Reading Order
Life of Galileo Reading Order
Life of Galileo (1943) by Bertolt Brecht is the most intellectually complex of the Brecht plays — Galileo Galilei from 1609 (when he demonstrates the telescope to the Venetian Senate) to 1637 (when his pupil Andrea smuggles the Discorsi out of Italy), with the central event being Galileo's recantation of the Copernican theory of the solar system in 1633 under threat of torture by the Inquisition. Brecht wrote two versions of the play: the first (1939) treats Galileo's recantation as a strategic retreat that allows him to continue scientific work in secret; the second (1945, written after Hiroshima) treats the recantation as a historical catastrophe that established the precedent of the scientist's subservience to power, specifically to the power that holds destructive technology. The play's central question — was Galileo a coward or a realist? — is one that Brecht himself changed his answer to between the two versions, and the play's continuing power comes from its refusal to resolve that question definitively.
Where to start
Life of Galileo (1939, revised 1945) — in Eric Bentley's translation (the standard English text) or David Hare's 2013 version. Most productions use the 1945 version. Best Brecht reading order: The Threepenny Opera → Mother Courage → The Good Woman of Setzuan → The Caucasian Chalk Circle → Life of Galileo
Complete Life of Galileo Book List
- 1Buy
Life of Galileo
Bertolt Brecht·1943·The most intellectually complex Brecht play — Galileo from the telescope to the Discorsi, with the recantation at the center. Brecht wrote two versions (1939 and 1945) with different evaluations of Galileo's recantation; the 1945 version (written after Hiroshima) treats it as a historical catastrophe rather than a strategic retreat - 2Buy
Mother Courage and Her Children
Bertolt Brecht·1941·The companion — Mother Courage, the cart, and the Thirty Years War. Both Mother Courage and Life of Galileo are organized around the same Brecht question: when is self-preservation heroic and when is it complicity? Courage's denial of her son and Galileo's recantation are the same gesture in different spheres - 3Buy
The Good Woman of Setzuan
Bertolt Brecht·1943·The companion Brecht play — the good woman Shen Te who must become bad to survive. Companion Brecht plays about the impossibility of maintaining principle in a bad system: Life of Galileo asks whether the scientific truth-teller can survive under religious censorship; The Good Woman asks whether the good person can survive under capitalist pressure - 4Buy
Galileo's Daughter
Dava Sobel·1999·Sobel's companion in the tradition of the literary investigation of Galileo's life from the perspective of his daughter — Sister Maria Celeste's letters to her father. Galileo's Daughter and Life of Galileo are companion investigations of the same historical figure from opposite formal positions: Brecht's play is the epic-theatrical investigation of the political consequences of Galileo's science; Sobel's is the intimate biographical investigation of his personal relationships - 5Buy
The Name of the Rose
Umberto Eco·1980·Eco's companion in the tradition of the literary investigation of the relationship between knowledge, power, and the Church — William of Baskerville's investigation at the medieval monastery. The Name of the Rose and Life of Galileo are companion investigations of the same question: what does the institution of the Church do to knowledge that threatens its authority? - 6Buy
Copenhagen
Michael Frayn·1998·Frayn's companion in the tradition of the dramatic investigation of the relationship between physics and moral responsibility — the 1941 meeting between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in Copenhagen and the question of what was said and why. Copenhagen and Life of Galileo are companion dramatic investigations of the relationship between scientific knowledge and political/moral responsibility; both are organized around a meeting at which the scientist's moral choice is made - 7Buy
The Physicist
Friedrich Dürrenmatt·1962·Dürrenmatt's companion in the tradition of the drama about the relationship between scientific knowledge and political power — the three physicists in the sanatorium. The Physicist and Life of Galileo are companion post-war Central European dramatic investigations of the same question: what is the scientist's responsibility when the knowledge they possess could be catastrophically misused? - 8Buy
Inherit the Wind
Jerome Lawrence·1955·Lawrence and Lee's companion in the tradition of the American drama about the conflict between scientific truth and religious authority — the Scopes Monkey Trial. Inherit the Wind and Life of Galileo are companion dramatic investigations of the conflict between scientific knowledge and religious authority: Brecht's is the seventeenth-century version; Lawrence and Lee's is the twentieth-century American version
Life of Galileo — Frequently Asked Questions
Was Galileo a hero or a coward in Brecht's play?
Brecht changed his answer to this question between the two versions of the play, and the change reveals how much the historical context shapes the moral interpretation. In the first version (1939), Galileo's recantation is presented as a cunning strategic retreat: by publicly denying the Copernican theory, Galileo saves his life and is able to complete the Discorsi (his major scientific work) in secret, which is then smuggled out of Italy by his pupil Andrea. The first version suggests that the recantation was not cowardice but survival strategy — the scientist working around the power that would otherwise destroy him. After Hiroshima (the second version, 1945), Brecht fundamentally revalued the recantation: he now saw it as the original sin of the scientist's relationship with power — the moment at which the scientific community established the precedent of subordinating knowledge to authority, a precedent that eventually produced the bomb. The Galileo who survives to complete the Discorsi is the same Galileo whose compliance with the Inquisition created the conditions under which the scientists of the twentieth century cooperated with the governments that built nuclear weapons. Brecht's Galileo in the 1945 version is explicitly a coward, and the play ends with Galileo's own self-condemnation: 'I have betrayed my profession. A man who does what I did cannot be tolerated in the ranks of science.'
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