 1950s, particularly the McCarthy hearings. "Inherit the Wind" serves as a critique of societal pressures that stifle dissent and critical thought, making it relevant across generations. The play has been translated into multiple languages and remains a significant work in American theater, demonstrating the enduring conflict between faith and reason.
Inherit the Wind by Robert E. Lee
First published: 1955
First produced: 1955, at the Theatre ’55, Dallas, Texas
Type of plot: Social realism; history
Time of work: The 1920’s
Locale: Hillsboro, a small town in the American Bible Belt
Principal Characters:
Matthew Harrison Brady , a noted prosecuting attorneyHenry Drummond , a noted defense attorneyTom Davenport , the district attorney for HillsboroE. K. Hornbeck , a cynical BaltimoreHerald newspaper reporterBertram Cates , a biology teacher accused of teaching evolutionRachel Brown , Cates’s fiancé, a twenty-two-year-old schoolteacherThe Reverend Jeremiah Brown , Rachel’s father, a minister
The Play
Based on the real-life trial of John Thomas Scopes, convicted in 1925 of teaching the theory of evolution in his classroom in a Dayton, Tennessee, high school, Inherit the Wind owes much to the transcripts of the trial, although the authors fictionalize their material and do not intend their play to depict accurately the “Monkey Trial,” as this historical proceeding was called.
The play opens outside the Hillsboro courthouse, where the trial of Bertram Cates, the accused biology teacher, will be held. The prosecutor, Matthew Harrison Brady, is a renowned jurist who twice ran for the presidency of the United States. Henry Drummond is the firebrand defense attorney championing an unpopular cause.
The opening scene is circuslike. The ultraconservative townspeople, most Bible-thumping Christians, await Matthew Brady’s arrival. The eyes of the nation are on this small, Bible Belt town, which stands to rake in considerable revenue as the town fills for the ignominious trial. One localite hawks Bibles to the faithful, one sells lemonade, and another vends palm fans to the sweltering hordes. A hotdog vendor’s business is brisk, and an organ grinder with a chained monkey amuses the crowd. People bear signs vowing that they are not descended from monkeys, that Satan must be destroyed, that Charles Darwin must go, and that Bertram Cates must be punished. Strains of “Gimme That Old Time Religion” fill the humid air.
E. K. Hornbeck, the reporter from Baltimore’s Herald covering the trial, wanders among the crowd, sharp and cynical. In the midst of all the hoopla, Brady arrives to applause and cheering. Hillsboro’s mayor makes him an honorary colonel in the state militia. Ever the politician, Brady glad-hands everyone in sight.
The agnostic Henry Drummond (Clarence Darrow in the actual case) is Cates’s defense attorney. The townsfolk are obviously in Brady’s corner in this contest. Drummond is considered the outsider who threatens Hillsboro’s value system and will use whatever legal tricks he can to derail the religious fervor of sanctimonious Hillsboro.
Scene 2 occurs in the sweltering courtroom, where a jury is being selected. Brady questions the faith of potential jurors. Drummond seeks to find out whether potential jurors have ever read Charles Darwin or understand anything about On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859).
In one amusing scene, Drummond objects to Brady’s being referred to as “Colonel Brady,” complaining that the title prejudices the case. In response, Drummond is made a “temporary honorary colonel” in the state militia. In this scene, the opposing lines are sharply drawn: Brady represents the conscience of a community that firmly believes in the literal truth of scripture, while Drummond supports the scientific stand.
Brady and Drummond are old friends. Drummond campaigned for Brady in his presidential runs. They are now at each other’s throats. The heated bickering in which they engage is lively and revealing, highlighting the roots from which each comes. Act 1 ends with an evening prayer meeting outside the courthouse. Brady accuses Drummond of moving away from him over the years, but Drummond reminds him that motion is relative.
The second act takes place wholly inside the courtroom, with scene 1 occurring in the midst of the trial and including the anguished testimony for the prosecution of Rachel Brown, the Reverend Jeremiah Brown’s daughter and Bertram Cates’s fiancé. In this scene, Drummond attempts to call six scientists whom he has brought to Hillsboro as defense witnesses to testify about the status of Darwin’s theories among scientists. The judge forbids such testimony, so, to everyone’s astonishment, the only witness the defense calls is Matthew Brady, labeled an expert on the Bible.
In his withering examination of Brady, Drummond completely shatters Brady’s attempts to prove literal interpretations of the Bible. The dialogue is rollicking, especially when Brady cites seventeenth century Irish theologian Bishop Ussher’s “proof” that the Lord began to create the earth on October 23, 4004 b.c.e., at nine o’clock in the morning. Drummond asks whether this was eastern standard time or mountain standard time. Brady is undone by the questioning, but it does not matter because his self-righteousness is strongly supported by the townspeople. In the play’s final scene, Bertram Cates is convicted and fined one hundred dollars, which Drummond, who plans an appeal to the state Supreme Court, announces Cates will not pay.
As the courtroom is cleared, Matthew Brady seeks to make a final statement, which he wants entered into the record but which the judge rules as inadmissible. As he reads his impassioned statement, he collapses and dies. The play ends with Cates and Rachel leaving town with Drummond, who reflects on life without Matthew Brady.
Dramatic Devices
The most salient dramatic device used in Inherit the Wind is the chorus. The townspeople, who attack both Cates and Drummond, serve as a chorus and convey more than any other device in the play. The chorus represents the sentiments and emotions of the citizenry of Hillsboro, as appalling as these sentiments and emotions may seem to many who see or read the play.
The singing of “Gimme That Old Time Religion” recurs as a leitmotif and serves as a rallying point for the townsfolk. The stifling atmosphere of the sweltering July courtroom hangs heavily over the entire production and is emphasized by the lazy ceiling fans that move the humid air only slightly, by the motion of the palm fans that people in the courtroom agitate, and by the loose collars and sweat-stained shirts of the participants. The oppressiveness of the psychological atmosphere is underscored by the heat that pervades almost every scene in the play.
The unities of time and place are well maintained throughout the production, adding vigor to the drama and intensifying the focus of the action. The dark colors of the woodwork in the courtroom serve to heighten the oppressive feeling the audience gleans from realizing that when the trial was conducted, courtroom temperatures neared one hundred degrees Fahrenheit.
Critical Context
More than anything else, Inherit the Wind was an attack on the anti-intellectualism of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, when hysteria about the communist threat was reaching hysterical proportions. It was upon this hysteria that Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy grounded his notorious hearings after concluding, quite without proof, that the United States Department of State was peppered with communists and that the communist influence in the media was threatening the very fabric of American society.
Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, liberals appalled at what was happening as the McCarthy hearings chipped away at the constitutional rights of many notable Americans, particularly playwrights and others in the arts, wrote the play. They distanced its issues by a whole generation from that which was going on in the country as McCarthyism spread insidiously into all walks of American life. They specifically refused to assign a date to the play’s action, saying that it might be today, yesterday, or sometime in the future.
A version of Inherit the Wind existed as early as 1951, well before the McCarthy hearings began, but Lawrence and Lee sensed an erosion of individual liberties and wrote their play in part to illustrate how mass hysteria among those who do not understand the intellectual underpinnings of society can lead to disastrous outcomes. By the time the play was first presented in 1955, the McCarthy hearings were well under way, and the United States was divided by them. Many naïve Americans were misled just as the townsfolk in Inherit the Wind had been.
The play, translated into more than one dozen foreign languages, has been performed worldwide. In 1957, when it ended its Broadway run, it was the longest-running drama based on a historical event. The much-heralded 1960 film version, written by Nathan E. Douglas and Harold Jacob Smith and directed by Stanley Kramer, is reasonably faithful to the original script.
Inherit the Wind was consistent with other notable plays produced during this period. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (pr., pb. 1949) explored the futility of existence for a thwarted man nearing the end of his career as a shoe salesman. In The Crucible (pr., pb. 1953), which focused on the Salem witch trials and was spawned by the same sort of hysteria that caused Bertram Cates to be arrested and tried in Inherit the Wind, Miller again addressed the question of irrationality. Both plays are aimed at demonstrating that history indeed repeats itself, usually to the detriment of society. William Inge’s Picnic (pr., pb. 1953) examined the prejudices and crippling fears of common people living in small-town America, building on the kind of social criticism that Tennessee Williams presented in The Glass Menagerie (pr. 1944, pb. 1945). The climate for such social criticism was ripe for a play like Inherit the Wind when it was finally produced in 1955.
Sources for Further Study
Corey, Michael Anthony. Back to Darwin: The Scientific Case for Deistic Evolution. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994.
Darrow, Clarence. The Story of My Life. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965.
De Camp, L. Sprague. The Great Monkey Trial. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968.
Iannone, Carol. “The Truth About Inherit the Wind.” First Things 70 (February, 1997): 28-33.
Menton, David. “Inherit the Wind: An Historical Analysis.” Creation: Ex Nihilo 19 (December, 1996-February, 1997): 35-38.
Weales, Gerald. American Drama Since World War II. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962.