CHAPTER FIVE
FRY'S CONCEPT OF COMEDY
CHAPTER
FIVE
FRY'S CONCEPT OF COMEDY
"Heaven forbid'. Any source
of innocent laughter is
precious in a world like
ours; and that person is
indeed unfortunate, who
cannot share it."l
According to Webster dictionary's definition, comedy is ^
a dramatic work in which the central motif is triumph over
adverse circumstances resulting in a successful or happy
conclusion.
The word comedy, in fact, seems to be derived
from the Greek word "komos" meaning "revel", and comedy arose'
out of the revels associated with the rites of Dionysius, the
god of fertility of nature. This suggests its origin in the
harvest festivities and ritual of the peasants.
The classical conception of comedy which began with
Aristotle in Ancient Greece of fourth century B.C. and
persists in the modern times is
man as a social being.
that it is concerned with
In dealing with man, all great comedy
writers know that his behaviour is often against the norms and
traditions of society.
So, the function of comedy is the
affirmation of man's physical vitality, his delight in life.
178
179
and his will-power to go on living.
Comedy at its best is
when the rhythm of life can be affirmed within the civilized
context of human society.
In other words, in the absence of
harmony between the hximan needs and the demands of the civilization/ man testifies to his contradictory nature.
S0ren
Kierkgaard, the nineteenth century Danish existentialist,
points out that
wherever there is life, there is contradiction... wherever there is contradiction,
the comical is present.2
The purpose of the comic dramatist is to reflect the
follies and vices of the society in the hope of reformation.
The life of comedy is in projecting the defects of the society,
and to comprehend the idea of a comedy, one must be recep;fcive
to them,One must know the real world, and know men and women
well enough in order to respond to the exigencies of life.
Comedy, thus conceived, is concerned with the absurdities of
the social group, while tragedy is concerned with the fate
of the individual.
The principal aim of comedy, then, is to amuse by exposing
whims and absurdities of social life.
In other words, the
comic which is perceptive is the governing spirit of the
laughter
and the sense of the absurd While it is true that
comedy has been, by and large, concerned with the more
realistic aspects of life,
but it by no means precludes the
180
non-realistic and the fantastic.
Indeed, ttie non-realistic
calls for greater freedom and variety, and this is perhaps
the strongest argument in favour of poetic drama.
A critic
testifies that the comedy of Moliere which originated in
France, aimed at the reformation of the follies in social
life, and Moliere himself pointed out that correction of
social absurdities must at all times be the matter of true
comedy
which has alway been witty, intellectual and remote
3
from reality.
What is affiliated to intellectuality of comedy may lead
one a step back to the principal definition of comedy laid down
by Meredith in "On the Idea of Comedy", that comedy is addressed
4
to the intellect; tragedy to the emotions, while another critic
contradicts this idea, saying:
Meredith's thesis that comedy appeals to
the intellect and not to the emotions and
concerns the social group has rightly
been rejected as too narrow.5
On the other hand, Eric Bentley supports Meredith's contention
that comedy is a reflection of the general mind, but he adds
that it might also be the individual's protest against the
general mind.
In this way, man expresses his perception by
means of laughter originating in the. intellect. The laughter
of comedy is impersonal and generally civilized and as it is
directed by the mind, it might be called the humour of the mind.
Meredith asserts:
181
Laughter directed by the comic spirit is
harmless wine, conducing to sobriety in
the degree that it enlivens. It enters
you like fresh air into a study; as when
one of the sudden contrast of the comic
idea floods the brain like pressuring
daylight... you take it in, savour it,
and have what flowers live on, natural
air, for food.7
To be more rational, one may affirm that sensitiveness to
the comic laughter is a step in civilization, and the excellent
test of the civilization of a country is the flourishing of the
comic spirit, and the test of true comedy is that it will
awaken thoughtful laughter. But when there is no social
freedom, comedy is absent, because comedy flourishes in a free
society.
On the other hand, high comedy depends on a stable
and cultivated audience
used to intellectual freedom and
heir to a long tradition.
W.S. Landor says:
Genuine humour and true wit require a
sound and capacious mind, which is always
a grave one.8
It is not possible to give here a detailed survey of the
development of comedy from the ancient to the present times.
Yet, a brief account of different types of comedy is necessary
in order to appreciate and identify Fry's ventures in poetic
comedy.
The differences in the forms and types of comedy are based
primarily on the differences in the attitudes of the authors
towards their subject. When the intention is to ridicule.
182
satirical comedy emerge^,
when ridicule is turned on persons,
the result is the comedy of character .
Satire of social
conventions creates the comedy of manners. Criticism of
conventional thinking produces the comedy of ideas.
Progress
from the troubles to triumph of love produces romantic comedy
which also may dramatize the conflict between the ideal and
the real.
Shakespeare's comedy eschews this ideal of the
romantic comedy in a combination of wit and humour and of
pleasure and laughter.
The comedy of intrigue derives from
excitement in contrived situations.
When the author wants to
exploit anotional situations, the result is the sentimental
comedy
which came into vogue after the collapse of the
Restoration Comedy, which in its turn was meant to be a
critique of the fashionable society. Sentimental comedy was
criticized by Goldsmith
who characterised it as "a kind of
bastard tragedy."
The realistic comedy of the seventeenth century, perfected
by Ben Jonson was based on a satiric observation of contemporary
manners, and its purpose was didactic.
Usually, a comedy
differs from a tragedy in that the former has a happy ending.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, there was a
combination of tragic and comic genres. The term "tragicomedy" was equivocal enough in the past;
but the vogue of
tragi-comedy was launched in England with the publication of
J. Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess.
Shaw deals with it in
183
the preface to Major Barbara (1905) . He calls the tragicomedy as a dramatization of the conflict between real life
and the romantic imagination.
On the other hand» a contemporary
writer like Ronald Peacock states:
In the midst of more intricate details as
aesthetic analysis, it is well to state a
simple truth. Drama must be one of two
things; either comic or intensely moving.^
To understand modern tragi-comedy, one must first understand
afresh the role of an audience in the theatre. The interaction
between the actor and his audience brings the play closer to
life.
Garcia Lorca is reported by his brother as saying:
If in certain scenes the audience doesn't
know what to do, whether to laugh or to
cry, that will be a success for me. 10
One can take it also as his justification of the tragicomedy.
The concept of tragi-comedy is enriched by numerous
works of modern playwrights. For instance, Ibsen has termed
his The Wild Duck (1884) a tragi-comedy, in which he projects
the unreconciled ironies of modern life.
On the other hand.
An Enemy of the People is an angry play about a half-comic,
hot-headed individualist.
Ibsen admitted
that he was not store
whether the play was comedy or drama. The plays of Chekhov with
their touching and hximourous figures reflect precisely that
mixture of an articulate joy and dull pain that is the essence
184
of the tragi-comic view of life. Strindberg produces a kind
of tragi-comedy peculiarly his own. His Dance of Death (1901)
with its cruelty and pain interspersed with pleasure by a
fiercely battling husband and wife is a significant model of
the grotesque in the modern theatre.
Dance of Death can be
characterized as one of the early examples of what came to
be known as Dark Comedy.
One of the greatest exponents of
this Dark Comedy in twentieth century was Luigi Pirandello.
His drama projects infinite spiritual yearnings against
finite physical limits. Pirandello's characters suffer from
intellectual dilemmas that give rise to the mental and emotional
distress;
but their sufferings are placed in satiric frame.
The logic of Pirandello's Dark Comedy demonstrates that
illusions make life bearable and pleasant;
but at the same
time, it also illustrates the absurdity of the happiness thus
denied.
Pirandello saysj
If at times I laugh and sing, I do it
because this is the only way I have to
provide an outlet for my painful tears.^^
The striking feature of modern art, according to Thomas Mann,
is that there is no classification of tragedy and comedy.
O'Casey's play. The Silver Tassle, which he characterized
as tragi-comedy is about the callousness generated by war.
It develops from farce to tragedy where young Harry, the
ex-footballer soldier sits helplessly in a wheel-chair. Eliot's
185
The Family Reunion Is conceived as tragedy. Harry, the hero.
Is projected as undergoing suffering for atonement, and this
may be taken as equivalent to a classical tragic idea. But
The Family Reunion Is In the last analysis a comedy.
mixing of tragic and comic elements —
This
of tears and laughter
is a striking feature of modern drama. These clashing ideas
have been characterized as dark comedy.
Eric Bentley points
out that the dark comedy may initially anatomize life; but it
does it to free people of stereotyped and arbitrary attitudes. 12
While J.L. Styan is more articulate.
He points out. that the
dark comedy:
makes elastic those thoughts and feelings
grown rigid, in order to offer us alternative
experience before the parts of that experience are
drawn together again.13
But the dark comedy rarely concludes or makes decisions for the
audience. It at the most suggests likelihood of solutions of
the social defects. In other words, it stimulates people by
Implications,
and at the same time, it does not pass judgement.
Therefore, in a dark comedy one is speclflally asked not to be
a fanatic.
One may deduce that the dark comedy, which
eventually sours the laughter and sharpens the emotional
responses, is bound to be a cheerless and uncompromising
drama, reflecting the complexities of modern life.
To sum up, modern drama Is paradoxical because it is a
drama of dismay and despair.
But this tragic experience is
186
often dramatized in a comic way. G.B. Shaw notices this
quality in Ibsen's The Wild Duck;
To sit there getting deeper and deeper in
that Ekdal home,.,, until you forget that
you are in a theatre; to look on with
horror and pity and profound tragedy, shaking
with laughter all the time at an irresistible
comedy; to go out... from an experience
deeper than real life ever brings to most
men...14
But all the same, clashing tears and laughter are uncomfortable
companions;
some kind of reconciliation is necessary if one
is to make peace with oneself. Thus the modern drama rarely
provides a contrast between tragedy and comic laughter since
this kind of conflict is not essential to its philosophical
approach, and one may say, that modern drama takes some kind
of delight in making its audience uncomfortable.
Others, like
Fry, feel that they must look for tragedy before they compose
their comedy.
Nevertheless, the mixture of grief, pity
and laughter is derision, and the end of such comedy is bound
to be dull and melancholy.
Coming now to Pry's concept of comedy, one should state
that he has given to the comedy a higher status than was
assigned by Aristotle
who rejected it as a sort of low
entertainment WavJng no serious moral purpose. According to
the Aristotelean concept of comedy, the ludicrous is a
sxibdivision of the ugly; and comedy is an imitation of a
187
lower type. It consists in the projection of defects and
distortions, which are not,
however^destructive.
Classical comedy concerns itself with the flaws and
imperfections of mankind, depicting evil not as it is in
its essential nature, but as a thing to be laughed at rather
than hated.
Pzry's comedies, though humorous, have a serious
aspect also which consists mainly in his blending of the
tragic experience and his religious faith with his comic
vision.
Fry's plays may be divided into those with overtly
religious themes and those which employ those of secular comedy.
He has a special belief in the power of comedy;
and there are
times when, according to Fry, comedy is especially important.
So, his comedies, as several critics have affirmed, are
delightful as well as instructive, serious as well as light,
low as well as high.
As faith in modern times is shaken due
to the rampant materialism, joy has been all on the devil's
side;
and one of the necessities of the time is to redeem it.
Hence, the comic spirit of Fry's plays does not merely consist
in verbal wit and humorous situations;
but it goes beyond
all these to a deep conception of the nature of comedy itself.
Fry expounds his theory in the following terms:
If I had to draw a picture of the person
of comedy, it is so I should like to draw
it: the tears of laughter running down the
face... Comedy is an escape; not from
truth; but despair: a narrow escape into
faith. It believes in a universal cause
of delight...17
188
In order to illustrate the comic spirit of his plays.
Fry makes extensive use of comic rh6toric through coinage of
words and figurative verse. But one need not, however,
maintain, that verse must always be superior to prose in
comedy.
One may say that most of the principal effects of
comedy can be enhanced if verse is used on the stage.
R.Peacock
in his book. The Art of Drama, states:
Satire, irony, humour, wit, the sardonic,
the cynical, mockery, parody, can be
expressed with greater liveliness and
influence, especially when rhyme is used,
and language, rhythm, and metaphor are
unfolding their subtler nuances of
meaning and tone.18
All Fry's comedies include sense of humour, even when they
deal with tragic situations, hanging or arson. In fact, scenes
of his comedies are alternately tragic and comic. He believes
that drama imitates life,
and life is never purely comic or
tragic. So drama, if it is to be faithful to life, has got to
be a mixture of tragic and comic elements of life.
Fry's ability conveys wonder and delight with the use of
laughter and wit*
Thomas in The Lady's Not For Burning, gives
his explanation of the phenomenon:
L aughter is surely
The surest touch of genius in creation.
Would you ever have thought of it, I ask you.
If you had been making man, stuffing him full
Of such hopping greeds and passions that he has
189
To blow himself to pieces as often as he
Conveniently can manage it—would it also
Have occurred to you to make him burst himself
With such a phenomenon as cachination?
That same laughter, madam, is an irrelevancy
Which almost amounts to revelation.
The spirit of his comedy, Venus Observed, is admirably summed
up in that, "There must be a joke/Lying somewhere, even when
20
the leaves are falling."
Consequently, Fry makes his audience
laugh, not with bitterness, but with relief and astonishment.
Fry is an important figure in the movement for the revival
of religious verse drama.
One may ask: Are not his religious
plays ccxnedies as far as they pivot on the sense of humour?
It is true that the themes of Fry's comedy are not social or
econcMTvic evils or hypocritical codes of conduct;
rather the
emphasis of his comedies is on the metaphysical and spiritual
aspects.
In fact, his comedy has two layers:
literal and comic,
the top one is
the bottom one is a comic vision of a
philosopher and a healer of sick souls. R.L. Varshney
points out:
His comedy is not merely a tickling of
thoughless laughter with comic incidents,
buffoonery and with a romantic love story;
but a spiritual exploration as well as a
means of salvation frc»n pain and misery.21
Undeniably, Fry would astonish J.C, Trewin, the Victorian
poet-dramatist, who held that laughter in blank verse was like
190
unseemly mirth during a church service.
In other words# what
Fry has done, is to evoke verse rhythms to demonstrate that
poetic drama need not keep within the narrow range of tragic
and religious themes but can bring within the theatre a
boisterous air of imaginative vitality.
On the other hand,
Emil Roy says that what distinguishes Fry's comedies from his
religious plays
is the kind of sustained tension between
character and the mood.
In the religious plays essentially
comic persons who may be capable of the tragic by virtue of
their complexity and depth
find themselves in the world of
tragedy.
In the comedies, a character fit for tragedy is
contrasted with a world which belongs to comedy.22
E,M. Browne played an important role in support of most
religious plays staged in Murcury Theatre, In an interview
to Theatre World, Browne attempts to explain why this should
be true
Because a number of productions at the
Mercury Theatre has had a religious
flavour, it must not be thought that
we are persuing a religious piety. Our
aim is to stage plays by poets; but as
poets are sensitive beings, it is not
surprising that they concern themselves
with religious themes in times of world
chaos.23
But Fry's religious plays of Murcury Theatre are quite different
from those of others, for a surprising concept of humour could
be found in his religious plays. S.M. Wiersma asserts that
191
in The Boy With a Cart, Pry's vision of
evil and theory of comedy are still
underdeveloped; the comic elements do
not have a redemptive meaning.24
Even the more elevated tragedy. The Firstborn» which relates
the tragic story of the Jews, is rich with humour.
Another
religious play, A Sleep of Prisoners, crackles with so much
wit like "Amor Vincint's Insomnia," and "Agression is the
better part of Allah", that one wonders whether it ought not
to be classified as comedy.
On the other hand, the ccwnedy,
A Phoenix Too Frequent, has religious overtone'. So, there is
hardly a separating line between his religious and comic
plays.
He declares that his theory of comedy is concerned
with wit and htimour arising from solemn episodes.
One may
safely call Fry's theory the Chestertonlan concept of comedy.
Chesterton is considered a master of paradox, and a well
reputed critic known for his swift comic sallies.
These
qualities are exhibited in his article, "On the Comic Spirit",
in which Chesterton asserts that all fun and humour depend
upon some sort of solemn commitment.
He suggests that divergence
from custrans, habits, beliefs, ideas and ideals furnish in
itself the bedrock of humour. Chesterton states further:
But I imagine that there were high
priests of old hieratic cults, who
really did dance at high solemnities,
as David danced before the Ark. Those
people did not think there was anything
funny about a high spirit who was
simply a man who danced.25
192
On the other hand, l».W. Barnes emphasizes Pry's seriousness
in his comedies, saying:
In Fry's comedies, the intellectual and
emotional speculations are on a high
level indeed, concerning as they do,
time, creation, knowledge and the
incongmiity between evidences of the
spirit and those of the physical world
and its material preoccupations.26
Hence, Pry is on solid ground with Chesterton because both
insist that the values must be serious and that which is
serious is respected.
Chesterton again affirms:
There must be something serious that is
respected, even in order that it may be
satirized. There may be something
amusing in a bishop's gaiters; but only
because they are a bishop's... Modern
comedy seems to be collecting gaiters,
and to have something mislaid by the
bishop and consequently missed the joke.^''
From above discussion it may be concluded that one is
likely to encounter laughter and witty humour amids rituals
and secular meeting of pious groups in Fry's religious plays
In fact. Fry's great achievement is that he has enriched the
contemporary stage with the high comedy of religious faith>
and has cloaked theology in entertaining theatrical garb.
According to John Alexander, Fry's drama presents
an angle of experience where the dark
is distilled into light either here or
hereafter, in or out-of-time.28
193
Or one can say
that Fry's comedy is a discovery of truth.
It is, as one of the characters in A Sleep of Prisoners
says, is an "exploration into God".
In this play, the
characters do not mock at the follies of one another
but at
the futility of death and pain, and also at man's spiritual
hollowness.
Fry has brought the church and the theatre back
to such good speaking terms with one another;
and that is
no doubt an achievement of considerable social significance.
One must agree with the critics who point
out that
Fry's invaluable achievement consists in the long-needed
reinstatement of the comic spirit in the English verse drama.
Consequently, Fry's seasonal comedies were like a breath of
fresh air after the sufferings and anxieties of the Second
World War. These comedies are as religious in spirit as his
explicitly religious plays. They involve the quest for
identity.
S.M, Wiersma states that The Lady's Not For Burning
places the quest for identity in the village of Cool Clary,
which is as contemporary as it is historical.
Although it
really is Eden, the fall has happened,
God knows there is enough evil in Cool
Clary; but Cool Clary does not know
that it has fallen. The community is
naively pleased with itself and its
hatred of evil — whatever does not
confirm to ordinary behaviour.29
For Jennet, the theme of the creation of the world is amazing.
She says:
194
I've only one small silver night to spend
So, show me no luxuries. It will be enough
If you spare spider, and when it spins, 1*11 see
The six days of creation in a web
And a fly caught in the seventh. And if the dew
Should rise in the web, I may well die a Christian.
In A Phoenix Too Frequent, Fry gives the story a Christian
twist.
The tree on which the dead husband is to be hanged,
is a holly, a traditional symbol of the cross on which Christ
was crucified.
And still more:
when the soldier returns to
the tomb, he cries in despair:
"It is determined/ln section
six. Paragraph Three of the Regulations.31
Wiersma clarifies
the same text in the Bible:
'The wages of sin is death; but the
gift of God is eternal life through
Jesus Christ, Our Lord*... The Second
half of the text is echoed in the words
of the widow: 'My darling, I give you
Virilius'. Note that Romans Six: 23 is
the end of chapter six, and Paul's
parable concerning death and marriage is
the beginning of chapter seven. The two
passages are from a single context.32
The original title of Fry's summer comedy, A Yard of Sun,
(1970), was Heat of the Day, which,as Wiersma points out, has a
biblical allusion.33 In Venus Observed, the Duke finds his
identity through Rosabel's offensive —
loving act of arson.
the violent and
There is something oddly Christ-like
about Rosabel's self-sacrifice to suffer disgrace, endure
195
punishment, and risk hatred from the beloved in order to
help him.
For instance, in her soliloquy she says:
So no one at all
Will be there. Now i know why all day long
Life has been tilting and driving me towards
To-night, I'm not myself any more,
I am only the meaning of what comes after dark.
If I have the courage ..,
He has to be touched by fire
To make a human of him, and only a woman
Who loves him can dare to do it.^^
Then Rosabel addresses another former mistress of the Duke,
Jessie;
To-night, no one is there
You'll see, I shall send his Observatory
Where Nero's Rome has gone: I'll blaze a trail
That he can follow towards humanity. 35
The fire in Fry's Venus Observed is redemptive;
but Wiersma
again affirms the pious theme of the play and reminds one of
"The redemptiveness of the apocalyptic fire. He refers to
the following text in the Bible referring to the Doomsday:
The heavens being on fire shall be
dissolved, and the elements shall melt
with fervent heat. Nevertheless we,
according to his promise,look for new
heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness.
(II Peter 3: 12-13)"^^
196
Countess Rosmarin, in The Dark is Light Enough^ is the
"goddess" of her world.
Her
very name signifies piety for
it is a combination of "Rose" and "Mary", both of which words
are rich in association in religious mysticism.
She is both
sure of herself and also tolerant and most explicitly Christlike of all Fry's characters.
Her
Thursday evenings, though
outwarldly social occasions are "reminiscent of the Last
Supper." The fellow characters are explicit about observing
the similarity between her and God.
This Thursday world of ours is now
More like the world than ever
The goddess of it, in her God-like way.
Is God knows where.
We can only hope
She will condescend to appear in her own time
You know the Countess has the qualities of
true di vi ni ty... -^ '
At the same time. Fry's comedies are rich in tragic elements,
for they reveal death and horror, a quality that makes for
salvation or sacrifice. They are dramas exposing tug-of-war
between the instincts of life and death.
The comic and
tragic events run together in congruity. To Fry, they are like
two currents of electricity, neither of which functions
without the other.
Fry's concept of tragi-comedy partakes of
good and evil, and joy and sorrow.
Fry saysi
197
Where tragedy is the demonstration of
the human dilemma, comedy is the comment
on the human dilemma,38
But Fry himself asserts the congruity between the contradictory
elements,saying:
The bridge on which we cross from tragedy
to comedy and back is precarious and narrow
... If the characters were not qualified
for tragedy, there would be no comedy; and
to some extent, I have to cross the one
before I can light on the other.39
So, the tragic concept of Fry's death-life struggle in his
comedies gives one a graphic idea of his comedy of seasons
in diverse stereotypes. A woman mourns her husband's death
and decides to die. A mercenary soldier, sick of carnage,
despises life and desires to be hanged.
An old philanderer,
hardened in self-hood, decides to resolve his dilemma by
marrying one of his previous mistresses amidst an act of
arson.
And a Godlike countess entangled in social commitments,
leads a life of divinity and makes a fatal sacrifice for
patriotism.
Death, in fact, is one of Fry's basic themes in
his comedies; and his assurance on life-force displays that
"suffering and death must be accepted as an essential part
of life."
Richard Findlater confirms Fry's doctrine saying:
The fact of death is not, as by many other
religious poets, brandished as a weapon in
the service of the church to frighten the
infidel into faith; but as a poetic truth
198
shining in the dark to illuminate the
dullness of life... witch-hunt, torture,
hanging and burning alive ..., but they
are reconciled in comedy without being
sentimentali zed.40
D. Stanford too affirms, that all of Fry's comedies skim
close to death. In A Phoenix Too Frequent, the young Roman
corporal is nearly court-martialled for a capital offence.
In Venus Observed, the Duke's observatory is set on fire by a
jealous ex-misttfess;
and the Duke and Perpetua are almost
burnt alive. In The Lady's Not For Burning, the heroine
escapes over-night from the faggots and the stake in company
with a war-sickened captain
he desired to be hanged.
who is so despaired of life that
In one of Fry's later comedies.
The Dark is Light Enough, Countess Rosmarin dies to restore
confidence in the neurotic Richard Gettner.
He in his turn,
gives himself upto the army from which he has deserted, perhaps,
to receive
penalty of death.41 With such a concept of
death within comedy one may safely deduce that Fry bases his
plays on that eternal triangle of life, love, and death.
In
A Phoenix Too Frequent, for instance, the death of Virilius
brings Dynamene to the tomb where she falls in love with
Tegeus,and her attitude towards life is changed.
Early in
the play, Tegeus asks Doto, Dynamene's maid:
Tegeus:
Doto:
Tegeus:
So the lady means to die?
For love; beautiful, curious madam.
Not curious;
I've had thoughts like it.
Death is a kind of love.42
199
The Lady's Not For Burning turns around Thomas's love of
death and Jennet's love of life. Even the quarrel of Humphery
with Nicholas has a bearing on these problems —
go and officially/Bury himself.
"Let Humphery
She's not for him,""^^
And
again Margaret says;
0 peaceful and placid heaven.
Are they both asking to be punished? Has death
Become the fashionable way to live?
Fry's most characteristic attitude, as revealed in these
comedies, is that of amusement^rendering smiles and even
laughter possible in the face of incongruity and paradox.
An occasional laughter, within that eternal triangle^producing
humorous situations, reminds one of how closely the comic and the
tragic visions of human existence are related.
Fry lays
emphasis on the significance of laughter, saying:
Laughter inclines me to know that man is
essentially spirit; this body, with its
functions and accidents and frustrations,
is endlessly quaint and remarkable to him;
and though comedy accepts our position in
time, it barely accepts our posture in
space.45
Fry maintains that a joke, even a bad one, can reflect the
astonishing life one lives. And at the same time he asserts
that the comprehension of his tragi-comedy, at its best,
depends not only on the juxtaposition of comic and tragic
200
occurrences^
but also upon their subtle integration. As a
result, one must reach comedy by the way of tragedy.
Fry says!
I know that when I set about writing a
comedy, the idea presents itself to me
first as tragedy... if the characters
were not qualified for tragedy, there
would be no comedy.46
R. Williams confirms the presence of both comic and tragic
elements in Fry's comedies, saying:
Careful readers of the comedies will know
that Thomas Mendip, Robert Bruno, and the
autumnal Duke have come all the way across
the bridge from tragedy to comedy...47
It is perhaps for this reason that Fry has been an enigma to
his critics. His comedies with those bewildering fluctuations
of comic, tragic and religious elements partially are responsible
for this.
One may perceive how the concept of death, horror,
hanging and acts of arson are curiously present amidst comic
spirit, fun and laughter.
Fry dips into history, Greek mythology and biblical
theology in search of themes for his plays, for he believes
that modern social life does not provide suitable material for
verse drama. For instance, his early experimental works are
richly imbued with these elements. The Boy With a Cart is
based on the legend of St. Cuthman, the patron saint of
Sussex, who took his mother in a handcart from Cornwall to
201
Steyning.
The Firstborn is an Old Testament drama. Thor
With Angels is a religious play set in a Jutish farmhouse
in 596 A.D.
Derek Stanford calls only one play. The Firstborn/
a tragedy, and classifies The Boy With a Cart, Thor With
Angels, and A Sleep of Prisoners as religious festival plays.48
This poses two questions:
Are the religious festival plays,
comedies or tragedies, or in a category of their own?
are comedies and tragedies not religious?
And
It is clear that,
though not written for a religious occasion. The Firstborn
is most directly biblical of all Fry's plays. Henceforth, one
daresay
that all the festival plays are tragic in so far as
they demonstrate the human dilemma —
unbelief.
faith in conflict with
Therefore, it is necessary to keep the terms comic
and religious in the closest juxtaposition in dealing with
Fry's plays. J. Alexander says:
Fry gives the clue to the essence of his
originality, and suggests that all his
plays belong to a single category — ...
'religious comedy*. Fry would have us
see life as a 'divine comedia'.49
When one reads Fry's comedies, he must be prepared to
discover in them a meaning as deep and permanent as he looks
forin a tragedy.
Likewise, when one reads his religious plays
he must not think of the laughter as eccentric or deem it as
a mark of irreverence.
For example. Fry inserts coffins, in
A Phoenix Too Frequent, in a most humorous manner.
202
One may safely deduce that there are no hard and fast
lines separating comedy, tragedy and religious plays in Fry's
theatrical world.
There are many humorous incidents and
speeches in his religious pieces, while the comedies are
nearly tragic in their endings. The death of a husband and
the presence of corpses in one comedy, the heroine sentenced to
the stake in another;
an act of arson, by which two chief
characters are almost destroyed in a blazing observatory are
but a few instances of the tragic elements in his comedies.
His last comedy ends with terrible death of the God-like
heroine.
Such are the grim macabre incidents in a set of
comedies whose lines have made their audience laugh and
laugh again.
For Fry, evil is a consequence of man's consciousness that
he must die;
and for the dramatist, life is the supreme
good. His comedies
reflect a positive and healthy view of
life. To Fry, life is a joyous miracle;
faith in God sustains
the old values of love, beauty and goodness; and where man
errs there can be forgiveness and redemption.
Some critics
accuse Fry of escaping from the realities of contemporary life,
and of indulging in the romantic world of history.
fact, he is not an escapist.
But in
On the contrary, he shares the
spiritual and intellectual tension of the present age. He
willingly proceeds with life unafraid, and gaily offers us not
despair or renunciation, but life and optimism.
The Duke, in
203
Venus Observed says to his mistress^Rosabel, "So you can
make merry with the world, Rosabel."
Why despair, when
there is always the joy of reflecting on the ups and downs
of life?
There is always life itself with all colourful
aspects evoking beauty.
Fry agrees with the theory of Arnold
that poetry is the criticism of life;
but he believes that
the criticism of life through fantasy must be regarded as the
special territory for comedy in the poetic theatre.
The
poet-dramatist writes engaging poetry and sonorous words, and
invites the audience to look at a world, which can be pleasing,
He believes that there is a reality beyond all appearances.
This reality is invisible and intangible, and also mysterious
and ineffable. Through comedy, one can grasp this
reality. So humour is an essential factor in Fry's comedies,
W. Arrowsmith maintains that Fry's great ability lies in the
fact that his comedy,
is not merely an adjunct to the theme,
or an ornament of the language-theme in
action, its very life is its struggle
with its counterpart, the examplar of
the great dualist oxymoron of prose and
poetry, death and life, and the other
paired antagonists.51
Fry asserts that out of the paradoxes and solemn circles
of society
jokes spring up, for they can mirror better the
aspects of astonishing life. Indeed laughter itself is a
great mystery of the flesh, as though the body is entertaining
something other than itself, "something vociferous, but
204
inarticulate". Notwithstanding this, there is a spiritual
assurance behind laughter which, no doubt, relieves the
tension of life.
One daresay^this inarticulate action is not
in vain with Fry, His basic attitude on the stage demands
thought and contemplation after laughter, as if it were a
duty "to affirm life, assimilate death, and persevere in joy".
E. Davies maintains:
This appeal to thought after laughter
will not occur to most people at first,
for it is not obvious, nor does it pursue
the intelligence. Only after mature
deliberation will one realize that Fry
approaches life from the positive side,
denying the denial of life which has been
the attitude of so many of our modern
writers.52
Therefore, in this phase of Fry's developed concept of comedy,
one may be sure that his preoccupation with wit, humour and
laughter is a genuine reflection of the infinite mystery
of existence.
Fry has a special vision of life, and stands bewildered
before the mysterious existence of the universe.
This mysterious
aspect of life is reflected in all his plays. Fry's model is
life in its very widest sense rather than mere surface existence.
He says:
(for what greater superstition
Is there than the mumbo-jumbo of believing
In reality?) — you should be swallowed whole by Time
In the way that you swallow appearances.53
205
What one touches is what one sees, what one knows is not real;
but actual. For Fry, as Ana-Clara says in A Yard of Sun, "reality
isn't what, but how/Vou experience." 54
In view of the above, it may be said that Fry is not a
philosopher in the technical sense of the term;
but he has
a vision of life as an artist. His main concern is beautifully
expressed by Moses (in Firstborn),
the hawk,
through the symbol of
which is cruel beneath its beauty, in the following
manner:
Where in this droughty
Overwatered world can you find me clarity?
What spirit made the hawk? a bird obedient
To grace, a bright lash on the cheek of the wind
And drawn and ringed with feathered earth and sun,
An achievement of eternity's birdsmith...55
To Fry, life has a great deal of mystery, amazement and wonder^
It is, to use Doto's words,
... more big than a bed
And full of miracles and mysteries like
One man made for one woman, etcetera, etcetra.
It is due to this mysterious nature of the universe that Peter
says:
How can I help it if I can't work myself up
57
About the way things go? It's mystery to me.
206
So the mysterious element in Fry's plays means the unknown.
This is why his plays emphasize the different aspects of the
unknown, which in L. Lecky's words, is presented as "singularity
eg
and wonder, incongruity and amazement, unity and belief".
To Fry's characters, "this dizzy-dazzy world of ours is not
always heaven". It is often "too fitting and large". They
ignore the universe and are indifferent towards life. For
instance, this indifference to life is reflected by Mendip,
who wants to be hanged, Moses who risks life for the sake of
his believers; Cuthman and Becket who die for the cause;
Countess Rosmarin who wooes death happily; and Jettner who
makes himself a martyr.
Fry is of the opinion that there are so many things in
the universe which are beyond the understanding of man.
Neither the universe nor the human mind are rationally
determined.
Therefore, his plays suggest in a very poignant
way that nothing is wrong with our body, but the soul has gone
astray.
Hence, the revival of the soul is necessary in that
"A man must be let to have a soul to himself/Or souls will go
the way of tails,"59 On the other hand, man's soul thirsts to
know the reality;
and in order to comprehend true reality.
Fry places eternal truth and mere existence in juxtaposition.
As a prelude to this paradox, there is his sense of mystery.
At one place, he defines "mystery" in the following way;
207
The usual meaning of mystery nowadays is
whodunit,., I am using the word mystery
in the sense of what am I? ... with a
succession of clues, imitations of a
truth, which is so profound that we can't
reach it by rational deduction; and if we
listen to those imitations... to what,
indeed, is revealed of God... You will
find in the stoiry of man's life on earth
great wonders perceived by the spirit,
you may sometimes feel that the truth of
God could with advantage, be more clearly
audible to the human ear, more obviously
visible to the human eye.60
The quotation above makes it clear that Fry does believe in
"the truth of God", and, therefore, he is quite aware of the
genuine miracles of the universe and the creation.
The poet-
dramatist sums up his belief in God in the following passage:
I wanted to move from division to unity,
to say that we are all souls in our sorrow,
and above all to say that the answer is in
ourselves, in each individual, and that
each individual has in him the elements of
God... The good in human nature is even
more powerful than the evil,if in our whole
hearts and lives, we abide by it.61
Even in his first published play. The Boy With a Cart, he
proclaims his faith.
The mystic realization comes to him in
the manner in which it came to St. Cuthman or St. Becket.
Having been filled with faith, he stands at "the four crossing
roads of earth, heaven, time and eternity.
He stands at a
loss before the infinite universe, and as a man he is too dazed
to delineate the incredible phenomena.
In his vision. Fry
208
assesses the insignificant position of man in this vast
universe:
And what
Is a man? Edgar, what is a man? 0
My man-child, what in the world is 'a man?^^
Then he asks, in Curtmantle;
Where do we go from here?
What is it we are doing?
What powers are we serving?
fi A
What is being made of us?
-Fry asserts
that "his plays are spiritual excursions.
He is not proposing, as he himself says, "a theatre cloudy
with insubstantial symbols and spiritual sea-wreck";
but
rather a threatre dealing with the facts of existence and
"elements of God", that are concealed.
These elements of God
make the audience share the feeling of the continuous presence
of mystery of Creation in all his plays, expressed particularly
in his comedies of seasons. In A Phoenix Too Frequent, Dynamene
says solemnly:
A mystery's in the world
Where a little liquid, with flavour, quality and fume
Can be as no other, can hint and flute our senses
As though a music played in harvest hollows
67
And a movement was in the swathes of our memory".
209
In The Lady's Not For Burning, Thomas reveals Creations
vast
and exquisite riddle of Natixre through a wonderful set of
images:
... what a waste of effort it has been
To give you Creation's vast and exquisite
Dilemmal Where alteration thrums
In every granule of the Milky Way,
Persisting still in the dead-sleep of the moon.
And heckling itself hoarse in that hot-head,
The sun...68
In Venus Observed, the sophisticated and the star-gazing Duke
of Altair uses the occasion of an eclipse to philosophize this
sense of mystery and to express man's paradoxical situation in
a world of illusion.
Perpetua, too, wonders at the astonishing
mysterious world:
Our milchy, mortal, auroral, jovial.
Harsh, unedifying world.
Where every circle of grass can show a dragon
And every pool's as populous as Penge,
Where birds, with taffeta flying, scarf the air...
In The Dark is Light Enough, Belman asks:
70
to the mystery?"
"What is the answer
Therefore, one may deduce, that there is God,
comprehensible God,
in spite of his revelation,
mystery of existence.
not
but the
This concept of God and Creation holds
210
Fry spell-bound.
His characters have "a longing to be worked
71
into the eternal fabric of God's love".
Like his characters,
he discovers God, the star-figure in "truth" and "in the
avalanches of snow", and at last is able to assert.
72
sound/Of God.
It comes, after all it comes,'=
God, to Fry; is Truth, Love, Light and Mercy.
"The
Therefore,
That is why
Varshney states that Fry's plays deal with the mystery of
God's nature, and his relationship to man; and concepts of
faith and resurrection as renewal occur in his plays.73 One
can trace faith in God in most of his plays. For instance,
in The Boy With a Cart, the evolution of spirit is intuitive
and mystical. It comes to the hero because of his profound
faith in God.
In The Firstborn, Moses suffers a spiritual
death to rise again as the saviour of the Hebrews. In
A
Phoenix Too Frequent, all the characters undergo renewal, and
even the title of the play suggests the image of the Phoenix
waich is a symbol of resurrection,
in Thor, With Angels,
Cymen renews himself through the Christian message of
St. Augustine. His conversion from Paganism to Christianity is
symbolic of renewal.
In A Sleep of prisoners, all the major
characters sleep to find themselves changed and renewed.
In
The Lady's Not For Burning, it is Thomas who enjoys the bliss
of spiritual rebirth.
Similarly Becket in Curtmantla, the Duke
in Venus Observed, and all the main characters in The Dark is
Light Enough and in A Yard of Sun are changed and renewed.
211
Fry as a true Christian
characters are humble towards
revers God.
Therefore his
God. This humility, which is
never slavish, is born of innocence, purity and devotion.
Pry's vision of God is an amalgamation of various approaches.
Moses is a Jew, Becket a Roman Catholic,
Cuthman a Christian
saint, and Cymen a pagan humanist.
Fry's contention is that salvation lies in devotion, and
the greatest happiness is the vision of God, and that one should
seek holiness not merely for the sake of external rewards, but
because it is the health of the soul.
He wants to teach people
that kindness and love for all is a decent way of living.
He
wants people to live by the rule of God, which is forgiveness,
mercy and compassion.
Cymen says:
We are afraid
To live by rule of God, which is forgiveness,
Mercy, and compassion, fearing that by these
We shall be ended. And yet if we could bear
These three through dread and terror and terror's doubt.
Daring to return good for evil without thought
Of what will come, I cannot think
We should be the losers. Do we believe
There is no strength in good or power in God?
God give us courage to exist in God,
74
And lonely flesh be welcome to creation.
So it can be deduced that Fry's quest for God is not painful
or slavish.
On the contrary, it is "a simple act of opening
212
the eyes,"
In The Dark Is Light Enough^ Fry embodies Divinity
in the figure of a woman. His submission to this god can best
be expressed through Peter Abel's words:
Deal me high, deal me low.
Make my deeds
My nameless needs.
I know I do not know.^^
In fact. Fry's quest for God reflects the human being's thirst
to know the mysterious infinite, divine power, and probe the
mystery of the gyrations of the universe "because in the world",
says Sister Maura,
There is an element of being, in everything
there is an element of mystery.76
Fry, then, expounds his own sense of the miraculous wonders of
the existence, stating:
We are plunged into an existence fantastic
to the point of nightmare, and however,
closely we dog the heels of science or
wheel among the stars of mysticisir,, we
cannot really make head or tail of it,77
There is always something new under the sun, because
mystery never ages.
Our problem is to be capable of recognizing
this newness. Fry believes that the theatre should be a place
where the persons and events have the recognizable ring of an
old truth, and yet it is seen in lightning spasm of discovery.
This old
truth and the mystery is the province of his poetry.
213
Characters of his comedies are aware of this mystery, which
adopts various forms —
loneliness, joy, death and love.
For instance, the Duke, who competes with his son for the
love of Perpetua, in Venus Observed, asserts his desire, saying:
Loneliness. The note, my son, is loneliness.
Over all the world
Men move unhoming, and eternally
Concerned: a swarm of bees who have lost their queen."^^
Again, in A Phoenix Too Frequent, the lonely Dynamene, decides
to die on her husband's tomb, for "Death is a kind of love".
Whatever is said about the infinite universe, the concept
of God and the creation of the world, one may suggest that Fry
could not be completely sure of the rationality of the
universe and the infinite world.
Man has doubts about the
fairness and beauty of the universal plan. Time and experiences
in life have not encouraged the belief that all is right with
the world.
For instance, Aron says in The Firstborn:
I've begun to believe that the reasonable
is an invention of man, altogether in opposition
To the facts of creation, though I wish it hadn't
Occurred to me.
And again, the rustics chant in The_Boy with a Cart:
we also loom with the earth
over the waterways of space. Between
Our birth and death we may touch understanding
Ks ^ ^OtU brushes a v^ir^dov, v,l^U i^s wings...
214
The Chaplain in The Lady's Not For Burning, expresses his
doubt of his existence:
When I think of myself
I can scarcely believe my senses. But there it is.
All my friends tell me I actually exist
And by an act of faith I have come to believe them.81
One may say that Fry's comedies are also entertaining, and
have given a great impetus to poetic drama. No doubt. Pry's
canedy is a unique piece of writing for the stage. But, his
comedy cannot be classified under the traditional banners of •
comedy;
it incorporates the best of all schools and traditions.
It has the romantic elements and it has the eccentricities of
the comedy of humour, and wit of the comedy of manners.
It
has also the elements of tragi-comedy, for his comedy is composed
on the subtle discords and whims of everyday life moving from
laughter to tears. And thus, his drama impresses upon the
audience as a steady intensification of feelings, because it
combines the metaphysical, the mystical and the comic in a
unique manner.
On the other hand. Fry satisfies the demands of
his audience for mystery, for fantasy, and for a language richer
than the daily speech of life.
Last but not the least, one may say that Fry tries to
see life in its varied aspects —
joys, grief, madness, hope,
love and fear. It will not be an exaggeration to call his
215
vision metaphysical, cosmic or a total vision of life
emerging out of great elemental contrasts. His vision is
not the dream of a Utopian but the kaleidoscopic vision of
a poet and philosopher.
It was perhaps because of this great
interest in the changing patterns of life,moods and emotions
that led him to write his comedies of seasons which may be
considered as the crowning glory of his dramatic career and
the most comprehensive embodiment of his vision of comedy.
216
NOTES
1
Quoted, A.R.Th(»(ipton. The Anatomy of Dreuna, California
University Press, California, 1946, p.197.
2
S0ren Kiergaard. Concluding Unscientific Postscript,
Copenhagen, 1846, p.26.
3
The Oxford Companion to the Theatre, Edited by Phylis
Hartnoll,Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1967,
p. 194.
4
G. Meredith. Comedy and the Uses of Comic Spirit,
Westminister of Archibold Constable & Co.,
Ltd., London, 1903, p.35.
5
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol.1, London, 1973, p.130.
6
E.R. Bentley, The Modem Theatre,
London, 1948, p.133.
7
Meredith, Og. cit., p.93.
8
Ibid., p.37. Quoted from W.S. Lander's "Imaginary
Conversations".
9
R. Peacock. The Art of Drama, Black Well & Co., London,
1957, p.189.
10
Black Well & Co.,
Francisco Lorca, Introduction to Three Tragedies of
Federico Garcia Lorca, Trans. Graham Liyan and
O'Connel, N.Y., 1955, p.13.
217
11
Quoted D, Vittorini, The Drama of L. Pirandello^
N.Y., 1935, p.89.
12
Eric Bentley, Og, cit., p.137.
13
J.L. Styan. The Dark CCTnedy: The Development of
Moderan Corolc Tragedy, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, 1962, p.277.
14
G.B. Shaw. Oar Theatre in the Nineties, Vol.3, London,
1932, p.138.
15
C. Pry,
16
Aristotle. Comedy.
17
C. Fry.
"Comedy", in: The Adelphi, Vol.27, (November,
1950), p. 28.
Penguin Books, London,1940, p.26.
Og. cit., p. 18,
and in: Tulane Drama Review,
4 (March, 1960), p. 25.
18
R. Peacock. Op.cit., p.230.
19
C. Pry,
20
C. Fry. Venus Observed,
1979, p. 84.
21
R.L. Varshney, C. Fry as a Dramatist ; An Assessment,
Student Store, Bareilly, 1968, p. 48.
22
Emil Roy, British Drama Since Shaw, Feffer & Simon,
Amesterdam, Holland, 1972, p. 35.
23
Eric Johns. "Poet's Playhouse", in: Theatre World,
XLIV, 28 (February, 1948), p. 31.
24
S.M. Wiersma, "C. Pry", in : Grand Rapids, Michigan,
Erdmans & Co., 1979, pp. 8-9.
The Lady's Not For Burning, Oxford U n i v e r s i t y
p r e s s , 1979, p . 165,
Oxford University Press,
218
25
G.K. Chesterton, "On the Comic Spirit", in: Collection
Essays> London, 1932, p.11.
26
L.W. Barnes, "C. Fry: The Chestertonian Concept of
Comedy", in: Xavir University Studies, U.S.A.,
2, 1968« p. 36.
27
Chesterton,
28
John Alexander, "C. Pry and Religious Comedy," in:
Meanjin, XV (Autumn, 1956), p. 77.
29
C, Fry.
30
Fry.
31
C. Pry.
32
S,M. Wiersma.
33
See Wiersma, Ibid., p.28.
34
C. Pry.
02* cit., p. 12.
The Lady's Not For Burning,
press, 1968, p. 27,
Oxford University
The Lady's Not For Burning, p. 58.
A Phoenix Too Frequent, Oxford University
press, 1968, p,42, (These lines obviously
allude to chapter six,verse 23 of the Epistle
to the Romans but for some reason Fry Talks
about Regulation six paragraph 3).
Og. cit,, p. 20.
Venus Observed, Oxford University press,
London, 1950, pp. 56-57.
35
Ibid., p. 58.
36
Wiersma, Og. cit., p. 32.
37
C. Fry.
The Dark Is Light Enough, Oxford University
press, London, 1950, p. 4,
219
38
C, Pry, "How Lost, How Amazed, How Miraculous We Arel",
in:
Tulan Drama Review, 8 (July, 1960), p. 28,
39
C. Pry, "Canedy", O^. cit,, p. 32,
40
Richard Findlater, The Unholy Trade, Mathuen, London,
1962, p. 160,
41
D, Stanford. "Comedy and Tragedy in C, Fry", in:
Modern Drama, Vol. 2, No. 1, May, 1950, p.3,
42
C. Pry.
A Phoenix Too Frequent, Oxford University
press, 1970, pp, 7-8.
43
C. Pry.
The Lady's Not For Burning, p. 16.
44
C. Pry,
The Lady's Not For Burning, Oxford University
Press, London, 1950, p. 24.
45
C. Pry, "Comedy", O^. cit.,p. 27-29.
46
Ibid., p. 20.
47
R.Williams, Recent English Drama, Macmillan, Basic
Books, N.Y., 1969, p. 4.
D. Stanford, C. Pry: An Appreciation, British Counsel,
48
London, 1960, p.26.
49
J. Alexander, Ojg. cit., p, 78.
50
Fry, Venus Observed, p, 82,
51
W, Arrowsmith. "Notes on English Verse Drama: C. Fry,"
in; Hudson Review, III (Autximn, 1950), p. 211.
52
Earle Davis, "C. Fry: The Twentieth Century Shakespear?",
in: The Kansas Magazine, Kansas, 1952, p.16,
220
53
C. Fry. The Lady's Not For Bunilng, p. 54,
54
C. Fry.
55
C. Fry. The Flrstbozm, Oxford University Press,
A Yard of Sun, Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 1972, p. 94.
1972, p. 27.
56
Fry.
A Phoenix Too Frequent, p. 4.
57
Pry.
A Sleep of Prisoners, Oxford University Press,
London, 1952, p.4.
58
Eleazer Lecky. "Mystery in the Plays of C. Fry",
in: Tulane Drama Review, IV (Spring, 1960),
p. 80.
59
C. Fry. A Sleep of Prisoners, p.36.
60
C. Fry.
"On keeping the Sense of Wonder", in: Vogue
CXXVIII (January, 1956), p.158.
61
C. Fry.
"Drama in a House of Worship", in: New York
Times, October 14, 1951, p. 4.
62
Pry. Thor, With Agels, p. 52.
63
Fry. Venus Observed, p.52.
64
Fry.
65
Cf.
66
C. Fry. "Playwrights", in: Scrutiny, London, 1958,
p.331.
Curtmantle, p. 22.
Fry's plays are "poetic exercises in Spiritual
History that has nestled under the shadow of
the Angelical Church of England". John Gassner,
The Theatre in Our Times, New York, 1955, p.18.
221
67
Fry.
A Phoenix Too Frequent^ p. 20.
68
Fry.
The Lady's Not For Burning« p. 54.
69
Fry.
Venus Observed, p. 63.
70
Fry.
The Dark Is Light Enough, p. 3.
The same
question is repeated at pages: 3, 11 and 17.
71
Fry.
Curtroantle, p. 49.
72
Fry.
The Firstborn, p. 72.
73
Varshney, Ojg. cit., p. 132.
74
C. Pry.
Thor, With Angels, Oxford University Press,
London, 1970, pp. 109-110.
75
C. Fry.
A Sleep of prisoners, p. 15.
76
Sister Maura. "C. Fry: An Angle of Experience", in:
Renascence, VII (Augiimn, 1956), p. 4,
77
C.Fry.
"How Lost, How Amazed, How Miraculous, We
Arei",
in:
Theatre Arts, XXXVI (August, 1952),
p. 75.
78
Fry.
Venus Observed, p. 52.
79
Fry.
The Firstborn, p. 35.
80
Pry.
The Boy With A Cart, p. 44.
81
Firy.
The Lady's Not For Burning, p. 41.