Inherit the Wind

Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee 129 pp.

I don't know how many times I have read this play. It is one of my favorites, as is the 1960 film starring Spencer Tracy & Fredric March. It is based on the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee--"The Trial of the Century" (or one of many). The essential arguments of whether or not scientific thought that may directly conflict with Biblical principles could be taught in the schools. The play pits logic and freedom of speech against belief. At the heart of it is the argument of whether everything in the Bible should be taken literally. Much of this version is taken from actual trial transcripts. I'm not sure if my favorite lines in the play are from those transcripts or created by the playwrights. ("Figure somebody pulled off another creation, over in the next county?" and "Does a man have the same privileges that a sponge has?) I enjoyed it just as much this time as I have all the other times I read it.