ABSTRACT
His poetic reputation was, it seemed, on the way to restoration. That brief burst of creative regeneration in 1847–8 produced another composition, Judas Iscariot, his first complete play since Gregory VII which he had bitterly declared in 1840 would be his last. Optimism turned him once more to dramatic form to portray Judas as a man fired by ambition, forcing Christ to reveal His identity and powers, never dreaming He would submit to crucifixion. Home owed this historical interpretation, which had obviously attracted his radical Unitarian mind as well as his dramatist's instinct, to the progressive Archbishop Whately of Dublin whom he had met during his Irish assignment. He owed his psychological interpretation to that part of his nature that found fascination in the character of the ruthless genius and the unconscious murderer. For Judas he portrayed as both: a genius irked by his destiny and determined to change it, and the unintentional cause of his Master's death. Though he claimed otherwise in the preface, Home's portrayal was undoubtedly sympathetic; for he in a sense saw himself as Judas, just as, in a sense, he had been part of his other similar anti-heroes, Gregory VII and Garcia.
