Like the young pupils of the fictional St. Nicholas Church School, John Patrick Shanley grew up in the Bronx in the 1960s, misbehaving his way through a Catholic school education. While Shanley drew on his working-class neighborhood and personal history for Doubt, the play’s real catalyst was his fascination with America’s collective resistance to uncertainty. When he started writing in 2003, in the wake of the United States-led invasion of Iraq, Shanley was transfixed by the volatility of clashing political commentators on television and the erosion of intellectual debate. “Everyone had a very entrenched opinion, but there was no real exchange, and if someone were to say ‘I don’t know,’ it was as if they would be put to death in the media coliseum,” he recalls. “There was this mask of certainty in our society that I saw hardening to the point that it was developing a crack—and that crack was doubt.”
His title in hand, Shanley mapped his approach. “I wanted to explore the idea that doubt has an infinite nature, that it allows for growth and change, whereas certainty is a dead-end,” he says. “Where there is certainty, the conversation is over, and I’m interested in the conversation, especially because another word for that conversation is ‘life.’”
Doubt is often described as an examination of the Catholic sex abuse scandals, but despite Shanley’s connection to the events—a family member was molested by Father John Geoghan, one of the serial rapists exposed by the criminal investigation into the Archdiocese of Boston—he wasn't interested in dramatizing the real-life cases. “I was looking for a polarizing situation, one in which most people would brook no hesitation in condemning a person—and then throwing those assumptions back at the audience in a different light,” Shanley says. Doubt questions the value and nature of moral certitude, and what happens when belief falters to reveal the great unknown.
Shanley set Doubt in 1964, during a time of sweeping change both for the Catholic Church, thanks to the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), and for the United States, which was still reeling from the Kennedy assassination even as it headed into a social and sexual revolution, and as the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum. “[1964] was when I started becoming aware that the foundation on which my world was built was not as firm as I thought,” reflects Shanley. “That was a pivotal time of going from complete faith in establishments and hierarchies, to questioning those establishments and hierarchies—like the military, and organized religion. I wanted to capture something about that lost moment.”
The clash between old and new manifests in the struggle between Sister Aloysius, the rigid, by-the-book principal of the parish school, and Father Flynn, the charismatic priest trying to upend the school’s traditional customs. After Sister Aloysius learns of Father Flynn’s potentially inappropriate relationship with Donald Muller, the school’s first Black student, she embarks on a crusade to remove him from his post, despite having no hard proof that he has assaulted Donald. But despite the strength of Sister Aloysius’ righteousness, she faces an uphill battle against the male-dominated hierarchy of the Church, which protects its own.
This isn’t the first time that Sister Aloysius has dealt with suspicions of clergy sexual abuse; she references “a priest who had to be stopped” eight years ago at her previous parish. At St. Nicholas, she lacks allies in the Church leadership to properly handle her concerns, leaving her with only one reliable source of authority: her own certainty. Sister Aloysius shed her ideals long ago, and is now molded out of conviction and resolve, as she repeatedly asserts to the young Sister James: “Innocence can only be wisdom in a world without evil,” and “It is not your place to be complacent. That’s for the children,” and lastly, “When you take a step to address wrongdoing, you are taking a step away from God, but in his service.” Sister Aloysius resists doubt because it is a surrender of power—in a situation, and rapidly changing world, where she has increasingly little.
Doubt is a play of conversations and confrontations, punctuated with two sermons delivered by Father Flynn, and culminating in a face-off between him and Sister Aloysius. Is Father Flynn a serial predator, allowed to flourish by a corrupt system? Is Sister Aloysius on a vengeful smear campaign against an innocent man, or is she right to follow her intuition? Shanley offers no concrete answers, opting instead to embrace ambiguity and let the sense of doubt ultimately linger with the audience. As he writes in the preface, “You may come out of my play uncertain. You may want to be sure. Look down on that feeling. We’ve got to learn to live with a full measure of uncertainty. There is no last word. That’s the silence under the chatter of our time.”
—Lauren Halvorsen