Spring and Apocalypse, Law and Prophets: A Reading of Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not for Burning

SPRING AND APOCALYPSE, LAW AND PROPHETS: A READING OF CHRISTOPHER FRY'S THE LADY'S NOT FOR BURNING THIS ESSAY IS A DEFINITION of the central paradox in Lady. Unlike the artist's philosophical-aesthetic que5t for a paradox in life, the scholar's quest for a paradox in a literary work is an academic quest. The scholar 's peculiar method is drawing sound conclusions from soundevidence ; Fry's peculiar method in Lady is hilarious comedy, evident not only in the playas a whole, but in every scene. This study does not take within its purview Fry's techniques for provoking laughter, although it does explain how the laughter provoked is colored by paradox. This study is written to persuade readers that the apparently frothy Lady is worth profounder consideration than has been given it. This first paragraph has been a frank apology that yet another solemn essayl should be written in quest of the paradox of a merry play. The paradox which this study explores is the paradox of spring and apocalypse. The spring season is evident throughout the play. The month is April ("I've an April blindness"2), and Lady takes its place in the tetralogy in which Venus Observed represents autumn, The Dark Is Light Enough represents winter, and a forthcoming play represents summer.s Lady is about spring-but it is also about apocalypse. 1 Three critics have gone in quest of the paradox in Lady. 1. John Woodbury fashions an accurate definition of Lady's paradox-spring and immanent cataclysm -but then blunts that instrument before he gets to use it, by equating spring with the myth of Orpheus, by equating cataclysm with the story and theology of Christ, and by not following Fry's clues for discovering precisely how the paradox works. "The Witch and the Nun," Manitoba Arts Review, X (1956), 41-54. 2. Gunnar Urang finds the "comic climate" of Lady in the ultimate paradox of Christianity: "God ... in Christ reconciling the world unto himself"; Mr. Urang's definition is too broad and blunt an instrument with which to examine the work. "The Climate Is the Comedy." The Christian Scholar, XLVI (1963), 61-86. 3. Nelvin Vos sees Lady as the resolution to the paradox of Victor-Victim, Victim-Victor; Mr. Vos devises his definition primarily for articulating differences between Wilder, Ionesco, and Fry, not for dealing specifically with Lady. "The Comic Victim-Victor: His Passionate Action in the Drama of Christopher Fry," The Drama of Comedy: Victim and Victor (Richmond, 1966), pp. 74-99. 2 Christopher Fry, The Lady's not for Burning, 2d ed. (New York, 1958), p. 6. Future references made by page number in the body of the text. S In a letter to me on January 16, 1967, Fry wrote: "I think, maybe, the fact that during last October and November I finished the first draft of the first act of the new play, and started on the second, is due to a few people like you who have made sense of what I am up to. You ask about the play-well, it's the summer 432 1971 SPRING AND THE ApOCALYPSE 433 The play opens with Thomas leaning in at the window, interrupting Richard at his figures. Annoyed with the distraction, Richard chooses (and Fry chooses for him) out of all possible oaths: "'Damnation." Thomas replies: "Don't mention it. I've never seen a world/So festering with damnation." (3) Both personal and cosmic apocalypse are the concern of Thomas: How do you know that out there, in the day or night According to latitude, the entire world Isn't wanting to be hanged? Now you, for instance, Still damp from your coccoon, you're desperate To fiy into any noose of the sun that should dangle Down from the sky. Life, forbye, is the way We fatten for the Michaelmas of our own particular Gallows. (5) Thomas cannot wait for judgment day: ... I've drunk myself sick, and now, by Christ, I mean to sleep it off in a stupor of dust Till the mornIng after the day of judgment. (19) That we, and his fellow characters, find Thomas strange for wishing...