ln' The Firstborn' C. Fry combined the material of the Bible with the modern
exeerience of history and created his own Moses. His Moses is characterized as deliverer of life from death，opposing himself to the tyranny and oppression of the pharaoh for defense of the lives of Israelites. In Act 1，II and the former half of III the play proceeds under the traditional principle of opposition and the character of Moses is developed with great skill and energy as a firm opponent against the Pharaoh in the palace and as an eloquent persuader of his kinsmen at home. ln the latter part of Act III，however，he comes to notice that his cause-he stands for life itself-enevitably deprives the Pharaoh's firstborn of life in its process and falls into despair. It apparently
shows that the author's own thought (C. Fry is a quaker who disapproves any form of homicide) intruded into the history play and shifted the denouement.
We are apt to presume to have a right cause even in case of war，but from the
viewpoint of‘life' the actual process of history， however right it may appear， always includes a great contradiction of taking off lives. This play may be said to have a deep significance in having dramatized， through the death of the Firstborn and Moses's agony and lamentagion in the last scene， the sad historical experience of sacrifice made by many innocent youths on either side during the last war.