In Darwin’s Day: A Play

Note: Many of the scientists in this play had actually already died by 1836, such as Lamarck, Hutton, and Malthus. Most of these men influenced Darwin through their written ideas more than their spoken ideas.

Act I

Narrator: A group of scientists and townspeople are gathered in a coffeeshop discussing their latest theories and ideas. Charles Darwin is just returning from his voyage on the Beagle.

Local Woman: Well, well, look who’s back from his trip on the Beagle! It’s good ol’ Chuck Darwin.

Hutton: Hey Charles, how was your trip?

Darwin: It was unbelievable! I saw so many magnificent life forms while there—both living and non-living! Fossils of giant beasts, lightning-fast rheas, gargantuan tortoises—some were so huge that one could actually ride on their backs like ponies!

Lamarck: Now Charles, that does sound magnificent! I’m so excited to hear more! But maybe later—we were just in the middle of a great discussion: our two geologist friends here, James and Charles, are telling us of their theories about our great planet!

Darwin: Really—is that so? Well, I’m very curious to hear about it!

Hutton: Well, as I see it, I just can’t simply believe that our dear planet has always been the way it appears today! My observations over the years-- of rocks, volcanoes, mountain ranges, erosion—all of this shows me that the earth is very dynamic. Mountain ranges form from shifting rock—then weather away by the forces of wind and water, only to settle on the sea floor and some day, be lifted up to form mountains again. It’s all just a huge cycle—the earth is changing, my friends!

Minister (taken aback): Preposterous! The earth—changing?!

Lyell: My research agrees with yours 100%, James. And to go a step further— this means that the earth can’t possibly be so young as 5,000 years old, as the Bible says. These processes of mountain building and erosion take time—maybe millions, or even billions of years! Now, I don’t want to be seen as a heathen of course for going against the good book, but I simply can’t believe that the earth can be just a few thousand years old. It’s got to be much older!

Darwin: Hmm…an old earth, eh?

Minister: Well, I do declare, what I’m hearing from all of you is blasphemous! Total blasphemy! How dare you contradict the teachings of the Bible! The earth and all life on it was created by God 5000 years ago! He created it in a certain way and it remains that way today! There has been no change!

Hutton: Now now, Father, do calm down. We’re not totally taking the hand of God out of this, mind you!

LaMarck: Yes, Father, please calm down—in fact, maybe we should change topics for a while. This is getting to be a rather heated discussion here. Ummm….so Darwin, tell us some more about your trip—what thoughts did it leave you with?

Darwin: Well, Jean, that’s what’s troubling me…

LaMarck: What do you mean?

Darwin: Well, on my trip, I kept getting hints that maybe life has changed over time.

Minister (interrupting): Blasphemy!

Lyell: Let him speak! What do you mean, Charles?

Darwin: Well, for example, I found many fossils in South America that seemed like ancient versions of the living species that I was seeing there. For example—I unearthed a giant fossilized beast that looked very much like the modern-day armadillo that we were catching and eating for breakfast! The similarities were quite striking.

Hutton: A giant armadillo-like creature—how interesting! Do continue.

Darwin: So I started thinking: if these fossils are indeed the ancient ancestors of modern species, then life has changed over time! Which is quite troubling—the notion of life changing flies in the face of all religious teachings I have ever heard!

Minister: It most surely does!! I’ve had enough of all of this bloody new-age “life changes” rubbish!

Darwin: Well, Father, although you call our ideas “new-age,” I would like to point out to you that these ideas about life and the earth changing aren’t totally new. Look at this poem I recently found as I was going through my grandfather’s old things after he died:

Organic life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.
— The Temple of Nature by Erasmus Darwin 1802

Minister: I’m leaving! (Minister angrily gets up and leaves).

Lyell: But Darwin, if you and your grandfather are right—the question is, how could life change over time? How could organisms acquire new powers and larger limbs, as the poem says? By what mechanism? I mean, James and I have an explanation for how the earth has changed over time—basically by the cycling of rocks propelled by heat sources emanating from the earth’s core. But living things aren’t rocks—how can species just morph over time into new species?

Darwin: Well, that’s what I’m stuck on…that’s what I haven’t figured out yet.

Lamarck: Well folks, funny you should mention this notion of life changing… because I’ve been saying the same thing myself for a long time now!

Hutton: You have?! Come now Jean, don’t try to steal all the credit…

Lamarck: I’m not! I published my idea a long time ago! I guess no one read it though…

Lyell: Ok Jean, please be so kind as to remind us of this idea of yours…

Lamarck: Gladly. Now tell me, friends, have you ever noticed how perfectly adapted many species are for their particular habitats and lifestyles? For example—a giraffe has just the perfect long neck for getting leaves from high in the trees; a moth is perfectly camouflaged for blending in with the bark of a tree; a seal is perfectly streamlined for sliding through the water.

Local Woman: Well of course we’ve all noticed that!

Local Man: Yes, of course—who hasn’t?

Lamarck: Well, it seems to me that THIS is how life changes: species change to fit their environments!

Darwin: Sure, that makes sense—I observed it everywhere on my trip—in the tortoises and finches I observed on the Galapagos Islands, in the rheas that I observed in South America…

Hutton (interrupting): But Jean, that still doesn’t fully explain it. How do they change—that is the question?

Lamarck: Well, imagine that, back in ancient times, some giraffe-like animal was grazing on the savanna one day. But all of the lower leaves on the trees have been eaten already.

Darwin: Ok…

LaMark: So, the ancient giraffe-like animal starts stretching and stretching until it can reach those higher leaves, causing its neck to get just a little bit longer!

Lyell: Hmmm…

LaMarck: Well, when that ancient giraffe-like animal has offspring, its offspring will all have slightly longer necks! Over several generations, one can see how this ancient giraffe ancestor could change into –voila!—the modern giraffe!

Local Woman: Well, seems plausible I guess…

Darwin: I don’t know Jean, I think that seems a little unrealistic.

Hutton: Yeah—something just doesn’t quite make sense about it.

LaMarck: Well, do either of you have a better explanation?

Darwin: Not yet…

Narrator: Just then, an economist by the name of Thomas Malthus* enters the coffee shop.

Malthus: Hello, everyone! Looks like you’re all having quite an intense conversation! I just saw the minister outside on the street—he looked a little distraught!

Hutton: Yes, distraught indeed. We were talking about this the idea of whether or not species can change over time. Tell me Tom, what have you been studying lately?

Malthus: Well, I’ve been working on another book about population growth of course—my favorite topic.

Darwin: Another book—but I haven’t read your first one yet!

Malthus (to Darwin): Well, dear friend, maybe you should be spending more time reading instead of traveling around the world chasing down giant birds and riding tortoises! But that’s ok—if you really want to read it, I have an extra copy with me. I’d be curious to know what you think about it.

Darwin: What’s it about?

Malthus: Well, it’s a little depressing—basically I did a study and found out that our lovely human race is reproducing out of control! We are now having children at a higher rate than people are dying! And if we continue doing this, we will surely run out of resources—food, space, etc.

Darwin (deep in thought): Hmmm, interesting…so more offspring are being produced than can survive…well Tom, I’ll read it for sure, first chance I get.

Malthus: Please do. I’d like to hear what you think about it—you always have such good insights!

Darwin: Thanks, Tom. Well everyone, I better be going now. I need to rest up from my trip—I still have a bad case of sea-legs from being on the Beagle. It was good to see all of you!

Everyone: Bye, Charles—rest up!

Narrator: Darwin begins his walk home, overwhelmed with his thoughts about his trip as well as his discussions with his friends. Do living things change over time? And if so, how? Darwin was unsatisfied with the theory proposed by

Lamarck. He just couldn’t see how species could acquire traits during their lifetime and pass them onto offspring. But Darwin himself didn’t have a better explanation for how living things could change—at least not yet.

Darwin (to himself): I’ll figure this out if it’s the last thing I do!

Act II

Narrator: Twenty-two years later: 1858. Darwin and his wife Emma are sitting in the parlor.

Darwin (talking to Emma, his wife): Emma dear, would you mind reading over this passage from the introduction to my book? I’m trying to summarize my theory of how species could change over time. I want to be sure it’s clear.

Emma (reading from Darwin’s unpublished book, The Origin of Species):

“As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.”

Darwin: Well? What do you think?

Emma (hesitating): Hmmm…well… It’s a little wordy don’t you think?

Darwin: Wordy! Hmph!

Emma: Dear, why don’t you just summarize it like this:

1. Organisms give birth to more offspring than can possibly survive, setting up a struggle for existence

2. There is variation among these offspring

3. Those offspring with traits that are better suited for the environment survive better and produce more offspring than others

4. The favored traits (if heritable) are passed down to the next generation

Darwin: Well that surely does sum it up!

Emma: But what are you going to call this theory of yours?

Darwin: Well, I’m not sure…hadn’t thought about that yet.

Emma: How about The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection?

Darwin: Wonderful idea!

Emma: And, um, Charles dear, when exactly do you plan on publishing this book? I know you’ve been working on it for quite some time now, but honestly, when will it be finished?!

(Doorbell rings)

Postman: Delivery, sir—for a Mr. Charles Darwin.

Darwin (opening the envelope): Thank you, good day.

Emma: What is it?

Darwin (reading): Oh my! Oh dear!!

Emma: What? Enough already, tell me what’s going on?

Darwin: It’s a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace—you remember him, right? It turns out that he’s come up with the same theory of natural selection that I have—on his own!

Emma: That’s preposterous, Charles, you must be joking!

Darwin: Indeed I am not, though I wish I were. Look here at this article he sent.

Emma (reading): I don’t believe it…

Well Charles, now you surely have some motivation to hurry up and publish that book—before Mr. Wallace beats you to it!

Darwin: No joke—I’m off to my typewriter! I’ve got a lot to do!

Thought/ Discussion Questions

Part I: Influences on Darwin

1. How do you think the geologists Lyell and Hutton influenced Darwin?

2. How did the economist Malthus influence Darwin?

3. What other person (or people) influenced Darwin’s ideas, and how?

4. What was Lamarck’s theory for how species change over time?

5. What part of Lamarck’s theory did Darwin agree with?

6. What part of Lamarck’s theory did Darwin disagree with?

7. Why is it somewhat misleading (and a little unfair) to call Charles Darwin the “Father” of Evolution by Natural Selection?

Part II: The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection

The Tenets of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection

Organisms give birth to more offspring than can possibly survive, setting up a struggle for existence
There is variation among these offspring
Those offspring with traits that are better suited for the environment survive better and produce more offspring than others
The favored traits (if heritable) are passed down to the next generation

8. Why is a “struggle for existence” necessary in order for evolution by natural selection to occur?

9. Why is there variation among organisms—where does it come from?

10. If we say that a person is physically fit, we usually mean that they are strong, fast, have big muscles, or have a high level of endurance. Sometimes people call natural selection “survival of the fittest.” Why is this not a completely accurate synonym for natural selection?

11. In the last part of Darwin’s theory, it says that favored traits will only be passed to the next generation if they are heritable.

a. What does this mean?

b. What is an example of a non-heritable trait?

12. You will often hear people say that “Evolution has no goal.” What do you think people mean by this?