Jan 2, 2010
Inherit the Wind | Inherit the Wind
At a glance:
- Author: Jerome Lawrence, Robert E. Lee
- First Published: 1955
- Type of Plot: Social realism; history
- Time of Work: The 1920’s
- Setting: Hillsboro, a small town in the American Bible Belt
- Principal Characters: Matthew Harrison Brady, Henry Drummond, Tom Davenport, E. K. Hornbeck, Bertram Cates, Rachel Brown, The Reverend Jeremiah Brown
- Genres: Social realism, Drama, Psychological drama, History play
- Subjects: Creation myth, Science or scientists, Religion, 1920’s, Lawyers, Bible, biblical imagery, or biblical symbolism, Evolution, Biology or biologists, Courts or courtrooms
- Locales: Tennessee
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...
[The entire page is 2039 words long]
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