Mystery in the Plays of Christopher Fry

Extract

“There is always something new under the sun,” Christopher Fry has said, “because a mystery never ages.” The remark, set apart like this, itself may seem mysterious, but, when added to Fry's plays, it usefully annotates them. It redirects attention to the presence there not just of mystery but of kinds of mystery which affect the dramatic value of the plays.

I do not wish to exaggerate the differences, but when Fry speaks of mystery, directly in his essays or indirectly in the plays, the word may have one of several meanings. (1) Sometimes he (or the speaker) is saying of a particular moment of experience that, like any other moment, it is unique. It has, besides the familiar qualities that language can codify, an indefinable quality of its own, for, literally, “There is always something new under the sun.” It is as if creation were an infinite series of special creations or “miracles.” No event, therefore, is fully explicable. In uniqueness, there is mystery.