The Dilemma of the Christian Dramatist: Paul Claudel and Christopher Fry

Extract

To compare two such different writers as Christopher Fry and Paul Claudel is, in a sense, an act of presumption; but then such comparisons are, by a paradox, inherent in the very nature of criticism, at once invidious and indispensable. I say by a paradox advisedly, for there can be no criticism without the ability of making comparisons, yet since each significant work of art is unique within its own terms of reference, no comparison can be altogether convincing. All the same, the very fact that Claudel and Fry are both Christian in a non-Christian age and a non-Christian or only nominally Christian society gives one a vantagepoint from which one may be able to assess at least some of the problems that confront the dramatist with a Christian vision of man and a Christian conception of the nature of reality.