Christopher Fry's A Phoenix Too Frequent: A Study in Source and Symbol

CHRISTOPHER FRY'S A PHOENIX TOO FREQ UENT: A STUDY IN SOURCE AND SYMBOL "THE STORY WAS GOT FROM Jeremy Taylor who had it from Petronius," Fry infmms us of A Phoenix.1 The story is all, however, that the three works have in common. Petronius is cynical: loving until death is a pretty intention that disregards the human need for sex.2 Taylor is moralistic: immoderate grief leads to other immoderate passions.3 Fry is ecstatic: the widow's decision to live demands celebration. The present study will demonstrate that Fry's unique handling of his identified sources is to be explained in part by its specifically Chris· tian content. This study will also suggest a probable and hitherto unnamed Christian source. The presence of Christian influence is most simply to be noted in the setting, the time, and the symbolic tree. Fry's setting is an example of his symbolic use of merely narrative detail provided by Petronius and Taylor. Petronius and Taylor place the story in the tomb and have the soldier report on the crucifixions. Fry combines the crosses and the tomb in his setting: "An underground tomb, in darkness except for the light of an oil-lamp. Above ground the starlight shows a line of trees on which hang the bodies of several men." (1) The strong visual image of a tomb and crosses together immediately alerts the audience to expect A Phoenix to be symbolically Christian in content. There is also the clue of time. Taylor says nothing as to how long the lady and her maid mourn in the tomb. Petronius makes it five days. Fry has Doto the maid specify that two days have been spent in the tomb mourning (9) and the play opens after midnight (7), or on the morning of the third day. Like Christ's macrocosmic resurrection , the microcosmic resurrections occur in the play on the third morning. 1 Christopher Fry, A Phoenix Too Frequent (Oxford, 1946), a note under the Cast of Characters on an unnumbered introductory page. Henceforth, references to this work will be made by page number in the body of the text. 2 Petronii Saturae, ed. Franciscus Buecheler (Berlin, 1958), pp. 136-143 (Ch. 110-113)· 8 Jeremy Taylor, "A Peroration Concerning the Contingencies and Treatings of Our Departed Friends, After Death, in Order to Their Burial," The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying, ed. Reginald Heber, in The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor (London, 1828), IV, 562-565 (Section VIII). 293 294 MODERN DRAMA December Finally, the kinds of trees on which the criminals are executed are not specified by Petronius and Taylor. In Fry's play there are "Five plane trees and a holly." (11) It is from the holly tree that relatives steal the body of one of the criminals, and it is on the holly tree that the soldier must die: How could I settle to death Knowing that you last saw me stripped and strangled On a holly tree? (40) The holly tree is a common Christian symbol of the cross, its red berries construed as drops of Christ's blood.4 A work which so consciously employs Christian symbols may well be based on Christian sources. This study takes note of the similarity between the following parable from Paul's Epistle to the Romans and A Phoenix: Know ye not, brethren (for I speak to them that know the Law) how that the law hath a dominion over a man as long as he liveth? For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law as long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then, if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man. (7: 1-3)5 This parable opens chapter 7. The closing verse of chapter 6 reads: "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our...