Two huge egos battling? He can relate

“Writing a play is hard,” Richard N. Goodwin reflects. “I found it the most difficult thing I’d ever undertaken. It’s much easier to write a national speech for a U.S. president than to write a play.”

Goodwin is one of the few men in the world who could offer such an opinion based on personal experience. In the 1960s, he was a speechwriter for two Democratic presidents, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Now at age 71, he has finally made his debut as a dramatist.

His play, “The Hinge of the World,” had its world premiere late last month at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in this attractive, affluent town in commuter country beyond London’s southwest suburbs. Goodwin has turned to the early 17th century for inspiration. “The Hinge of the World” outlines a dramatic confrontation between Galileo, the Italian mathematician, philosopher and astronomer, and Pope Urban VIII. The play’s lengthy subtitle claims the men “battle for the soul of the world.”

“It struck me that here were these two mammoth figures, two of the greatest egos of the 17th century,” Goodwin said, “and they were in mortal combat with each other. It seemed to me this was a natural drama.”

The topic has been tackled before, by German Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht, whose “Life of Galileo” also deals with the spirit of free inquiry in conflict with a powerful ideology. Brecht wrote it in 1937-39, in the shadow of the rise of Nazism.

Although his play is far removed from modern times, Goodwin could draw on his experiences in and around the Oval Office: “I know something about men of power. And these two men behaved as people I know have behaved.”

Goodwin was familiar with power and manipulation even before his speechwriting career. In the late 1950s, as an idealistic young Harvard Law graduate, he worked for a congressional subcommittee investigating corruption on network TV game shows and uncovered evidence of fixing. (The episode was detailed in Robert Redford’s 1994 film “Quiz Show,” in which Rob Morrow played Goodwin.)

Galileo’s dispute with the pope arose because his book effectively advocated the Copernican view of physical reality, including the belief that Earth revolved around the sun. The Catholic Church regarded the Copernican system as a heresy. As a result, the Inquisition summoned Galileo to Rome, where the pope had him placed under house arrest and forbade publication of his future work.

Goodwin’s view that this confrontation was a turning point in world history gives the play its title. “Obviously, scientific reason has become a new faith, and it seriously diminishes the power of God,” he said. “The play is ambivalent about that. A lot has been lost by not having some anchor of belief and mystery. With every new scientific theory that comes along to explain the mystery of life, we think we have more information. But it seems to me the more [theories] we have, the less we know.”

He admitted that “maybe 99% of the modern audience would think Galileo was right, but I was anxious not to write this play and come down on one side or another. I don’t like didactic theater, and I don’t like plays that tell me what to think. I had to give the pope some powerful arguments.”

Certainly the themes gave the first-night audience plenty to talk about. “Overhearing some of those divergent points of view afterward,” Goodwin said, “I felt I’d accomplished something.”

Getting the play staged was an accomplishment in itself. He first had the idea for the play about seven years ago and took three years to finish a script, writing it at his home in Concord, Mass. It was published in the U.S. in book form in 1998. Meanwhile, British friends sent his script to theater directors. Emerging talent Edward Hall -- who recently directed a West End production of “Macbeth” and last year “Rose Rage,” a reworking of Shakespeare’s two Henry VI plays -- expressed interest. “I flew over to Britain immediately, met Edward and liked him,” Goodwin recalled. “He seemed to understand the play and certainly seemed capable of directing it.”

But Hall had heavy commitments, and Goodwin, without a producer, set about raising money for a production. “My timing was unfortunate,” he says, shrugging. “Just as I was getting people interested, the stock market collapsed. But finally we put it all together: $450,000 plus some money the Guildford theater threw in.”

Hall, son of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Sir Peter Hall, was able to attract a strong cast of 13 actors -- not household names, but several with experience in such ensembles as the Royal Shakespeare Company. There are now hopes for a transfer to London’s West End in the fall.

“The truth is, I worked on it so long and hard, I just wanted to see one performance,” Goodwin said. “I saw it and that was a culmination of all the work.”

Politics as interlude

On the day after opening night, Goodwin is joined by his wife, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, at his Guildford hotel. He is a rumpled figure, with long, wayward hair that grows almost to his shoulders. His company is agreeable, his wit dry and his presence warm; a beaming smile frequently lights up his creased features.

Although agreeing his is a late start to a career as a playwright, Goodwin insisted that “ever since I left political life, I’ve been writing. It’s as though the political thing was an interlude in my life. The first thing I had published when I left the White House was a poem in the New Yorker. I’ve written regularly for them since.” He has also written nonfiction books: His “Remembering America” was the inspiration for “Quiz Show.”

But now he has a taste for writing plays and is planning his next one: a “battle for America” between two men, Johnson and Robert Kennedy. This time, Goodwin can use firsthand experience: He was special assistant to Johnson and originated the phrase “the Great Society.” He helped draft the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and wrote for Johnson the speech of which he is most proud: “We used ‘we shall overcome,’ which was the anthem of the civil rights movement,” he said. “I read Martin Luther King burst into tears when he heard that speech.”

Goodwin became the first person to quit Johnson’s administration because he opposed the Vietnam War; subsequently, he directed Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign in New Hampshire and Wisconsin, and served as campaign advisor to Robert Kennedy.

“He and Lyndon Johnson disliked each other. Bobby Kennedy said Johnson was the most formidable human being he’d ever met. They’re both tragic figures of different kinds. Johnson was totally ill-equipped to deal with the Vietnam War, and it destroyed him. Robert Kennedy was a man of passionate intensity. I don’t know how he’d have done as president, but it would have been interesting.”

Goodwin has been close enough to powerful men and key events to have been portrayed three times on film: in “Quiz Show” and two TV movies last year, “RFK” (David Paymer played Goodwin) and John Frankenheimer’s “Path to War” (James Frain played him).

He still occasionally receives requests for his speechwriting skills: He drafted Vice President Al Gore’s graceful concession speech after the controversial 2000 presidential election. Yet Goodwin, a lifelong Democrat, is happy not to be involved with the incumbent of the Oval Office, even in these momentous times: “You can write speeches,” he said. “But you can’t make people something they aren’t.”