Although the play is divided into two Acts, there are no delineations between scenes despite the fact that the setting shifts back and forth between the present and various periods in the past. Despite the fact that these flashbacks take place in different locations, the “setting” of the play never changes. The set is essentially a bare bones jail cell and the shifts in time and place are indicated through various other means. Indeed, the entire play could very easily be performed without any notable break between Act One and Act Two, though to do so would diminish the impact of the Thoreau’s famous retort which brings the curtain down on the first act.
The choice of the jail cell as the play’s lone scenic design is important both literally and thematically: the “present” time relates the actual historical event in which Henry David Thoreau chose to be jailed rather than pay taxes to support a contemporary war against Mexico which he considered immoral. So in the “present” the cell literally holds Henry prisoner, but as narrative explores through fluidity of time several episodes from Thoreau’s past, the jail also becomes a metaphor for the imprisonment of ideas.
The opening of the play quick establishes the fluidity of time by flashing forward to a point in time in which an aged Ralph Waldo Emerson has trouble recalling even the name his old friend Henry David Thoreau. After this brief glimpse into the future, the audience is suddenly thrown back into the past (or the play’s “present”) when Henry is in his cell with his mother asking what he’s done. Then there is a shift back to Waldo in the future that seamlessly blends into a flashback of Waldo as a younger man giving a lecture which causes Henry to lapse momentarily into a kind of trance from which his brother’s appearance brings him and tosses both of them back into the past when Henry was growing disappointed with everything about Harvard except for the lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
And so goes the rest of the Act One as flashbacks reveal Thoreau’s relationships with Emerson and his wife Lydian and Thoreau’s mother and brother in the past while in the “present” Henry becomes outraged that his cellmate—a black man accused of burning down a barn—has been left lingering in jail for months still waiting a trial. The flashbacks demonstrate Henry’s admiration of Ralph Waldo and his own intensifying reputation for being such an independent thinker that he is increasingly viewed as strange by nearly everybody with whom he comes into contact.
As he teaches his illiterate cellmate how to spell his own name in the “present” a flash back to the past centers on Thoreau’s actual career as a teacher which brought him into conflict with Deacon Nehemiah Ball of the Concord School Committee. Henry’s strangeness and independence have put his teaching methods at odds with the official curricula, but he is also at odds with Ball’s religious views as well.
In response to this conflict, Henry and his brother John decide to start an alternative school of their own. Although things start well, the school soon begins losing students and this failure is juxtaposed against both brothers being attracted to a young woman named Ellen Sewell. She rejects both brothers as well as their embrace of Transcendentalism and the brothers agree that her real preference would have been to enjoy both brothers at once. After she rejects John’s proposal, the time moves forward slightly to John’s funeral after he absurdly succumbs to the ravages of a tiny cut from a rusty blade.
From here, the forward movement in the past shows Henry being employed by Waldo as a handyman on his property and from there to his celebrated period living in a cabin near Walden Pond. It is only as Act One draws to a close that the reason for Henry’s being in jail is actually revealed. Waldo arrives and asks Henry what he’s doing in jail and the curtain closes on Thoreau’s infamous retort: “Waldo! What are you doing out of jail?”
Act Two begins with Lydian Emerson arriving at the jail to suggest that Henry would be better off if he would just “go along” but these words and everything they imply are anathema to Thoreau and he responds with furious outrage. When his cellmate asks Henry to be his lawyer, Thoreau refuses and this leads to a shift back to Walden and a time when an escaped slave—also named Henry—making his way to Canada received food and comfort from the writer. This leads to a point forward when Henry and Waldo have an argument over Emerson’s lack of activism on behalf of protecting runaway slaves. It turns out that Henry—the slave—as been shot and this drives Thoreau to accuse Waldo of talking the talk, but not walking the walk on the issue of opposition of slavery. Henry excitedly rings the town bell with the news that Ralph Waldo Emerson is going to give a speech on the issue, but Lydian instead informs him that her husband is merely going to write an essay. Henry tries to ring the bell to get the assembled crowd to stay and wait, but the bell makes no sound, the crowd disperses and Henry falls into a despondency that brings on the moment when time and place are finally completely shattered.
Back in his cell in the “present” Henry is having a nightmare and that nightmare becomes realized within the context of the Mexican War which stimulated Henry’s being in jail in the first place. All the major character reappear on stage, but in different roles: his cellmate is now a solider, Deacon Ball is a general and Waldo is the President. As Henry struggles to communicate with Waldo, he is stricken mute. When Ball inquires about the President’s plan for action, Waldo’s response is merely that he needs time to think. The runaway slave shows up as a Mexican soldier Waldo’s son Edward suffers a wound and still Waldo as President hesitates, suggesting only that he needs to collect his thoughts to write an essay.
The nightmare reaches a feverish pitch when Henry refuses to take a musket from a sergeant. Henry’s mother appears with the advice that one should always do the right thing even when it’s wrong and this absurdity leads to the most nightmarish sequence in not just the nightmare but the entire play as everybody else on stage starts chanting—with “demonic glee” according to the stage directions—for Henry to “GO ALONG.” At this point, Henry’s brother John rises from the grave to show up as a soldier, only to immediately get shot and die again.
Henry wakes up from his nightmare in his cell and is told that his tax burden no longer exists as it has been paid by someone else. A livid Henry demands that the Sheriff tell him who committed this outrage and he learns that it was his Aunt Louisa. As Henry leaves the jail, he informs his cellmate that it is time for to leave Walden, quit hiding and become a more active participant in society.
