Fry's plays concentrate on a group of closely related themes: the redemptive power of love, both eros and agapé; the wonder, paradoxes and unity of existence; the cycle of life, death and renewal; the operation of necessity and the nature of individuality; and man's relationship with the universe and with God. Several of his plays—The Boy with a Cart (1939), The Firstborn (1949), Thor, with Angels (1948), and A Sleep of Prisoners (1951)—are overtly religious, but the secular plays, through their distinctly religious sub-structures, also pursue, in Fry's own phrase from A Sleep of Prisoners, "an exploration into God." A few examples of such sub-structures are the ritual death and rebirth patterns in A Phoenix Too Frequent (1949) and in The Lady's Not for Burning (1949), the process of love, sacrifice and redemption in those plays and in Venus Observed (1950) and The Dark Is Light Enough (1954), and the sacramental nature of Rosmarin's...