The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail is a two-act play by Robert Edwin Lee and Jerome Lawrence written in 1970. Hal B. Wallis is producer of the film based on the play, for which both Lawrence and Lee wrote the screenplay. The play is based on the early life of the titular character, Henry David Thoreau, leading up to his night spent in a jail in Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay a poll tax on the grounds that the money might be used to pay for the Mexican-American War, which he opposed.
Writing in the New York Times, Howard Taubman described the ideological relevance of the play to contemporary audiences, stating "this play and its protagonist, though they are of the 19th century, are speaking to today's concerns: an unwanted war in another land, civil disobedience, the interdependence of man and nature, education the role of government and the governed."
Read more about The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail: Plot, Characters, Production History
Famous quotes containing the words the night, night, thoreau, spent and/or jail:
“I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is “Who in the world am I?” Ah, that’s the great puzzle!”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You need not rest your reputation on the dinners you give.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I spent my life mixin’ with your breed, and I don’t like it. Get me. You can hide behind a lot of red tape, crooked lawyers and politicians with the gimmes, writs of habeas corpus, witnesses that don’t remember overnight, but we’ll get through to you, just like we got all the rest.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)
“If, after obtaining Buddhahood, anyone in my land
gets tossed in jail on a vagrancy rap, may I
not attain highest perfect enlightenment.”
—Gary Snyder (b. 1930)