Masefield wrote a number of poetic dramas on Christian themes (of which Good Friday was the first); but to his amazement, he encountered a ban on the performance of plays on biblical subjects that went back to the Reformation and had been revived a generation earlier to prevent production of Oscar Wilde’s Salome. However, a compromise was reached and in 1928 his “The Coming of Christ” was the first play to be performed in an English cathedral since the Middle Ages.
Good Friday was self-published in the UK during the First World War, in 1916 (having first appeared in The Fortnightly Review in 1915). The first edition in book-form was published in 1916 by Macmillan, New York with the title “Good Friday. A Dramatic Poem”, the author having been sent to the United States “under government auspices to help explain the British war effort” (ODNB).