Summary
Galileo complains to Virginia that his work is getting misinterpreted by the people who read it. Virginia then asks her father if the Grand Duke actually sent for him, and Galileo tells her he did not, but that he wants the book that Galileo wrote.
Virginia goes to the guard and asks if they will be let in to see the Grand Duke soon, and the guard impolitely sends her away. Galileo suggests that perhaps they ought to take Sagredo up on his offer to go to Padua and bring some Sicilian wine, but Virginia tells him that he would not be happy away from his books and reminds him that the court owes him two months' salary.
The Cardinal Inquisitor comes down the stairs, followed by the Grand Duke, Cosmo di Medici. Galileo tries to give him the book, but Medici tells him that he's worried about his eyes and it has made him skeptical of his findings, rejecting the book. Virginia becomes worried that they are in danger, but Galileo tells her that they can flee to another location. Before they can leave, an official brings Galileo to a coach, which will take him to the Holy Inquisition.
Scene 12. "The Pope." The Pope, formerly Cardinal Barberini, meets with the Cardinal Inquisitor. While the Inquisitor is unhappy with Galileo's findings, the Pope wants to uphold his research, saying, "I am not going to have the multiplication table broken." The Inquisitor is resistant, saying, "Are we to base human society on doubt and no longer on faith?" He gives a lengthy monologue about how the Pope's belief in Galileo's teachings is just weakening Catholicism in Europe. At the end of his speech, the Inquisitor says, "This evil man knows what he is up to when he writes his astronomical works not in Latin but in the idiom of fishwives and wool merchants."
The Pope is in favor of Galileo's teachings, suggesting that he has created charts that have improved the world, saying, "After all the man is the greatest physicist of our time, the light of Italy, and not just any old crank."
Scene 13. "Before the Inquisition, on June 22nd 1633, Galileo recants his doctrine of the motion of the earth." The little monk and Federzoni play chess, Andrea waits for news of Galileo, and Virginia kneels in prayer. They discuss Galileo's fate, the fact that he left the Venetian Republic, and that he carries a little stone in his pocket, his "proving stone."
The little monk notes that it is Galileo's 24th day in prison and that his chief hearing was the previous day. He remembers that Galileo's "sense of beauty" is "what forced him to look for the truth." Suddenly, a messenger enters and tells the group that Galileo will be back shortly and that he will recant soon. "I don't believe it," Andrea says.
After the messenger leaves, Andrea lists all of Galileo's findings in a loud voice. For a moment it sounds like Galileo will not recant, and his pupils rejoice, but the bell soon begins to ring, indicating that he will recant. They hear the town crier reading Galileo's recantation.
Galileo enters just as Andrea says, "Unhappy the land that has no heroes!" The stage directions note that Galileo is changed by his trials and is almost unrecognizable. Andrea begins to call Galileo names, then has to sit down, feeling ill. Galileo amends Andrea's statement, saying, "Unhappy the land where heroes are needed."
A reading appears on the curtain, a note from Galileo, comparing the different sized animals, ending with the statement, "The common assumption that large and small machines are equally durable is apparently erroneous."
Scene 14. "1633-1642. Galileo Galilei lives in a house in the country near Florence, a prisoner of the Inquisition till he dies. The 'Discorsi.'"
Galileo is old and half blind in a large room with a wooden table and a globe, "experimenting with a bent wooden rail and a small ball of wood." A monk sits on guard, when a peasant arrives with two plucked geese he has been told to deliver. Virginia accepts the geese and brings them to Galileo, who can barely see them.
Virginia tells Galileo to stop playing with the ball and suggests that he dictate to her a letter to the archbishop, but he asks her to read him some Horace instead. She insists that he continue to dictate a letter to the archbishop, and he does. In his letter, he agrees with the archbishop, "that it is better to hand out soup to [a group of disaffected rope-makers] in the name of Christian brotherly love than to pay them more for their hawsers and bell ropes. Especially as it seems wiser to encourage their faith rather than their acquisitiveness."
Andrea comes to visit Galileo, who is there to check on Galileo on behalf of the government. He is on his way to do research in Holland. "I don't know that he'll want to see you," Virginia says, "You never came." Galileo admits him, and asks what he is doing now, having heard that Andrea works on hydraulics. Andrea tells Galileo that his recantation has caused many philosophers and scientists to abandon their work for fear of the repercussions. "The only way I can do research is by going to Holland," Andrea says.
Galileo tells Andrea that he is repenting for his sins against the church, then asks why Andrea has come to visit him. He tells Andrea that he has finished the Discourses Concerning Two New Sciences: Mechanics and Local Motion.' Galileo tells Andrea that the transcript is inside the globe and encourages him to take it to Holland. "...You would of course have to bear the entire responsibility," he says, and Andrea is overjoyed; "This will found a new physics," he says.
Andrea marvels at the fact that Galileo recanted so that he could stay alive and make more scientific discoveries, but Galileo corrects him, saying, "I recanted because I was afraid of physical pain."
Galileo launches into a lengthy monologue about the fact that his discoveries "delighted the mass audience," meaning the workers. He comes to the conclusion that "a human race which shambles around in a pearly haze of superstition and old saws, too ignorant to develop its own powers, will never be able to develop those powers of nature which you people are revealing to it." Galileo expresses remorse for having handed over his discoveries to the authorities to be misused and altered.
Scene 15. "1637. Galileo's book, the 'Discorsi' crosses the Italian frontier." In an Italian frontier town, Andrea waits to have his papers checked by some guards. A group of children sing a religious song, as the guard asks Andrea why he is leaving Italy. "I'm a scholar," Andrea replies, as a group of boys begin talking to Andrea and asking him about what he's reading. When he tells them he's reading Aristotle, they mock him. While the guard is suspicious of Andrea, he ultimately decides that "nobody who wanted to hide something would put it under our noses like that."
The guard questions Andrea a bit more, as the local boys heckle him. The guard asks him what's in his box, and he tells him it's filled with 34 books. The guard lets him cross, and one of the boys insists that Andrea's box is possessed by the devil. Andrea scolds him, saying, "There are a lot of things we don't know yet, Giuseppe. We're really just at the beginning."
Summary
In the struggle between science and religion is the struggle between doubt and faith. While religion would have its followers depend on their faith to create meaning, Galileo's belief in the power of science is ultimately a contrary belief: in doubt, in his sense that the universe may be different from what we have always assumed it to be. Science, in Brecht's play, is positioned as a discipline that calls reality into question, where religion supplies airtight answers. Thus, Galileo's struggle with the authorities has to do with their belief in making sure that blind faith is upheld, while he is committed to throwing faith into question.
Galileo's insistence that "Someone who doesn't know the truth is just thick-headed. But someone who does know it and calls it a lie is a crook," is at the center of his philosophy. He believes that it is corrupt and indefensible to know something to be true and yet deny it, and the government of Italy is guilty of subduing the truth in order to maintain order. Thus Galileo is guided by reason, but also by this strong moral conviction, the sense that it is better to admit the truth than to try and hide it for the sake of keeping the status quo.
The major turn in the play occurs when Galileo recants his teachings, an event that his most loyal pupils thought would never occur, and which greatly disappoints them. After working tirelessly for years and years in the service of the truth, Galileo falls prey to the pressures of his era and takes back all of the scientific claims that he has put forth. His pupils feel betrayed by his decision, as it sets science backwards, and he too is changed by his decision.
Galileo's recantation comes at a high ideological price, one which compromises all of his philosophical and political beliefs. At the house where he is held captive in the country, he is forced to dictate letters to the archbishop that express his agreement with the archbishop's corrupt methods of rulership. In his letter, he says that "it seems wiser to encourage their faith rather than their acquisitiveness" in relation to a group of disgruntled rope-makers, displeased with their working conditions. Not only must Galileo recant on his own teachings, but he must pledge allegiance to an oppressive government, a much deeper humiliation.
The play ends with Galileo's protege, Andrea, carrying forth his scientific discoveries, traveling to Holland, a more progressive country. Andrea picks up where Galileo left off, both literally transporting his findings, as well as continuing to pursue science. After Galileo has been beaten down by having tried to sell his work to the state, he advises Andrea to be careful to not make his same mistakes. Andrea dutifully obeys, and closes out the play with a message of hope, a determination to look towards the future with curiosity and doubt, a scientific necessity—and, Brecht's play suggests, a moral one.
