Author Description

From back cover:'It is extraordinary what delight I get from a play in which there is real thought and real care for the English language,' wrote T. S. Eliot in 1962 to the author of Curtmantle, after seeing a performance of that play which he called 'a most important and most refreshing experience.'Curtmantle, Christopher Fry's first historical play, which had its world premiere at the 1962 Edinburgh Festival, is set in the twelfth century, in the reign of King Henry II. It explores the character of the King ('undoubtedly Mr. Fry's greatest achievement in any play so far, 'as John Whiting wrote in the London Magazine) and the theme of the Law as seen in his conflict with Thomas Becket and his relationship with Eleanor of Aquitaine.In A Sleep of Prisoners, first performed in 1951 – when it was described by the Church Times as 'a great religious play' – four prisoners of war locked up in a church in enemy territory reveal, in successive dreams, their inner responses to the conflicts set up by confinement.The Dark ls Light Enough, Mr. Fry's 'Winter comedy', produced by Peter Brook at the Aldwych in 1954, dramatizes an imaginary incident in the Hungarian revolution of 1848-9. Its heroine, the Countess, is 'a lady of great spirit' who, as the Times Literary Supplement commented, 'graciously personifies the force which forbearance persisted in with fearless courage may exert on violent events.'Other plays by Christopher Fry available in Oxford PaperbacksA Phoenix Too Frequent; Thor, with Angels; the Lady's Not for Burning (OPB 179); The'Boy with a Cart; The Firstborn; Venus Observed (OPB 218)