Written in 1931
SUMMARY
The play opens with defendants, lawyers, and court officers waiting in Judge Dunfumy’s courtroom. Judge Dunfumy enters and tells the Court Clerk that because he is in a bad mood he plans to clear the docket and find everyone guilty. The first defendant, Cliff Mullins, is convicted of assaulting his wife and sentenced to ninety years in jail. The Judge proceeds to send a spectator in the courtroom to prison for ten years at hard labor for having a new deck of cards in his pocket. The next defendant, a bootlegger, is fined five thousand dollars and sentenced to ten years in jail. The final defendant is represented by a lawyer, but the Judge refuses to hear the case because he wants to take a pretty girl in the courtroom home.
WHY YOU SHOULD READ THIS PLAY
- Hurston is primarily known as a novelist and anthropologist. This play is part of a collection of manuscripts found in the Library of Congress. Read more about the LOC Collection HERE
- The play is a variation of a traditional burlesque courtroom scene featuring Black characters.
- The play is very similar in tone to Pigmeat Markham’s “Here Comes the Judge” act (and song) from Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.
- While the play is over the top and features exaggerated scenarios to make a point about the injustice of the legal system, the Judge’s repeated miscarriages of justice are plausible. People are convicted and sentenced without evidence or due process.
MEMORABLE LINES
SETTING: Usual court-room arrangement, except that there is a large red arrow pointing off-stage left, marked “To Jail.”
* * *
JUDGE: I’d give a canary bird twenty years for peckin’ at an elephant. (to CLERK) Bring ‘em on.
* * *
JUDGE: You better have a strong determination, and you better tell a good experience.
JEMIMA: Yes, I sold it and I’ll sell it again.
* * *
JUDGE: Mules must be respected.
* * *
JUDGE: Lemme ast you something. Didn’t you know dat all de women in dis town belongs to me?
HISTORICAL NOTES
- This play was written in between the time period when Hurston was primarily writing poetry and when she started writing novels.
- Hurston collaborated with Langston Hughes on the play Mule Bone in 1930. The process of writing the play broke up their friendship and the play was not produced until 1991.
- Hurston conducted anthropological fieldwork on Vodou and Hoodoo in Florida, Haiti, and Jamaica.
- Hurston graduated from Barnard College in 1925, where she was a classmate of Margaret Mead.
Read Lawing and Jawing HERE
Photo Credit: VBlock, “Gavel,” 2021