The Brome Play of Abraham and Isaac Anonymous

1300-1400 3 men, angel, doctor

Setting – The script doesn’t provide any setting, but it implies that it takes place in ancient
biblical times somewhere in the middle east where Abraham would have lived.

Plot – It starts by establishing that Abraham is devoted to God and treasures his son, Isaac. God
decides to find out if Abraham loves God more than Isaac, and sends an angel to tell Abraham to
kill Isaac as a sacrifice. Abraham travels to the Mount with Isaac and woefully prepares to
sacrifice him, until Isaac questions his actions. Hearing that it is God’s will for him to be
sacrificed, Isaac resigns himself to his death and allows Abraham to kill him. Just before
Abraham makes the killing stroke, the angel holds back his sword and reveals a ram caught
among briars and tells Abraham to use that as the sacrifice instead. God blesses Abraham for his
faithfulness, and Abraham and Isaac go home.

Items of Note – I thought it was interesting that Abraham made several mentions of God and the
Trinity, when the story is pulled from the Hebrew Bible and the Trinity doesn’t become a
recognized concept until the New Testament. But anyway that’s just a little thing. The play takes
the brief story from scripture and fleshes it out well, really making Abraham and Isaac fully
human and relatable and articulating the struggle that it was for them. I think it was really
interesting that after the story has concluded, the script has a “doctor” come out and give a
monologue dictating the moral of the story and challenging the audience if they would do the
same as Abraham. That kind of thing in contemporary theater turns me off, but it was probably
the standard thing to do of the time. I don’t have any personal interest in being involved with this
play or probably many like it, but I wouldn’t be averse to seeing it performed and I’d be
interested to learn more about the significance of plays like this in theatre history.