The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail is a two-act American play by Robert E. Lee and Jerome Lawrence written in 1969.
The play is based on the early life of the title character, Henry David Thoreau, leading up to his night spent in a jail in Concord, Massachusetts.
[1] Writing in The New York Times, Howard Taubman described the ideological relevance of the play to contemporary audiences, stating "this play and its protagonist, though they are of the 19th century, are speaking to today's concerns: an unwanted war in another land, civil disobedience, the interdependence of man and nature, education, the role of government and the governed.
The play quickly shifts to Henry's current time in jail because he refused to pay the tax to support the war, where he meets Bailey, a homeless man falsely accused of arson.
Henry, who would have graduated from Harvard, but refused to pay the one dollar fee to receive his diploma, becomes a schoolmaster and attempts to teach a class against the school's curriculum, but Deacon Ball—a logical, respected teacher—makes him flog the children, after which he quits.