Christopher Fry’s Old Testament drama and replacement theology

Christopher Fry’s plays have been studied mainly in the context of verse drama, and where religious discourse in Fry’s work has been considered, the focus has been on how it relates to streams of Christian theology, namely mainstream Protestantism (Church of England) or Quakerism. Thus, extant criticism neglects to consider the significance of The Firstborn’s source text in terms of its Jewishness. This article explores the play within the context of Semitic discourse in modern Britain and demonstrates how Fry’s restaging of the Exodus story in The Firstborn serves to forward Christian replacement theology.