Show Plot Night Thoreau Spent in Jail

Authors: Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee

Time Period: 

• Primary Present: 1846 (during the Mexican–American War)
• Flashbacks: Spans roughly the 1830s through 1846
• Historical Context of Creation: Written in 1969 during the Vietnam War as an intentional parallel against modern state conflicts

Setting: Concord, Massachusetts (including the jail cell, Harvard University, Walden Pond, and the Emerson household)

Summary: The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail is a two-act play that dramatizes Henry David Thoreau’s refusal to pay a poll tax to protest the Mexican–American War, using flashbacks in a jail cell to explore civil disobedience, conscience, and government.