Just Say No To Popery

Christopher Buckley's bad days are better than other writer's good days. I finally ordered a copy of Campion, a play Buckley wrote with James MacGuire. Buckley has carved out a comfortable niche for himself as a comic novelist, but if this play is anything to go by, he has what it takes to be a dramatist.

There was something odd about the play, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I remembered that Buckley and MacGuire wrote in their introduction to Campion that they really liked A Man For All Seasons.

That's when it hit me. Sir Thomas More and Edmund Campion are used in both of these plays to celebrate the individuals freedom of conscience and religion, but ironically belong to an institution that has never really stood for either of these values.

It doesn't diminish my appreciation of either work, but it does seem odd, now that I think of it, that this paradox is never really dealt with in either Campion or the film adaptation of A Man For All Seasons.