More Than the Ear Discovers: God in the Plays of Christopher Fry

The nations of the western world were socially, politically, and morally confident in the years after World War II. In spite of the advent of the nuclear era, the destruction of great colonial empires, and the dawning of a new age of technology they felt secure that life would go on as it had before the war. Little did they realize that hidden in the mushroom clouds of the atomic bomb, concealed in the peace treaties and the victory parades, lay the unanswered moral questions of atomic war, the rise of the third world, and many of the forces that would shake the foundation of western power. The world of 1950 even made room for a voice of dissent. When English playwright Christopher Fry appeared on the cover of Time Magazine on November 20, 1950 he had four plays running on Broadway. Fry's religious outlook was barely orthodox and certainly unconventional, as he warned against the church's too easily allying itself with the structures of the world. And his advocacy of pacifism clearly violated the triumphal military spirit of the day. But still he drew crowds: his plays filled theaters; his words provoked discussion; his opinions stirred debate. Yet Christopher Fry was a man ahead of his time and the phenomenon did not last. Perhaps his language was too demanding to sustain repetition. Or perhaps the public was too skittish--after flirting with Fry's novel ideas--may have realized how revolutionary they would be if they took the intellectual and emotional energy to pursue them. It was much simpler to watch Milton Berle or I Love Lucy. But the issues Fry raised have not died. In fact, they are very much in people's minds today--issues like pacifism, violence, the exploitation of women, authentic religious living, problems with official church structures, and many more. This book, however, is not a book on politics or sociology. It is literary criticism, and it brings the reader to see the relationships between Fry's works and their literary kin. Eliot and Auden, Shakespeare and Pound as well as some very unlikely sources help to reveal the breadth and depth of Fry's work. Dr. Wiersma is clearly a Fry partisan. Drawing on his own study, the work of other scholars, and perhaps most importantly, on personal correspondence and conversations with Fry over the course of some twenty odd-years, he explores and explains the imagery and thus helps bring the thoughtful reader to share in the insight. More That The Ear Discovers expresses the hope that Fry will receive a second hearing from the public and believes that his poetic drama is too important in our time to be confined to footnotes and research theses. It hopes to send the reader to the library or the used-book store to enjoy the plays in their entirety. And it makes it easier for today's reader to find in depth what the reader of the fifties merely glimpsed for an instant before hurrying past.