By the early twentieth century, the Gospels had undergone imaginative treatment in poetry, prose fiction and dramatic scenarios, but any ambitions to present them on stage were held firmly at bay by the rigid adherence of successive Examiners of Plays to the Theatres Act of 1843. Prohibiting dramas adapted from the Scriptures and placing an outright ban on the depiction of Christ or the Deity on stage, the legislation proved a more or less insurmountable barrier to aspiring religious dramatists – orthodox and unorthodox – and a bone of contention for members of the artistic community. Encounters with the censor, such as Wilde's over Salome, prompted a variety of public reactions, including a series of articles published in the New Review in 1893. Speaking for the traditionalists, F. W. Farrar insisted that:

Putting the case for the liberals, Henry Arthur Jones argued:

As the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth, so the Theatres Act appeared more and more an anachronism to all but the staunchest traditionalists, prompting satirical responses such as this by the writer and civil servant Humbert Wolfe: