Theater: A German f accuse

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As Hochhuth has portrayed him, Pius is all discretion and no valor, and as Emlyn Williams plays him, he is gently dignified but bloodless, Christ's bookkeeper rather than his vicar. While Hochhuth robs Pius of all stature, even he cannot deprive him of sound sense. The Pope reminds Father Riccardo of the mounting Communist danger from the East, thus proving at least as prophetic as Winston Churchill at Fulton, Mo. Pius keeps silent, he tells Father Riccardo, to prevent worse misfortunes —and Hochhuth is scarcely in a position to argue that Hitler was not capable of further madness. But like Hochhuth, Father Riccardo sees himself as holier than the Pope, and he leaves Pius' presence with the words, "God must not destroy the church because a Pope hid when he was summoned."

While every episode in The Deputy calls for Pius to speak out in the name of God, the final scene all but denies the existence of God and drains meaning from the rest of the play. "The Angel of Death," a satanic concentration camp doctor who "selects" those who will die from those who will live a little longer, taunts Father Riccardo with the emptiness of his death. His martyrdom will be unknown and unfelt. Is he dying for the Jews, when his own church has, in centuries past, itself persecuted the Jews? If God exists, why does inexplicable evil persist and triumph? "God is silent," mocks the Angel of Death. Father Riccardo finds no words or divine illumination to refute the silence or absence of God, and he is thrown to his death like a bundle of rags. Thus The Deputy, which begins as a morality play, ends in the dark despair of total nihilism.

With its crude, inept dramaturgy, The Deputy is no service to playwriting, and as a polemic, it might have been a far finer spur to conscience. Hochhuth affects to attack Pius XII for lacking the power of faith but really attacks him for lacking faith in power.