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Background

Inherit the Wind is a fictionalized account of the 1925 Scopes "Monkey" Trial, which resulted in John T. Scopes's conviction for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to a high school science class, contrary to a Tennessee state law that prohibited the teaching of evolution. The fictional characters Matthew Harrison Brady, Henry Drummond, Bertram Cates and E. K. Hornbeck correspond to the historical figures of William Jennings Bryan, Clarence Darrow, John Scopes, and H. L. Mencken, respectively. However, the playwrights state in a note at the opening of the play that it is not meant to be an historical account.^[2] Their intent was to criticize the then current state of McCarthyism or anti-Communist investigations of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) and Senator Joseph McCarthy. The authors used the historical Scopes trial as the background for a drama that comments on and explores the threats to intellectual freedom presented by the anti-communist hysteria. In 1996 Lawrence commented in an interview that, "we used the teaching of evolution as a parable, a metaphor for any kind of mind control [...] It's not about science versus religion. It's about the right to think." ^[1]