Evolution plays – Play 3: The Great Debate
The cast
Narrator – to set the scenes
Presenter – to read the stage directions
Charles Darwin
Emma Darwin – Charles’ wife
Sir Joseph Hooker – Charles’ friend
Sir Charles Lyell – another friend of Charles
Sir Tomas Huxley – a great supporter of Darwin’s ideas
Bishop Wilberforce (‘Soapy Sam’) – a great debator and church figure at the time
Scene 1
Narrator
The scene is set in the study of Charles Darwin in Down House. It is 1856, 20 years since the
Beagle’s voyage came to an end. Charles has published a very popular book about his
voyages and has married Emma and moved to a house near London. He is seen sitting around
a table with two friends, the famous geologists, Sir Joseph Hooker and Sir Charles Lyell.
Sir Charles
Well, Charles, your ideas on how new species could arise seem very well advanced to me
now. You have published so much evidence to support them.
Sir Joseph
Yes, Charles. Tell us again how you arrived at them.
Charles
All through my work over the years I have observed variations between living things of the
same type. I know that people have been breeding animals like pigeons for years by selecting
certain variants to breed from. So these variations must be passed down from generation to
generation.
Sir Charles
What about those finches that you saw on the Galapagos Islands on your voyage?
Charles
Well, I think they probably changed into the different species that we see today from an
ancestral type of finch that arrived on the new volcanic islands from the mainland. The
finches probably had slight differences and some of these new types were more suited to live
in particular places than others.
Sir Charles
(dubiously) But with so many finch types breeding, why aren’t the islands overrun with these
birds?
Sir Joseph
Have you read that book by Thomas Malthus? He says that the human race would soon
overrun our planet if it were not for famine, war and disease.
Charles
(excitedly) Exactly! There is a struggle for survival where only the fittest survive. New
varieties of finch that are better suited to live and feed in a particular part of an island are
more likely to survive and so live to breed to make more of the same – eventually a new
species arises.
Sir Joseph
(excitedly) Charles! You must publish these ideas!
Charles
Wait – I must look at more evidence. The pigeon study for example – people will need to be
convinced. (they all get up and Charles shows his friends to the door)
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© Ian Abrahams and Martin Braund (2012) Performing Science. London: Continuum.
Scene 2
Narrator
It is 1858, two years later. Darwin and his two friends, Lyell and Hooker, are again seated in
the study. Darwin’s wife, Emma, enters holding a letter. Charles is feeling very weak and
quite ill.
Emma
Charles, here is a letter that has just arrived for you. Are you well enough to read it?
Charles
(in a rather weary voice) Ah my dear – just tell me who it is from and what it says.
Emma
(she reads through the letter for a moment) It’s from some fellow called Alfred Wallace. He
says that he has been collecting in South America and has noticed that so many animals are
competing for food – vast numbers are dying – he then says that some animals seem to be
better able to survive than others and these live on to have their young.
Sir Joseph
(he jumps up, grabs the letter from Emma and advances towards a rather shocked Charles)
Charles, you realize what this means!?
Charles
(rather despondently) Yes, it means this Wallace chap must publish his work with those
ideas.
Sir Charles
No, Charles, you must publish your ideas at last – or at least jointly along with Wallace. Sir
Joseph and I will write to the Linnaean Society and enclose copies of both your works along
with an explanation.
Sir Joseph
Yes, this is the stimulus that we have been waiting for all these years.
Charles
I shall call it An Essay on the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
Scene 3
Narrator
It is 1860, two years later in the house of Thomas Huxley. He is standing holding a copy of
the Times newspaper, facing Sir Charles Lyell and Sir Joseph Hooker.
Thomas
Have you two read some of the things people are saying about Darwin’s theories on Natural
Selection?
Sir Charles
Yes. I believe even Charles’ old colleague, Adam Sedgewick, said that the principles were
false. He seems to be annoyed that the theory spreads over millions of years of evolution and
is worried that it makes all of us independent of a creator.
Sir Joseph
Hasn’t Bishop Wilberforce thrown his, not inconsiderable, weight into the arguments against
Darwin?
Thomas
Yes. There is an article in today’s Times (he reads from parts of the article) ‘If such changes
are happening… where is the proof around us… is it credible that all favourable varieties of
turnips are tending to become men when there is no evidence for even simple one-celled
plants to become simple one-celled animals.’
Sir Joseph
I’ve heard that there is to be a meeting of the British Association at Oxford on Saturday to
debate the new ideas on evolution.
Thomas
(he looks again at his paper) Yes, here it is! There’s an advert for the meeting. Bishop
Wilberforce is to speak!
Sir Charles
Will Darwin go to defend his ideas?
Sir Joseph
No. He is depressed by all the criticism and Emma says that he is far too ill with the
recurrence of that disease he caught in South America.
http://education.abrahamsbraund.continuumbooks.com
© Ian Abrahams and Martin Braund (2012) Performing Science. London: Continuum.
Sir Charles
Thomas – you are one of Darwin’s greatest supporters. You must go to Oxford on Saturday to
stand up to Wilberforce and his cronies and defend those ideas which are so dear to us.
Thomas
I’ll go, but I tell you – I’m not looking forward to it. Wilberforce is reckoned to be one of the
most powerful and persuasive debators in the country.
Scene 4
Narrator
The scene is the chamber of the Oxford Debating Society. Bishop Wilberforce (‘Soapy Sam’)
has just delivered an eloquent, but very biased, speech against Darwin’s ideas and in support
of the Church’s teaching on Special Creation. At the end of his speech he turns to Thomas
Huxley.
Wilberforce
(standing and pointing to Thomas Huxley opposite, speaking loudly) Is it through his
grandmother or his grandfather that the gentleman opposite considers himself to be descended
from a monkey? (The bishop smiles and holds out his arms to the crowd who cheer and clap
until he sits down)
Thomas
(seated and muttering to himself) The Lord hath delivered him into mine hands.
Narrator
Thomas Huxley then delivered a marvellous speech at the Oxford meeting outlining the
Darwinian ideas and giving much evidence to support them. He is winding up his speech.
Thomas
(standing, turning towards the seated Bishop) I asserted and I repeat that a man has no reason
to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should
feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man – a man of restless and versatile intellect –
who, not content with a success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions
which he knows little about, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the
attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals
to religious prejudices. (Thomas then sits down, having completed his speech)
Narrator
The audience clapped and cheered for a full ten minutes. Soapy Sam (the bishop) was clearly
annoyed. Thomas had exposed the weakness in his speech as the bishop had lowered the tone
of the debate to a personal and insulting level. Over the next 20 years the Darwinian theories
were to gain an increasing level of acceptance across the world.
http://education.abrahamsbraund.continuumbooks.com
© Ian Abrahams and Martin Braund (2012) Performing Science. London: Continuum.