Introduction & Overview of Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence

Inherit the Wind Introduction

In the blistering hot summer of 1925, two nationally-known legal minds, Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, battled in a tiny courtroom in Dayton, Tennessee, and, for a time, captured the attention of the world. The issue? A state law that forbid the teaching of evolution and a local teacher's violation of that law. The official name of this encounter was Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes, but it became known the world over as the Scopes "Monkey Trial."

Thirty years later, in 1955, playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee published their dramatized version of the events of the summer of 1925. In a brief note at the beginning of the play, the playwrights admit that the Scopes Monkey Trial was clearly the inspiration for their work. But, the authors emphasize "Inherit the Wind is not history" and that the "collision of Bryan and Darrow at Dayton was dramatic,...
(read more)