Distaste for authority

The highlights of Brecht’s Life of Galileo are packed into the opening hour. As the astronomer glimpses new worlds through his telescope, we get a palpable sense of his wonder and astonishment. The effect of these revelations on the mediaeval mind comes through in simple, thundering utterances. ‘The moon has no light of its own.’ ‘The earth is a star like any other.’ ‘Heaven has been abolished.’ It’s thrilling to see aeons of Aristotelian tradition being shattered and remade in the space of a couple of cloudless evenings on an Italian hillside. But the play drags once Galileo comes into conflict with the Church.

The Faith versus Reason ding-dong becomes wordy and repetitive. Brecht can’t find a subtler or spicier line of argument for Galileo than ‘The man who knows the truth and denies it is a criminal.’ And he can’t think up a single decent argument for the Church.