The Man Born To Be King, by Dorothy Sayers

C.S. Lewis used to read The Man Born to be King yearly during the Lenten season to prepare his mind for Easter. If I had been likewise preparing my mind, I would have gotten this review to you last month, but Easter kind of crept up on me this year, so here we’ll have it in May!

The Man Born to Be King is a play cycle written by Dorothy Sayers covering the life of Christ. It is theologically sound and beautifully written. But I think its greatest strength is in the unblinking realism of how she portrays the people surrounding Christ.

In her introduction (which is a jewel among introductions and excellent standalone reading for any Christian writer) Sayers remarks that we often read the Gospels as if the people in them are “sacred personages standing about in symbolic attitudes.” But the reality, she says, is that “God was executed by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own […] He was executed by a corrupt church, a timid politician, and a fickle proletariat led by professional agitators.”

I think Sayers is one of the few writers that can rival Lewis for clarity of thought and the excellence of her craft. Even when she takes some creative liberties, as with Judas Iscariot’s motivations, her intentions are always clearly to glorify the Lord and uphold Biblical thought and not to just create drama for drama’s sake. I will say that she constantly describes Jesus as having a “golden beard” which ticks me off, but it’s a small flaw in an otherwise brilliant piece.

These are plays that reveal the sad shortsightedness of human reasoning and then in in contrast, the greatness and glory of Christ’s love, death, and resurrection. It’s worthwhile reading any time of the year, not just before Easter.