Free Brecht Collected Plays: 5: Life of Galileo; Mother Courage and Her Children (World Classics) by Bertolt Brecht Page A

say? Nothing follows.
    GALILEO
laughing:
You just don’t want to know.
    ANDREA : Pick it up again. Why don’t I hang head downwards at night, then?
    GALILEO : Right: here’s the earth and here’s you standing on it.
He takes a splinter from a piece of firewood and sticks it into
the apple
. Now the earth’s turning round.
    ANDREA : And now I’m hanging head downwards.
    GALILEO : What d’you mean? Look at it carefully. Where’s your head?
    ANDREA
pointing:
There. Underneath.
    GALILEO : Really?
He turns it back:
Isn’t it in precisely the same position? Aren’t your feet still underneath? You don’t stand like this when I turn it, do you?
He takes out the splinter and puts it in upside down
.
    ANDREA : No. Then why don’t I notice it’s turning?
    GALILEO : Because you’re turning with it. You and the air above you and everything else on this ball.
    ANDREA : Then why does it look as if the sun’s moving?
    GALILEO
turns the apple and the splinter round again:
Right: you’re seeing the earth below you; that doesn’t change, it’s always underneath you and so far as you’re concerned it doesn’t move. But then look what’s above you. At present the lamp’s over your head, but once I’ve turned the apple what’s over it now; what’s above?
    ANDREA
turns his head similarly:
The stove.
    GALILEO : And where’s the lamp?
    ANDREA : Underneath.
    GALILEO : Ha.
    ANDREA : That’s great: that’ll give her something to think about.
Enter Ludovico Marsili, a rich young man
.
    GALILEO : This place is getting like a pigeon loft.
    LUDOVICO : Good morning, sir. My name is Ludovico Marsili.
    GALILEO
reading his letter of introduction:
So you’ve been in Holland?
    LUDOVICO : Where they were all speaking about you, Mr Galilei.
    GALILEO : Your family owns estates in the Campagna?
    LUDOVICO : Mother wanted me to have a look-see, find out what’s cooking in the world and all that.
    GALILEO : And in Holland they told you that in Italy, for instance, I was cooking?
    LUDOVICO : And since Mother also wanted me to have a look-see in the sciences …
    GALILEO : Private tuition: ten scudi a month.
    LUDOVICO : Very well, sir.
    GALILEO : What are your main interests?
    LUDOVICO : Horses.
    GALILEO : Ha.
    LUDOVICO : I’ve not got the brains for science, Mr Galilei.
    GALILEO : Ha. In that case we’ll make it fifteen scudi a month.
    LUDOVICO : Very well, Mr Galilei.
    GALILEO : I’ll have to take you first thing in the morning. That’ll be your loss, Andrea. You’ll have to drop out of course. You don’t pay, see?
    ANDREA : I’m off. Can I have the apple?
    GALILEO : Yes.
    Exit Andrea
.
    LUDOVICO : You’ll have to be patient with me. You see, everything in the sciences goes against a fellow’s good sound commonsense. I mean, look at that queer tube thing they’re selling in Amsterdam. I gave it a good looking-over. A green leather casing and a couple of lenses, one this way –
he indicates a concave lens
– and the other that way –
he indicates a convex lens
. One of them’s supposed to magnify and the other reduces. Anyone in his right mind would expect them to cancel out. They don’t. The thing makes everything appear five times the size. That’s science for you.
    GALILEO : What appears five times the size?
    LUDOVICO : Church spires, pigeons, anything that’s a long way off.
    GALILEO : Did you yourself see church spires magnified in this way?
    LUDOVICO : Yes, sir.
    GALILEO : And this tube has two lenses?
He makes a sketch on
a piece of paper
. Did it look like that?
Ludovico nods
. How old’s this invention?
    LUDOVICO : Not more than a couple of days, I’d say, when I left Holland; at least that’s how long it had been on the market.
    GALILEO
almost friendly:
And why does it have to be physics? Why not horsebreeding?
    Enter Mrs Sarti unobserved by Galileo
.
    LUDOVICO : Mother thinks you can’t do without a bit of science. Nobody can drink a glass of wine without science these days, you know.
    GALILEO : Why