Brecht Collected Plays: 5: Life of Galileo; Mother Courage and Her Children (World Classics) (18 page)

On the milk she fed the priest.

No, no, my friends, the Bible is no matter small

Once let them off the lead indeed all loyalty ceases.

But one thing’s true, pleasures are few. I ask you all:

Who wouldn’t like to say and do just as he pleases?

THE SINGER’S WIFE
:

I lately went a bit too far

And told my husband I’d see

If I could get some other fixed star

To do what he does for me.

BALLAD-SINGER
:

No, no, no, no, no, no! Stop, Galileo, stop.

Once take a mad dog’s muzzle off it spreads diseases

People must keep their place, some down and some on top.

(Although it’s nice for once to do just as one pleases.)

BOTH
:

Good people who have trouble here below

In serving cruel lords and gentle Jesus Who bid you turn the other cheek just so They’re better placed to strike the second blow:

Obedience isn’t going to cure your woe

So each of you wake up, and do just as he pleases!

THE BALLAD-SINGER
: Honoured inhabitants, you will now see Galileo Galilei’s amazing discovery: the earth circling round the sun!

He belabours the drum violently. The woman and child step forward. The woman holds a crude image of the sun while the child, with a pumpkin over its head to represent the earth, circles round her. The singer points elatedly at the child as if it were performing a dangerous leap as it takes jerky steps to single beats on the drum. Then comes the drumming from the rear
.

A DEEP VOICE
calls:
The procession!

Enter two men in rags pulling a little cart. On an absurd throne sits the ‘Grand Duke of Florence’, a figure with a cardboard crown dressed in sacking and looking through a telescope. Above his throne a sign saying ‘Looking for trouble’. Then four masked men march in carrying a big tarpaulin. They stop and toss a puppet representing a cardinal into the air. A dwarf has taken up position to one side with a sign saying ‘The new age’. In the crowd a beggar gets up on his crutches and dances, stamping the ground till he crashes to earth. Enter an over-lifesize puppet, Galileo Galilei, bowing to the audience. Before it goes a boy carrying a gigantic Bible, open, with crossed-out pages
.

THE BALLAD-SINGER
: Galileo Galilei, the Bible-buster!
Huge laughter among the crowd
.

11

1633: The Inquisition summons the world-famous scientist to Rome

The depths are hot, the heights are chill

The streets are loud, the court is still.

Antechamber and staircase in the Medici palace in Florence. Galileo and his daughter are waiting to be admitted by the Grand Duke
.

VIRGINIA
: This is taking a long time.

GALILEO
: Yes.

VIRGINIA
: There’s that fellow again who followed us here.
She points out an individual who walks past without looking at them
.

GALILEO
whose eyes have suffered:
I don’t know him.

VIRGINIA
: I’ve seen him several times in the past few days, though. He gives me the creeps.

GALILEO
: Rubbish. We’re in Florence, not among Corsican bandits.

VIRGINIA
: Here’s Rector Gaffone.

GALILEO
: He makes me want to run. That idiot will involve me in another of his interminable talks.

Down the stairs comes Mr Gaffone, rector of the university. He is visibly alarmed on seeing Galileo and walks stiffly past them barely nodding, his head awkwardly averted
.

GALILEO
: What’s got into the man? My eyes are bad again. Did he even greet us?

VIRGINIA
: Barely. What’s in your book? Could it be thought heretical maybe?

GALILEO
: You’re wasting too much time in church. You’ll spoil what’s left of your complexion with all this early rising and scurrying off to mass. You’re praying for me, is that it?

VIRGINIA
: Here’s Mr Vanni the ironfounder you designed the furnace for. Don’t forget to thank him for those quails.

A man has come down the stairs
.

VANNI
: Were those good quails I sent you, Mr Galilei?

GALILEO
: The quails were first-rate, Messer Vanni, many thanks again.

VANNI
: Your name was mentioned upstairs. They’re blaming you for those pamphlets against the Bible that have been selling all over the place lately.

GALILEO
: I know nothing about pamphlets. The Bible and Homer are my preferred reading.

VANNI
: Even if that weren’t so I’d like to take this chance to say that we manufacturers are behind you. I’m not the sort of fellow that knows much about the stars, but to me you’re the man who’s battling for freedom to teach what’s new. Take that mechanical cultivator from Germany you were describing to me. In the past year alone five books on agriculture have been published in London. We’d be glad enough to have a book on the Dutch canals. The same sort of people as are trying to block you are stopping the Bologna doctors from dissecting bodies for medical research.

GALILEO
: Your voice can be heard, Vanni.

VANNI
: I should hope so. Do you realise that they’ve now got money markets in Amsterdam and London? Commercial schools too. Regularly printed papers with news in them. In this place we haven’t even the freedom to make money. They’re against ironfoundries because they imagine putting too many workers in one place leads to immorality. I sink or swim with people like you, Mr Galilei. If anybody ever tries launching anything against you, please remember you’ve friends in every branch of business. You’ve got the north Italian cities behind you, sir.

GALILEO
: As far as I know nobody’s thinking of launching anything against me.

VANNI
: No?

GALILEO
: No.

VANNI
: I think you’d be better off in Venice. Fewer clerics. You could take up the cudgels from there. I’ve a travelling coach and horses, Mr Galilei.

GALILEO
: I don’t see myself as a refugee. I like my comforts.

VANNI
: Surely. But from what I heard upstairs I’d say there was a hurry. It’s my impression they’d be glad to know you weren’t in Florence just now.

GALILEO
: Nonsense. The Grand Duke is my pupil, and what’s more the pope himself would never stand for any kind of attempt to trap me.

VANNI
: I’m not sure you’re good at distinguishing your friends from your enemies, Mr Galilei.

GALILEO
: I can distinguish power from impotence.
He goes off brusquely
.

VANNI
: Right. I wish you luck.
Exit
.

GALILEO
returning to Virginia:
Every local Tom, Dick and Harry with an axe to grind wants me to be his spokesman, particularly in places where it’s not exactly helpful to me. I’ve written a book about the mechanics of the universe, that’s all. What people make of it or don’t make of it isn’t my business.

VIRGINIA
loudly:
If they only knew how you condemned all those incidents at last carnival-time!

GALILEO
: Yes. Give a bear honey and if the brute’s hungry you risk losing your arm.

VIRGINIA
quietly:
Did the Grand Duke actually send for you today?

GALILEO
: No, but I had myself announced. He wants to have the book, he has paid for it. Ask that official and tell him we don’t like being kept waiting.

VIRGINIA
:
followed by the same individual, goes and addresses an official:
Mr Mincio, has his Highness been told my father wishes to speak with him?

THE OFFICIAL
: How am I to know?

VIRGINIA
: I don’t call that an answer.

THE OFFICIAL
: Don’t you?

VIRGINIA
: You’re supposed to be polite.

The official half turns his back on her and yawns as he looks at the individual
.

VIRGINIA
returning:
He says the Grand Duke is still occupied.

GALILEO
: I heard you say something about ‘polite’. What was it?

VIRGINIA
: I was thanking him for his polite answer, that’s all. Can’t you just leave the book here? You could use the time.

GALILEO
: I’m beginning to wonder how much my time is worth. Perhaps I’ll accept Sagredo’s invitation to spend a few weeks in Padua after all. My health’s not what it was.

VIRGINIA
: You couldn’t live without your books.

GALILEO
: We could take a crate or two of that Sicilian wine in the coach with us.

VIRGINIA
: You’ve always said it doesn’t travel. And the court owes you three months’ salary. They’ll never forward it.

GALILEO
: That’s true.

The Cardinal Inquisitor comes down the stairs
.

VIRGINIA
: The Cardinal Inquisitor.

As he walks past he makes a deep bow to Galileo
.

VIRGINIA
: What’s the Cardinal Inquisitor doing in Florence, Father?

GALILEO
: I don’t know. He behaved quite respectfully. I knew what I was doing when I came to Florence and kept quiet for all those years. They’ve paid me such tributes that now they’re forced to accept me as I am.

THE OFFICIAL
calls out:
His Highness the Grand Duke!
Cosimo de Medici comes down the staircase. Galileo goes to meet him. Cosimo stops somewhat embarrassedly
.

GALILEO
: I wanted to bring my Dialogues on Two World Systems to your …

COSIMO
: Ah, yes. How are your eyes?

GALILEO
: Not too good, your Highness. If your Highness permits, I have the book …

COSIMO
: The state of your eyes worries me. It worries me, truly. It shows me that you’ve been a little too eager to use that admirable tube of yours, haven’t you?

He walks on without accepting the book
.

GALILEO
: He didn’t take the book, did he?

VIRGINIA
: Father, I’m scared.

GALILEO
firmly, in a low voice:
Control your feelings. We’re not going home after this, we’re going to Volpi the glazier’s. I’ve fixed with him to have a cart full of empty barrels
standing permanently in the yard of the wine house next door, ready to take me out of the city.

VIRGINIA
: So you knew …

GALILEO
: Don’t look round.

They start to go
.

A HIGH OFFICIAL
comes down the stairs:
Mr Galilei, I have been charged to tell you that the court of Florence is no longer in a position to oppose the Holy Inquisition’s wish to interrogate you in Rome. The coach of the Holy Inquisition awaits you, Mr Galilei.

12

The Pope

Room in the Vatican. Pope Urban VIII (formerly Cardinal Barberini) has received the Cardinal Inquisitor. In the course of the audience he is robed. Outside is heard the shuffling of many feet
.

THE POPE
very loudly:
No! No! No!

THE INQUISITOR
: So it is your Holiness’s intention to go before this gathering of doctors from every faculty, representatives of every order and the entire clergy, all with their naive faith in the word of God as set down in the Scriptures, who are now assembling here to have that trust confirmed by your Holiness, and tell them that those Scriptures can no longer be regarded as true?

THE POPE
: I am not going to have the multiplication table broken. No!

THE INQUISITOR
: Ah, it’s the multiplication table, not the spirit of insubordination and doubt: that’s what these people will tell you. But it isn’t the multiplication table. No, a terrible restlessness has descended on the world. It is the restlessness of their own brain which these people have
transferred to the unmoving earth. They shout ‘But look at the figures’. But where do their figures come from? Everybody knows they originate in doubt. These people doubt everything. Are we to base human society on doubt and no longer on faith? ‘You are my lord, but I doubt if that’s a good thing.’ ‘This is your house and your wife, but I doubt if they shouldn’t be mine.’ Against that we have your Holiness’s love of art, to which we owe our fine collections, being subjected to such disgraceful interpretations as we see scrawled on the walls of Roman houses: ‘The Barberinis take what the Barbarians left’. And abroad? Your Holiness’s Spanish policy has been misinterpreted by short-sighted critics, its antagonising of the Emperor regretted. For the last fifteen years Germany has been running with blood, and men have quoted the Bible as they hacked each other to pieces. And at this moment, just when Christianity is being shrivelled into little enclaves by plague, war and the Reformation, a rumour is going through Europe that you have made a secret pact with protestant Sweden in order to weaken the Catholic emperor. So what do these wretched mathematicians do but go and point their tubes at the sky and inform the whole world that your Holiness is hopelessly at sea in the one area nobody has yet denied you? There’s every reason to be surprised at this sudden interest in an obscure subject like astronomy. Who really cares how these spheres rotate? But thanks to the example of this wretched Florentine all Italy, down to the last stable boy, is now gossiping about the phases of Venus, nor can they fail at the same time to think about a lot of other irksome things that schools and others hold to be incontrovertible. Given the weakness of their flesh and their liability to excesses of all kinds, what would the effect be if they were to believe in nothing but their own reason, which this maniac has set up as the sole tribunal? They would start by wondering if the sun stood still over Gibeon, then extend their filthy scepticism to the offertory box. Ever since they began voyaging across the seas – and I’ve nothing against that – they have placed their faith in a brass ball they call a compass, not in
God. This fellow Galileo was writing about machines even when he was young. With machines they hope to work miracles. What sort? God anyhow is no longer necessary to them, but what kind of miracle is it to be? The abolition of top and bottom, for one. They’re not needed any longer. Aristotle, whom they otherwise regard as a dead dog, has said – and they quote this – that once the shuttle weaves by itself and the plectrum plays the zither of its own accord, then masters would need no apprentice and lords no servants. And they think they are already there. This evil man knows what he is up to when he writes his astronomical works not in Latin but in the idiom of fishwives and wool merchants.