GALILEO gruffly: Bring the telescope.
LUDOVICO: Giuseppe, take our luggage back to the coach. The servant goes out.
MRS SARTI: She’ll never get over this. You can tell her yourself. Hurries off, still carrying the jug.
LUDOVICO: I see you have made your preparations. Mr Galilei, my mother and I spend three quarters of each year on our estate in the Campagna, and we can assure you that our peasants are not disturbed by your papers on Jupiter and its moons. They are kept too busy in the fields. But they could be upset if they heard that frivolous attacks on the church’s sacred doctrines were in future to go unpunished. Don’t forget that the poor things are little better than animals and get everything muddled up. They truly are like beasts, you can hardly imagine it. If rumour says a pear has been seen on an apple tree they will drop their work and hurry off to gossip about it.
GALILEO: interested: Really?
LUDOVICO: Beasts. If they come up to the house to make some minor complaint or other, my mother is forced to have a dog whipped before their eyes, as the only way to recall them to discipline and order and a proper respect. You, Mr Galilei, may see rich cornfields from your coach as you pass, you eat our olives and our cheese, without a thought, and you have no idea how much trouble it takes to produce them, how much supervision.
GALILEO: Young man, I do not eat my olives without a thought. Roughly: You’re holding me up. Calls through the door: Got the screen?
ANDREA: Yes. Are you coming?
GALILEO: You whip other things than dogs for the sake of discipline, don’t you, Marsili?
LUDOVICO: Mr Galilei. You have a marvellous brain. Pity.
THE LITTLE MONK amazed: He’s threatening you.
GALILEO: Yes, I might stir up his peasants to think new thoughts. And his servants and his stewards.
FEDERZONI: How? None of them can read Latin.
GALILEO: I might write in the language of the people, for the many, rather than in Latin for the few. Our new thoughts call for people who work with their hands. Who else cares about knowing the causes of things? People who only see bread on their table don’t want to know how it got baked; that lot would sooner thank God than thank the baker. But the people who make the bread will understand that nothing moves unless it has been made to move. Your sister pressing olives, Fulganzio, won’t be astounded but will probably laugh when she hears that the sun isn’t a golden coat of arms but a motor: that the earth moves because the sun sets it moving.
LUDOVICO: You will always be the slave of your passions. Make my excuses to Virginia; I think it will be better if I don’t see her.
GALILEO: Her dowry will remain available to you, at any time.
LUDOVICO: Good day. He goes.
ANDREA: And our kindest regards to all the Marsilis.
FEDERZONI: Who command the earth to stand still so their castles shan’t tumble down.
ANDREA: And the Cenzis and the Villanis!
FEDERZONI: The Cervillis!
ANDREA: The Lecchis!
FEDERZONI: The Pirleonis!
ANDREA: Who are prepared to kiss the pope’s toe only if he uses it to kick the people with!
THE LITTLE MONK likewise at the instruments: The new pope is going to be an enlightened man.
GALILEO: So let us embark on the examination of those spots on the sun in which we are interested, at our own risk and without banking too much on the protection of a new pope.
ANDREA interrupting: But fully convinced that we shall dispel Mr Fabricius’s star shadows along with the sun vapours of Paris and Prague, and establish the rotation of the sun.
GALILEO: Somewhat convinced that we shall establish the rotation of the sun. My object is not to establish that I was right but to find out if I am. Abandon hope, I say, all ye who enter on observation. They may be vapours, they may be spots, but before we assume that they are spots – which is what would suit us best – we should assume that they are fried fish. In fact we shall question everything all over again. And we shall go forward not in seven-league boots but at a snail’s pace. And what we discover today we shall wipe off the slate tomorrow and only write it up again once we have again discovered it. And whatever we wish to find we shall regard, once found, with particular mistrust. So we shall approach the observation of the sun with an irrevocable determination to establish that the earth does not move. Only when we have failed, have been utterly and hopelessly beaten and are licking our wounds in the profoundest depression, shall we start asking if we weren’t right after all, and the earth does go round. With a twinkle: But once every other hypothesis has crumbled in our hands then there will be no mercy for those who failed to research, and who go on talking all the same. Take the cloth off the telescope and point it at the sun!
He adjusts the brass reflector.
THE LITTLE MONK: I knew you had begun working on this. I knew when you failed to recognise Mr Marsili. In silence they begin their observations. As the sun’s flaming image appears on the screen Virginia comes running in in her wedding dress.
VIRGINIA: You sent him away, Father.
She faints. Andrea and the little monk hurry to her side.
GALILEO: I’ve got to know.
10
During the next decade Galileo’s doctrine spreads among the common people. Ballad-singers and pamphleteers everywhere take up the new ideas. In the carnival of 1632 many Italian cities choose astronomy as the theme of their guilds’ carnival processions.
A half-starved couple of fairground people with a baby and a five-year-old girl enter a market-place where a partly masked crowd is awaiting the carnival procession. The two of them are carrying bundles, a drum and other utensils.
THE BALLAD-SINGER drumming: Honoured inhabitants, ladies and gentlemen! To introduce the great carnival procession of the guilds we are going to perform the latest song from Florence which is now being sung all over north Italy and has been imported by us at vast expense. It is called: Ye horrible doctrine and opinions of Messer Galileo Galilei, physicist to the court, or A Foretaste of ye Future. He sings:
When the Almighty made the universe
He made the earth and then he made the sun.
Then round the earth he bade the sun to turn –
That’s in the Bible, Genesis, Chapter One.
And from that time all creatures here below
Were in obedient circles meant to go.
So the circles were all woven:
Around the greater went the smaller
Around the pace-setter the crawler
On earth as it is in heaven.
Around the pope the cardinals
Around the cardinals the bishops
Around the bishops the secretaries
Around the secretaries the aldermen
Around the aldermen the craftsmen
Around the craftsmen the servants
Around the servants the dogs, the chickens and the beggars.
That, good people, is the Great Order of things, ordo ordinum as the theologians call it, regula aeternis, the rule of rules; but what, dear people, happened?
Sings:
Up stood the learned Galilei
(Chucked away the Bible, whipped out his telescope, took a quick look at the universe.)
And told the sun ‘Stop there.
From now the whole creatio dei
Will turn as I think fair:
The boss starts turning from today
His servants stand and stare.’
Now that’s no joke, my friends, it is no matter small.
Each day our servants’ insolence increases
But one thing’s true, pleasures are few. I ask you all:
Who wouldn’t like to say and do just as he pleases?
Honourable inhabitants, such doctrines are utterly impossible.
He sings:
The serf stays sitting on his arse.
This turning’s turned his head.
The altar boy won’t serve the mass
The apprentic
e lies in bed.
No, no, my friends, the Bible is no matter small
Once let them off the lead indeed all loyalty ceases
For one thing’s true, pleasures are few. I ask you all:
Who wouldn’t like to say and do just as he pleases?
Good people all, kindly take a glance at the future as foretold by the learned Doctor Galileo Galilei:
Two housewives standing buying fish
Don’t like the fish they’re shown
The fishwife takes a hunk of bread
And eats them up alone.
The mason clears the building site
And hauls the builders’ stone.
And when the house is finished quite
He keeps it as his own.
Can such things be, my friends? It is no matter small
For independent spirit spreads like foul diseases.
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 tenant gives his landlord hell
Not caring in the least.
His wife now feeds her children well
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!
GALILE
O: 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.