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WITHIN THE LAST THREE DECADES' the martyrdom of Thomas Becket has furnished dramatic material for notable plays of T. S. Eliott Christopher Fry, and Jean Anouilh. Murder in the Cathedral (1935) and all of Fry's work including Curtmantle (19,61) stem directly from Eliot's determination to have a poetic drama. Although Anouilh's play Becket2 or the Honor of God (1961) owes little or nothing to Eliot or a theory of poetic drama, all three writers have dissociated themselves from modern realism. As Francis Fergusson has said in another context, they use the stage, the characters, and the story to demonstrate an idea which they take to be the undiscussible truth. Eliot takes dramatic root in classical Greek and medieval morality plays, the Elizabethans and metaphysicals. Fry is distinctly Shavian, and Anouilh has singled out a performance of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author for its seminal impact on his work. Just as significant is the fact that although both Murder and Curtmantle are the culminations of a long and publicly debated process of theory and experimentation, they are apparently both dead-ends. Eliot never again used either a martyrdom or such a dazzling array of verse so prominently. Fry's play-which appeared after a "crisis of confidence" lasting nine years-may have ended his playwriting career. Anouilh's Becket, on the other hand, is still another illustration of human alienation from a sterile universe but one presenting a more mature, positive hero than had his earlier plays.

AN INDUCTIVE STUDY of the imagery of Fry's comedies reveals a great deal about the closeness of his theory and practice, his place in the metaphysical tradition, and the workings of the creative imagination. Far from an automatic versifier, Christopher Fry is a deliberate craftsman who works by design. Although his second religious play, The Firstborn, was begun in 1938, it was not published until 1946 or produced until 1948; moreover, it has been revised twice, in 1952 and in 1958. Curtmantle was only recently produced (1961) although it was reported "in progress" ten years ago. In An Experience of Critics, Fry has sharply defined the painstaking deliberation of playwriting

ALTHOUGH CHRISTOPHER FRY HAS CALLED HIS NON-RELIGIOUS PLAYS "comedies" and has repeatedly used the term in his infrequent but incisive criticism, all his plays except perhaps Curtmantle belong to the tradition of tragicomedy. It is a form which has also been called "problem play" (in Shakespeare), "dark comedy" or, by Suzanne Langer, "averted tragedy." Fry's term, of course, is "comedy of mood." If as Eric Bentley suggests, the two most successful types of tragicomedy are tragedy with a happy ending and comedy with an unhappy ending, Fry writes the former.