The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail: Act 1 Summary & Analysis

The play opens on a jail cell, center stage, with imaginary walls and windows. “Time and space are awash here.” A man (Henry) sleeps on a cot, and another man, in shadow, sleeps on a cot next to him. Unrelated to the cell, on one side of the stage, an old man walks hand in hand with his wife.

The old man, Waldo, stops suddenly and asks his wife, “What was his name?” Lydian is confused, and Waldo tells her he has forgotten the name of his best friend. Lydian wonders if he is thinking of “Henry” and Waldo says he keeps wanting to say “David.”

Henry’s mother appears on another part of the stage, asking her son, whom she calls “David Henry,” what he’s done. He says he’s gone and “not done” something. This conversation bleeds into the conversation being held between Lydian and Waldo, where they struggle to remember Henry. Lydian recalls that he was strange, but that she “almost understood him.” Waldo recalls that he rested all week and worked on Sundays.

Waldo stands up and appears younger. He takes his place at a podium. Upon seeing him at the podium, Henry sinks cross-legged to the floor to listen. Waldo orates: “Cast conformity behind you.” Henry repeats these words “as if memorizing a commandment.” Henry’s brother John enters and approaches Henry with amusement. Henry, still in a trance, says to John that Waldo is the most captivating professor at Harvard—that the “light of all mankind” is within him.

Henry stands and sees John, as if breaking out of a trance, and embraces him. John asks if Henry has his diploma, and Henry explains that they wanted to be paid a dollar for it and he had refused. John laughs and asks his brother what he is going to do now that he has “turned his backside on Harvard.” Henry says that he will strive to be as much like Ralph Waldo Emerson as possible.

The light fades on the brothers and rises on Waldo and Lydian again. Lydian tells Waldo that he gave a splendid lecture. Waldo worries aloud that he’d lost his place a couple of times, and he says he thought he saw one boy asleep in the audience, sitting with his eyes closed. Lydian reassures him the boy was just concentrating. Waldo seems almost comforted.

In the jail cell area, snoring begins. It crescendos, and Henry gently wakes up his groggy cellmate. The man, whose name is Bailey, stops snoring but is still groggy. Henry tells him to be quiet so they can hear. The faint sound of a night bird comes into the cell, and Henry is rapturous. Bailey wonders at him, saying it’s “just a bird.” Henry demands to know if Bailey can make a sound like that, or feed on flowers, or fly.

Bailey asks how a man as educated and well-spoken as Henry ended up in jail. Henry says he has refused to commit murder. Bailey asks who Henry was meant to kill, and Henry says “Mexico.” Bailey has not heard about the war with Mexico and does not understand. Henry asks Bailey why he is in jail, and Bailey explains he has been in jail for months, awaiting trial. He has been accused of burning down a barn, but he is innocent. Henry is outraged that his companion is still in jail awaiting his verdict.

Henry listens at the imaginary window and hears footsteps through the square. Henry asks Bailey where the footsteps are going, but Bailey cannot answer. Henry explains that they are going where they are supposed to be going – that the man is walking the direction he feels he should be walking, so that he may be liked by others. Henry then calls America “a whole country of us who only want to be liked.”

Bailey once again marvels at Henry’s intelligence. He remarks that he’d love to learn to write his own name. Henry teaches him write in the dust on the floor of the cell. Henry makes the letters seem simple, and his teaching style is entertaining. Bailey says he has never heard someone make it so easy, and remarks that Henry must be a teacher.

Bailey sinks back into the shadows, and the light comes up on Henry, who is teaching a classroom full of students (who are not actually present as actors, but only imaginary). He is explaining how even the seemingly empty air around them is full of particles moving and flying around. Deacon Ball enters, and Henry is irritated at the interruption. Ball wonders why the students have no books. Henry explains that they are “huckleberrying’—that is, gathering up knowledge from the world around them, as if collecting huckleberries.

Henry goes on to explain that he was in the middle of answering a question of a student, named “Potter,” who wondered how to be sure of God’s existence. Ball is appalled, calling the question blasphemy. Henry explains that the sunrise is no accident—it cannot be. It is the result of an “intelligence” that governs the universe. Ball calls this “atheism” and Henry says he sometimes wonders if atheism is popular with God himself. Ball calls this “transcendental Blasphemy.”

Meanwhile, on a different part of the stage, Waldo takes his pulpit and begins to speak about “the wonder of the Universal Mind.” Henry speaks quietly to Potter, asking him if he understands. Ball says he does not understand. Henry begins to ridicule Ball and his proscribed textbook, sarcastically insisting to his students that they must not listen to a cricket or smell a flower unless it has been approved by the school board. John appears, and tells Henry to have an ounce of humility, or he will be fired, and then who will answer Potter’s questions?

Henry apologizes, but Ball is not satisfied. He orders Henry to flog his students. Henry obliges, flogging each imaginary student with his belt and becoming increasingly repulsed by the violence. After the deed is done, Henry flings the belt offstage. He announces that he is resigning. Ball recedes into the shadows and the lights come up on Waldo, who announces that he is resigning as pastor of the Unitarian Church in Boston. Henry sits back down on his cot and says “I shall never teach again.” Waldo says “I shall never preach again.”

John and his mother stand on the edge of the stage. John says a school doesn’t need books or a classroom—only minds. He approaches Henry and the two plan to open a new kind of school, one where class takes place in the countryside. Henry is re-energized, and turns to speak to a group of imaginary students, presumably gathered all around him. He talks about the varied flora of the meadow.

A strikingly beautiful young woman appears on the side of the stage, listening to Henry. Henry tells her that she seems too old to take this class. The woman, Ellen Sewell, says she just wants to listen. Henry is skeptical, and tells her she must be herself, and not anyone else’s idea of herself. He tells the students to listen to the sounds, touch the grass, smell the air, and to pursue their own way.

The lights fade on the “meadow” and Henry is back in the cell with Bailey, who is delighted that he has learned to write his name. Henry, dejected, tells him not to learn to write, or else he might write a book and get himself into trouble—the way Henry has.

John enters and helps Henry pull an imaginary boat from an imaginary pond (they are back in the meadow). Henry is planning to take the children out in the boat for class, but John tells Henry that they have lost all but one student. Ellen enters and explains that her little brother, the last remaining student, will not be attending because their father believes Transcendentalism is an “affliction” and doesn’t want his children exposed to it.

Henry, since he has no class to teach, asks Ellen if she would like to go out on the boat. She agrees, and out on the water, Henry tries to explain Transcendentalism to her. He explains to Ellen that she loves her father, and always will, even if he is not beautiful or talented, and cannot fly like a bird or swim like a fish. She loves something about him that transcends what he actually is. This does not make sense to Ellen. He tells her that Transcendentalism can allow her to “BE,” rather than simply to “live.” She responds that she likes living.

Henry starts getting intense, and demands that Ellen stand up to her father and be more open-minded about her ideas. Ellen doesn’t like Henry rocking the boat (literally, for he is standing up in the boat) and wishes he would row her back to shore. She says she is not one of his fish or his birds and must simply wait for him to bring her back to dry land. Henry realizes that he has missed his chance and is frustrated. He agrees to take her back to shore on the condition that she attend church with his brother John, whom he believes is in love with her. She agrees. When they arrive back to shore, she asks Henry what will happen to his school. He answers by launching into a short rant about how men do too much talking anyway. His intensity frightens her and she runs away.

The lights come up on the cell again. Henry asks a sleeping Bailey what he thinks of marriage, and Bailey only snores in response. Henry then looks out the window and reflects aloud that behind these bars, alone with his thoughts, he can see the world for what it really is. Jail has made him freer than anyone else in Concord.

The lights come up on Henry’s family in church. Ellen sits beside John. Suddenly, Henry’s mother sees with horror that Henry has come into church pushing a wheelbarrow full of dirt. She begs him, “not on a Sunday.” Henry asks what they think they are doing in church. Deacon Ball responds, “feeding our souls!” Henry calls him selfish, and explains that he has been feeding the flora of Concord.

Waldo steps in with some good-natured jokes, and explains that for Henry, the American Declaration of Independence is not enough—he must declare his independence every day. The group disperses, Henry with his wheelbarrow and John with Ellen, leaving Mrs. Thoreau alone. She prays to God that he will not make Henry too strange, and then asks the Lord to “slip the word ‘yes’ into that young lady’s mouth.”

Lights fade and rise on Henry and John, laughing in the meadow. Henry assumes John’s laughter means that Ellen said yes to a proposal of marriage, and he congratulates him. John cannot stop laughing, and finally wheezes out that Ellen said no. Her father had forbid her to be with a Thoreau. John says he is laughing because he realizes that he and Henry are “a couple of monks.” John worries that his life will be lonely, but Henry grabs his hand and assures him that they will have each other until they are both old and grey.

The lights black out and there is the sound of church bells. A ministerial voice announces the death of John Thoreau. The lights come up on Mrs. Thoreau and Henry. Henry refuses to pray—he believes his brother’s death is an indication that God has stopped listening.

Ellen hurries onstage and asks Henry what happened. Henry, with bitter wit, that his brother died a heroic, glamorous death. He had thought of something funny while shaving, and nicked his finger—and then he died of blood poisoning. Henry is appalled most of all by the meaninglessness of the death. Ellen slowly suggests that perhaps God makes us feel pain so we can learn to transcend it. She says she has just come to understand Transcendentalism. She wonders if—even though John is no longer living—he continues to “be.”

The lights fade and then come back up on Henry and Waldo talking. They are making arrangements for Henry to work for Waldo—he wants to do manual labor. Henry will help with tasks around the house and gardens and look after Waldo’s son, Edward. As payment, Henry will be allowed to live out by the pond on Waldo’s property—the pond called “Walden.” When Henry, satisfied with the arrangement, departs, Lydian remarks that he is a strange man, for he seems to want nothing. Waldo says it may be the case that Henry wants too much.

The lights fade and come back up on Henry and Bailey back in their cell. Henry is telling Bailey about Walden, and Baily is thrilled and made envious by Henry’s description. He can’t imagine having such independence. Henry admits that sometimes he did have to go into town.

Lights fade and come back up on Henry walking down an imaginary street. Sam, the constable, approaches Henry deferentially and nervously about Henry not having paid his taxes. Henry defiantly says that he refuses to pay them. When Sam offers to pay them himself to keep Henry out of trouble, Henry commands him not to. A small crowd gathers, and Henry rhapsodizes about the unjust burden of taxes, saying he will not pay the salaries of the men in Washington so long as they do not serve him or his ideals. He says, “If I keep my mouth shut, I’m a criminal.” The townspeople lament that Henry will break his mother’s heart, but Henry insists that Sam take him away and lock him up.

Sam begrudgingly takes Henry into jail, where he collects his information. Henry makes a joke out of the simple questions Sam asks him. Then lights come up on Lydian reading a letter. She tells Waldo that Henry has been sent to jail. As Waldo takes the note, the lights rise on Mrs. Thoreau, who says that Henry being in jail is her worst nightmare come true.

Waldo says he must go help Henry, and rushes out. Meanwhile, Henry is telling Sam that to ask him to pay for a rifle is the same as asking him to fire it. He says he will not let his government make him into a killer. Sam, dejectedly, leaves Henry in the cell. Waldo rushes in and asks Henry what he is doing in jail. Henry says, “Waldo! What are you doing out of jail?”