Christopher Fry was a 20th century British poet and playwright known for reviving poetic drama. He is regarded as one of the most lively dramatists of the time. Some of his most famous works include the verse dramas The Lady's Not for Burning, Thor with Angels, and A Sleep of Prisoners. His plays often dealt with themes of good and evil, man and God, and used lyrical language to explore characters' inner selves and quests for identity. Fry believed that using poetry in drama brought a deeper experience of the human condition. He was influenced by T.S Eliot and known for his innovative use of language charged with emotion in his spiritual and intellectual comedies and tragedies

1. Name: Hirani Khushboo A.
M.A.SEM_III
CORE_07:Modern British Literature
Topic: Christopher Fry as a Poet & Playwright

2. Christopher Fry as Poet & Playwright
 Born: 18th December 1907
 Died: 30th June 2005
 Liveliest Dramatist of 20th Century
 Contribution: Revival of English Poetic Drama in the
world of Theatre
 Regarded as the technique of Dramaturgy
 Best known for his Verse Dramas “The Lady’s Not for
Burning” which made him a major force in theatre in
the 1940s and 1950

3. Career
• He gave up his career in 1932 an found Tunbridge wells
• He wrote ‘The Peregrines’ when he was a school boy
• First appeared in 1953 in a programme at ‘The Saville Theatre’in London
• He also wrote the music for ‘She shall have music’ in 1935
• Influenced by poet T.S.Eliot later become friend
• Artistic Director of ‘Oxford Playhouse’1939

4. Literary Contributions
1) Religious Festival Plays
 The Boy with a Cart (1938)
 Thor, with Angels (1948)
 A sleep of Prisoners (1951)
“His Religious plays are not only about religious pilgrimages; they are
part of the ongoing pilgrimage. His characters are much closer to
ordinary people and ordinary life.”
Theme : 1)Good & Evil
2)Man & God

5. Comedies
1)A phoenix of frequent (1946)
2) The Lady’s not for Burning (1949)
3)Venus Observed (1950)
4) The Dark is light Enough (1904)
Theme: “The Comedy is a climate of damp and dry of spirit and matter,
playing April with each other and the climate is the comedy.”
-Christopher Fry
(Preface)The Lady’s not for Burning
“Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair, a narrow
escape into faith”

6. Tragedy
• The First Born(1946)
Translation of French Playwright
• Ring Round the Moon (1950)
• The Lark (1955)
• Tiger at the Gate (1955)

7. Evidential Critical Reputation
 Based on his Dazzling language in his works
 Most striking stage Vocabulary and most natural images
 “His theatre as theatre of Words”
Because his words are not only heard but also seen through the eyes
and experienced through the mind.
 He did not Juxtaposed verse and prose in his plays as Shakespeare
and Eliot did; but he has gift for inventing colloquial language which
is rhythematically charged with innovated idioms.

8. Ability to Weave Musical Words
“By God, a cuckoo Grief and god
A chanting cuckoo that laughs with no smile
A world unable to die, sits on and on
In spring sunlight, Hatching egg after egg.
Hoping against hope that out of one of them will come
The reasons for it all and always out pops the arid chuckle
And centuries of cuckoo spit”
-Oxford University Press, London
(Thomas Mendip) ‘The Lady’s not for Burning’
“He believe that words gives us a larger or deeper experience of
action”

9. Christopher Fry
• Use language charged with emotions
• Sentimental in nature
• Advocate poetic drama dealing with spiritual matters
• World is a land of fertility and he recommends its acceptance
after a renewal or purification of spirit
• As an artist approaching the physical world with joyful
respect
T.S.Eliot
• Rationalist and Intellectual
• The World is a wasteland and reject physical life
• look at life as a devoid of Life

10. Stage setting
Christopher Fry William Shakespeare

11. Tragedy
• Concern wit the
destiny of the
protagonist with
sorrows
• Demonstrate Human
Dilemma
• No bound of Three
Unities
• More focused on
developing
characters and
porting mood rather
than building plot
• Distinguishes
between the true and
actual
Characterization
• Characters are busy
not in revealing their
personalities but in
exploring their inner
selves
Humor
• Humour with
Intellectual touch
• First please the
gallery as it written
for a very
sophisticated
audience
• treat life as a joke,
quite funny than
laughable
• He not ridicule
man’s follies in
characters of conduct
but to expose the
errors and weakness
of the soul.

12. Theme of Fry’s play
• In all his plays is the Quest for identity on the part of one or more
characters.
• The quest for identity as a religious quest for the Discovery of God.
• Use of poetry in Drama :
“Poetry is action and action is poetry”
• Plays are made up of paradox, Mystery, Intellectual elements,
Religious beliefs, philosophy and mysticism.

13. Bibliography
• Wikipedia
• WWW.enotes.com
• WWW.Shmoop.com