SOURCE: “Praying and Playing,” in The New Republic, December 14, 1987, pp. 47-8.

In the following review, Baranczak examines the style, central themes, and philosophical underpinnings of John Paul's plays.

Two of the world's most powerful men were once actors. But only one of them was also smart enough to write his own lines. The appearance in English of The Collected Plays and Writings on Theater reminds us that before he became John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla's extraecclesiastic pastimes included not only philosophy, poetry, acting, skiing, and hiking, but also playwriting. To paraphrase Stalin, how many diversions does the pope have?

To be exact, Wojtyla stopped writing plays years before he moved to Rome. Between 1940 and 1964 he wrote six plays altogether, of which five have survived. Of these, three were written after he had become a priest. Only one, The Jeweler's Shop, was published (under a pseudonym) before his election...