The Scholar, a Human Being
The first thing L. did when he set to work was to rid the figure of Galileo of the pallid, spiritual, stargazing aura of the text books. Above all, the scholar must be made into a man. The very term ‘scholar’ [Gelehrter] sounds somewhat ridiculous when used by simple people; there is an implication of having been prepared and fitted, of something passive. In Bavaria people used to speak of the Nuremberg Funnel by which simpletons were more or less forcibly fed undue quantities of knowledge, a kind of enema for the brain. When someone had ‘crammed himself with learning’, that too was considered unnatural. The educated – again one of those hopelessly passive words – talked of the revenge of the ‘uneducated’, of their innate hatred for the mind; and it is true that their contempt was often mixed with hatred; in villages and working-class districts, the mind was considered something alien, even hostile. The same contempt, however, could also be found among the ‘better classes’. A scholar was an impotent, bloodless, quaint figure, conceited and barely fit to live. He was an easy prey for romantic treatment. L.’s Galileo never strayed far from the engineer at the great arsenal in Venice. His eyes were there to see with, not to flash, his hands to work with, not to gesticulate. Everything worth seeing or feeling L. derived from Galileo’s profession, his pursuit of physics and his teaching, the teaching, that is, of something very concrete with its concomitant real difficulties. And he portrayed the external side not just for the sake of the inner man – that is to say, research and everything connected with it, not just for the sake of the resulting psychological reactions – these reactions, rather, were never separated from the everyday business and conflicts, they never became ‘universally human’, even though they never lost their universal appeal. In the case of the Richard III of Shakespeare’s theatre, the spectator can easily change himself along with the actor, since the king’s politics and warfare play only a very vague role; there is hardly more of it than a dreaming man would understand. But with Galileo it is a continual handicap to the spectator that he knows much less about science than does Galileo. It is a piquant fact that in representing the history of Galileo, both playwright and actor had to undo the notion which Galileo’s betrayal had helped to create, the notion that schoolteachers and scientists are by nature absent-minded, hybrid, castrated. (Only in our own day when, in the shape of ruling-class hirelings remote from the people, they delivered the latest product of Galileo’s laws of motion, did popular contempt change to fear.) As for Galileo himself, for many centuries, all over Europe, the people honoured him for his belief in a popularly based science by refusing to believe in his recantation.
Subdivisions and Line
We divided the first scene into several parts:
We had the advantage that the beginning of the story was also a beginning for Galileo, that is, his encounter with the telescope, and since the significance of this encounter is hidden from him for the time being, our solution was to derive the joy of beginning from the early morning: having him wash with cold water – L., with bare torso, lifted a copper pitcher with a quick sweeping motion to let the jet of water fall into the basin – find his open books on the high desk, have his first sip of milk, and give his first lesson, as it happens, to a young boy. As the scene unfolds, Galileo keeps coming back to his reading at the high desk, annoyed at being interrupted by the returning student with his shallow preference for new-fangled inventions such as this spyglass, and by the procurator of the university who denies him a grant; finally reaching the last obstacle that keeps him from his work, the testing of the lenses which, however, would not have been possible without the two prior interruptions, and makes an entirely new field of work accessible.
Interest in Interest and Thinking as Expression of Physical Contentment
Two elements in the action with the child may be mentioned:
Washing himself in the background, Galileo observes the boy’s interest in the astrolabe as little Andrea circles around the strange instrument. L. emphasised what was novel in G. at that time by letting him look at the world around him as if he were a stranger and as if it needed explanation. His chuckling observation made fossils out of the monks at the Collegium Romanum. In that scene he also showed amusement at their primitive method of proof.
Some people objected to L.’s delivering his speech about the new astronomy in the first scene with a bare torso, claiming that it would confuse the audience if it were to hear such intellectual utterances from a half-naked man. But it was just this mixture of the physical and the intellectual that attracted L. ‘Galileo’s physical contentment’ at having his back rubbed by the boy is transformed into intellectual production. Again, in the ninth scene, L. brought out the fact that Galileo recovers his taste for wine on hearing of the reactionary pope’s expected demise. His sensual walking, the play of his hands in his pockets while he is planning new researches, came close to being offensive. Whenever Galileo is creative, L. displayed a mixture of aggressiveness and defenceless softness and vulnerability.
Rotation of the Earth and Rotation of the Brain
L. arranges a little demonstration of the earth’s rotation to be quick and offhand, leaving his high desk where he has begun to read and returning to it. He avoids anything emphatic, seems to pay no attention to the child’s intellectual capacity, and at the end leaves him sitting there alone with his thoughts.
This casual manner, in keeping with his limited time, simultaneously admits the boy to the community of scholars. Thus L. demonstrated how for Galileo learning and teaching are one and the same – which makes his subsequent betrayal all the more horrible.
Balanced Acting
During this demonstration of the earth’s rotation Galileo is surprised by Andrea’s mother. Questioned about the nonsensical notions he is teaching the child he answers: ‘Apparently we are on the threshold of a new era, Mrs Sarti.’ The way in which L. caressingly emptied his glass of milk while he said it was enchanting.
Response to a Good Answer
A small detail: the housekeeper has gone to let the new student in. Galileo feels constrained to make a confession to Andrea. His science is in no very good state, its most important concerns must be concealed from the authorities, and for the moment they are only hypotheses. ‘I want to become an astronomer,’ Andrea says quickly. At this answer Galileo looks at him with an almost tender smile. Usually actors do not rehearse such details separately, or often, enough to render them quickly in the performance.
[Dismissal of Andrea]
The dismissal of Andrea during the conversation with Ludovico is a piece of stage business for which time must be allowed. Galileo now drinks his milk as if it were the only pleasure to be had, and one which will not last very long. He is fully aware of Andrea’s presence. Ill-humouredly he sends him away. One of those unavoidable everyday compromises!
Galileo Underestimates the New Invention
Ludovico Marsili describes a new spyglass which he has seen in Holland and cannot understand. Galileo asks for detailed information and makes a sketch which solves the problem. He holds the cardboard with the sketch without showing it to his pupil, who expected to have a look. (L. insisted that the actor playing Ludovico should expect this.) The sketch itself he drew casually, just to solve a problem that offered some relief from the conversation. Then, his way of asking the housekeeper to send Andrea for lenses and borrowing a scudo from the entering procurator – all that had an automatic and routine quality. The whole incident seemed only to demonstrate that Galileo too was capable of ploughing water.
A New Commodity
The birth of the telescope as a commodity took a long time to emerge clearly in the rehearsals. We found out why: L. had reacted too quickly and arrogantly to the university’s refusal of a grant. All was well as soon as he accepted the blow in hurt silence and then went on, almost sadly, to speak like a poor man. As a natural result, Galileo’s ‘Mr Priuli, I may have something for you,’ came out in a way to make Galileo’s dismissa
l of the new spyglass as ‘bosh’ perfectly clear.
[Interruption of Work]
When Andrea returns with the lenses he finds Galileo deep in his work. (L. has shown, during a by no means brief interval, how the scholar handles his books.) He has already forgotten the lenses, he lets the boy wait, then proceeds, almost guiltily because he has no desire to take up the lucrative bosh, to arrange the two lenses on a piece of cardboard. Finally he takes the ‘thing’ away, not without a little demonstration of his showmanship.
The senators surround and congratulate Galileo and draw him to the rear, but the tiny exchange with Ludovico Marsili, with its imputation of plagiarism, must as it were still hover in the air; for when the half-curtain closes behind them [Ludovico and Virginia] and in front of Galileo and the others, they continue and conclude the conversation while exiting along the footlights. And Ludovico’s cynical remark, ‘I am beginning to understand science,’ serves as a springboard for the ensuing third scene – that of the great discoveries.
3
[Confidence in Objective Judgment]
Galileo lets his friend Sagredo look through the telescope at the moon and Jupiter. L. sat down, his back to the instrument, relaxed, as though his work was done and he only wanted his friend to pass impartial judgment on what he saw, and that this was all he needed to do since his friend was now seeing for himself. By this means he established that the new possibilities of observation must bring all controversy about the Copernican system to an end.
This attitude explains at the very beginning of the scene the boldness of his application for the lucrative position at the court of Florence.
The Historical Moment
L. conducted the exchange with his friend at the telescope without any emphasis. The more casually he acted, the more clearly one could sense the historic night; the more soberly he spoke, the more solemn the moment appeared.
An Embarrassment
When the procurator of the university comes in to complain about the fraud of the telescope, L.’s Galileo shows noticeable embarrassment by studiously looking through the telescope, obviously less to observe the sky than to avoid looking the procurator in the eye. Shamelessly he exploits the ‘higher’ function of the instrument which the Venetians have found not to be very profitable.
It is true that he also shows his behind to the angry man who has trusted him. But, far from trying to put him off with the discoveries of ‘pure’ science, he at once offers him another profitable item, the astronomical clock for ships. When the procurator has left, he sits glumly before the telescope, scratching his neck and telling Sagredo about his physical and intellectual needs which must be satisfied in one way or another. Science is a milch cow for all to milk, he himself of course included. While at this point in time Galileo’s attitude is still helpful to science, later on, in his fight with Rome, it is going to push science to the brink of the abyss, in other words, deliver it into the hands of the rulers.
The Wish Is Father to the Thought
Looking up from their calculations of the movements of Jupiter’s moons, Sagredo voices his concern for the man about to publish a discovery so embarrassisng to the church. Galileo mentions the seductive power of evidence. He fishes a pebble from his pocket and lets it fall from palm to palm, following gravity: ‘Sooner or later everybody must succumb to it’ [the evidence]. As he argued along these lines, L. never forgot for a moment to do it in such a way that the audience would remember it later when he announced his decision to hand over his dangerous discoveries to the Catholic court of Florence.
[Rejection of Virginia]
L.’s Galileo used the little scene with his daughter Virginia to indicate how far he might be blamed for Virginia’s subsequent behaviour as a spy for the Inquisition. He does not take her interest in the telescope seriously and sends her off to matins. L. scrutinised his daughter after her question, ‘May I look through it?’ before replying, ‘What for? It’s not a toy.’
The Fun in Contradictions
Saying, ‘I am going to Florence,’ Galileo carefully signs his letter of application. In this hasty capitalisation of his discoveries as well as in his discourse on the seductive power of evidence and the representative value of great discoveries, L. left the spectator completely at liberty to study, criticise, admire Galileo’s contradictory personality.
4
The Acting of Anger
Vis-à-vis the court scholars who refuse to look through the telescope, because to do so would either confirm Aristotle’s doctrine or show up Galileo as a swindler, what L. acted was not so much anger as the attempt to dominate anger.
Servility
After Galileo, erupting at last, has threatened to take his new science to the dockyards, he sees the court depart abruptly. Deeply alarmed and disturbed, he follows the departing prince in cringing servility, stumbling, all dignity gone. In such a case an actor’s greatness can be seen in the degree to which he can make the character’s behaviour incomprehensible or at least objectionable.
4 and 6*
The Fight and the Particular Manner of Fighting
L. insisted that throughout the following scenes, 4 and 6, the sketch of Jupiter’s moons from Galileo’s original report should remain projected on the backdrop screen. It was a reminder of the fight. To show one of its aspects, the heel-cooling for the sake of truth, L., at the end of scene 4, when the chamberlain stays behind after the hasty departure of the court to inform him of the appeal to Rome, let himself be driven out of the space that stood for his house and stood in front of the half-curtain. He stood there between scenes 4 and 6 and again between scenes 6 and 7, waiting, and occasionally verifying that the pebble from his pocket continued to fall from one raised hand to the other stretched out below.
6
[Observation of the Clergy]
Galileo is not entirely devoid of appreciation when he observes the jeering monks at the Collegium Romanum – after all, by pretending to stand on a rolling globe they are trying to prove the absurdity of his propositions. The very old cardinal fills him with pity.
After the astronomer Clavius has confirmed Galileo’s findings, Galileo shows his pebble to the hostile cardinal who retreats in dismay; L. did this by no means triumphantly, rather as if he wanted to offer his adversary a last chance to convince himself.
Fame
Invited to the masked ball of Cardinals Bellarmin and Barberini, Galileo lingers for a moment in the anteroom alone with the clerical secretaries who later turn out to be secret agents. He has been greeted on his arrival by distinguished masked guests with great respect: obviously he stands in high favour. From the halls a boys’ choir is heard, and Galileo listens to one of these melancholic stanzas which are sung amid the joy of life. L. needed no more than this brief listening and the word ‘Rome!’ to express the pride of the conqueror who has the capital of the world at his feet.
The Duel of Quotations
In the brief duel of Bible quotations with Cardinal Barberini, L.’s Galileo shows, beside the fun he has with such intellectual sport, that the possibility of an unfavourable outcome to his affairs is dawning on him. For the rest, the effectiveness of the scene depends on the elegance of its performance; L. made full use of his heavy body.
Two Things at Once
The brief argument about the capacity of the human brain (which the playwright was delighted to have heard formulated by Albert Einstein) furnished L. the opportunity to show two traits: 1) a certain arrogance of the professional when his field is invaded by laymen, and 2) an awareness of the difficulty of such a problem.
[Disarmed by Lack of Logic]
When the decree is read out forbidding the guest to teach a theory acknowledged to have been proven, L.’s Galileo reacts by twice turning abruptly from the reading secretaries to the liberal Barberini. Thunderstruck, he lets the two cardinals drag him to the ball as if he were a steer stunned by the axe. L. was able, in a manner the playwright cannot describe, to give the impression that what m
ainly disarmed Galileo was the lack of logic.
8
[Indomitable Urge to Research]
If in the seventh scene Galileo experiences the No of the church, in the eighth he is confronted with the No of the people. It comes from the lips of the little monk, himself a physicist. Galileo is disturbed, then recognises the situation: in the fight against science it is not the church that defends the peasant, but the peasant who defends the church. It was L.’s theatrical conception to let Galileo be so profoundly upset that he delivers his counter-arguments in a spirit of defence, even of angry self-defence, and makes the throwing down of the manuscript into a gesture of helplessness. He blamed his indomitable urge to research like a sex offender blaming his glands.
Laughton Does Not Forget to Tell the Story
In the eighth scene one of Galileo’s lines contains a sentence which continues the story: ‘Should I condone this decree …’ L. distilled this small but important detail with great care.
9
[The Impatience of Galileo the Scientist]
Whereas L. insisted he must be allowed to give Galileo’s character a markedly criminal evolution after the recantation in scene 13, he did not feel a similar need at the beginning of scene 9. Here too, to oblige the church, Galileo has for many years abstained from publicising his discoveries, but this cannot be considered a betrayal like the later one. At this point the people know very little about the new science, the cause of the new astronomy has not yet been taken up by the North Italian bourgeoisie, the battle fronts are not yet political. There may not be an open declaration on his part, but there is no recantation either. In this scene therefore it is still the scientist’s personal impatience and dissatisfaction which must be portrayed.