[Editor's note: When we received the latest book by Dava Sobel, author of the multiple-award-winning Longitude, we were intrigued to see that, halfway through her discussions of the life of Copernicus, Sobel inserts a one-act play. We asked her to write a new play for HuffPost Books readers - this time, featuring the two sides of her writing personality, battling over the best way to tell Copernicus' story. This is what she wrote.]
The Copernicus Idea
Dava Sobel, The Playwright (DSP): I have a great idea for a play.
Dava Sobel, The Author (DSA): Oh?
DSP: Picture this: There's a reclusive old astronomer living in the north of Poland in the 16th century. All his life, he's been writing a book that will turn the cosmos inside out by claiming that the Earth revolves around the Sun instead of remaining motionless at the center of the universe. Naturally he's afraid to go public.
DSA: You want to write a play about Copernicus? Why?
DSP: Think of him clinging to this bombshell that goes against common sense and two thousand years of received wisdom. Until one day, a young genius shows up at the old one's door. He says he's heard about the theory and feels the world might be ready for it. Trouble is, he's the wrong religion. He's come from Martin Luther's own university in Germany--at the peak of the Protestant Reformation--to the old man's Catholic diocese--where the bishop has banished all the Lutherans!
DSA: That's not an original idea. Those things really happened. That's exactly how Copernicus got talked into to publishing On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres.
DSP: Ah, but what did they say to each other, the young genius and the old recluse?
DSA: I don't know.
DSP: That's my point.
DSA: Nobody knows.
DSP: I know that, but think of the dramatic tension. This illegal alien rides into town, wins the old man's confidence, then convinces him to do what he's avoided doing for three decades. That must have been some conversation, don't you think?
DSA: People didn't record conversations in the 16th century.
DSP: Aren't you curious?
DSA: Some things are just lost to history.
DSP: But one could imagine the dialogue.
DSA: Imagine?
DSP: Based on what's known of the facts, of course. How the two of them overcame all their differences for the sake of an idea. How the manuscript got to the printer. How the book changed the world.
DSA: You mean make it up?
DSP: To recreate the yeastiness of the situation.
DSA: I wouldn't touch that. I've based my entire career as a journalist on not making up things.
DSP: As long as I'm candid about calling the work a play, who's to fault me?
DSA: Copernicus, for one. His genius disciple Rheticus for another. How can you put words in the mouth of a real person?
DSP: I don't mean to be cavalier about it. I would do all the research, make the best possible guesses, even quote some of the very lines that the two of them wrote in their published works, their letters.
DSA: No. A true story from the annals of science history deserves a straightforward, factual treatment.
DSP: It would work better as a play. The two of them go through their whole argument--"You must publish," "Are you mad?" "Don't be so stubborn," whatever--and then the old man dies at the end, the minute his friends put the finished book in his hands.
DSA: That part is almost too melodramatic to be borne. It will never work on stage.
DSP: But it really happened.
DSA: Yes. That's why it should be told as a true story.
DSP: The record is so thin, though. You can't get a good sense of Copernicus the man, because he didn't leave behind enough personal papers to reveal what he thought and felt about things.
DSA: He believed he knew the true structure of the universe. That's something to go on.
DSP: He's a ghost. A cipher.
DSA: I bet there are plenty of clues to his character in the historical documents.
DSP: Try it. You'll see. You'll constantly be stuck in circumlocutions.
DSA: At least I won't be skirting the truth.
DSP: You'll be saying things like, "Perhaps this" and "Maybe that," or "Historians think it likely that..."
DSA: So? What's wrong with admitting the limits of certainty?
DSP: Why would you even bother telling his story if you couldn't bring something new to it?
DSA: But there isn't any new evidence. No documents I know of that others have overlooked. That's why I haven't tried.
DSP: That's why it's time to come at him in a new way. The story lends itself perfectly to the play form. Trust me, if Michael Frayn or Tom Stoppard had known about Copernicus and Rheticus, this play would have been written by now.
DSA: Go on, then. Write your play.
DSP: I will. You'll see.
DSA: And I'll write the story my way. Just to keep you honest. And to keep anyone who reads your play from forming an overly fictionalized picture of Copernicus.
DSP: Fair enough.
DSA: It's a deal.
Curtain