Q: Survive all Internal Elements on "Murder in The Cathedral" by Thomas Stearns Eliot.
Introduction: "Murder in the Cathedral" is a verse drama by T. S. Eliot, first performed in 1935 (published the same year). The play portrays the assassination of Archbishop, Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral during the reign of Henry II in 1170. Eliot drew heavily on the writing of Edward Grim, a clerk who was an eyewitness to the event. It often called T. S. Eliot’s first play, and is probably Eliot’s best-known play, and his only completed work of historical drama.
"Murder in the Cathedral", poetic drama in two parts, with a prose sermon interlude, the most successful play by American English poet T.S. Eliot. The play was performed at Canterbury Cathedral in 1935 and published the same year. Set in December 1170, it is a modern miracle play on the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury. The play’s most striking feature is the use of a chorus in the Classical Greek manner.
The book is divided into Two Parts. Part one takes place in the Archbishop Thomas Becket's hall on 2 December, 1170. The play begins with a Chorus singing, foreshadowing the coming violence. Thomas’s return from his Seven-year Exile, fretting over his volatile relationship with King Henry II. The term dramatic literature implies a contradiction in that literature originally meant something written and drama meant something performed. The play was immediately successful when performed in the Chapter House at Canterbury.
Following this initial success, it had a long, critically acclaimed run at the Mercury Theatre in London, under Ashley Dukes and Martin Browne. It scored again in the WPA Theatre in New York, and in the spring following the liberation of France it succeeded in a translation by Henry Fluchele. Following the stage triumphs it was successfully translated into a film by Eliot and George Hoellering. The form of Murder is unique in that Eliot developed his new form and then, after writing this one play, he decided that it was at a dead end and made no further use of it.
Poetry and Drama, Eliot's decision should not be taken as a comment, the usefulness or success of the form; it was at a dead end for Eliot because he wanted to move on and write new and in soms ways more difficult plays for which the form of Murder would not be artistically valid.
Oder of Merit, Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888 – 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor. His notable works are "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1915), "The Waste Land" (1922), "The Hollow Men", (1925) "Murder in the Cathedral", (1935) and "Four Quartets" (1943). He won Nobel Prize in literature in 1948. Eliot first attracted widespread attention for his poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" from 1914 to 1915, which, at the time of its publication, was considered outlandish.
It was followed by "The Waste Land" (1922), "The Hollow Men" (1925), "Ash Wednesday" (1930), and "Four Quartets" (1943). He was also known for seven plays, particularly "Murder in the Cathedral" (1935) and "The Cocktail Party" (1949). He was awarded for the 1948 Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his outstanding, pioneer contribution to present-day poetry".
Summary: Eliot concentrates the action of the play on December 1170, the month of Thomas Becket’s murder. Becket has returned to England following his exile in France, necessitated by his heated disagreements with the King of England, Henry II. Henry and Becket had formerly been close friends, and the King had appointed Becket as Archbishop of Canterbury in the hope that his friend would prove a loyal servant of the Crown. However, Becket came to regard his spiritual office as far superior to any worldly royal authority, and the two men fell out.
Drawing on ancient Greek Drama, Eliot uses a Chorus – in this case, a group of poor women – to mediate between the action of the play and the audience who witness it. The second reminds him that before he was Archbishop, he was Lord Chancellor, enjoying much political power. The third tries to persuade Becket to stir up a revolt against the King. An Interlude follows Becket’s encounter with these "four tempters."
This interlude focuses on Becket’s Christmas Day sermon, which once again prophesies Becket’s own martyrdom: an event he sees as succeeding a long line of previous Christian martyrdoms. Then, on 29 December, Four Knights turn up at Canterbury Cathedral, denouncing Becket for disloyalty to his King and demanding that he return to his exile in France.
Analysis: the sequence known as, Four Quartets, which he wrote between 1935 and 1942. Indeed, lines from an early draft of "Murder in the cathedral" were even repurposed for ‘Burnt Norton’, the first of the, Four Quartets, which Eliot completed in the same year as "Murder in the cathedral" premiered. Eliot was commissioned to write "Murder in the cathedral" for performance in Canterbury Cathedral in Kent: the very same building in which Thomas Becket’s martyrdom had taken place almost 800 years earlier.
The play was first performed by candlelight in the Chapter House on 15 June 1935, as part of the Canterbury Festival. However, as is made clear by the most famous and oft-quoted line from the play – Becket’s own statement about refusing to do "the right deed for the wrong reason" – Becket must not be martyred in pursuit of his own glory. It must be done for God, and for the Church, if done at all. But this does not mean that we should view "Murder In the Cathedral" as ‘only’ about Christian Faith, any more than Robert Bolt’s "A Man For all Seasons" is just about whether an individual should accept the authority of Henry VIII as "Head of the Church in England."
Another summary for Advancement: Eliot wrote his play for an audience expected to know the historical story of Thomas Becket and King Henry II. For that reason, a brief review of that story, contained in the "about thomas becket and king henry ii" section of the Note, will greatly aid comprehension of this summary. It opens in the Archbishop's Hall on December 2nd, 1170. A Chorus, comprising women of Canterbury, has gathered at the cathedral with some premonition of a terrible event to come.
In a long speech, they reflect on how their lives are defined by suffering and reflect on their Archbishop, Thomas Becket. He has been in exile from England for seven years, after a terrible clash with King Henry II. The women worry that his return could make their lives more difficult by angering the king. Three priests enter the hall and also lament Thomas's absence and debate the ramifications of his potential return. A Herald arrives, bringing news that Thomas has indeed returned to England and will soon arrive in Canterbury. The Herald quashes their hopes that Thomas's return indicates reconciliation with Henry and confesses his own concern that violence is soon to follow the archbishop's return.
Once the heralds leave, the priests reflect on Thomas's time as Chancellor of England, when he served as secular administrator under Henry. The Chorus, listening to the priests discuss the matter, confess their disappointment at his return, which they believe will bring them more suffering. They admit their lives are hard but predictable, and they would rather "perish in quiet" than live through the turmoil of new political and spiritual upheaval (180). "The Second Priest" insults them and insists they fake happiness to welcome Thomas.
However, Thomas enters during this exchange and stresses that the priest is mistaken to chide them, since they have some sense of the difficulty that awaits them. He stresses that all should submit to patience, since none can truly know God's plans or intentions. A series of tempters enters, one by one, each attempting to compromise Thomas's integrity. The First Tempter reminds Thomas of the libertine ways of his youth and tempts him to relinquish his responsibilities in favor of a more carefree life. "The Second Tempter" suggests Thomas reclaim the title of Chancellor, since he could do more good for the poor through a powerful political post than he could as a religious figure. The Third Tempter posits a Murder in the Cathedral.
In the progressive form of government, in which a ruler and barons work together as a "coalition." In effect, he offers Thomas a chance to rule and break new ground in government. Thomas easily rejects all three tempters; after all, they are forms of temptation that he has already rejected in his life. A Fourth Tempter enters and suggests the idea of martyrdom, which he notes would give Thomas the greatest dominion over his enemies.
He would be remembered throughout the ages if he allowed himself to die for the church, while his enemies would be judged and then forgotten by time. Thomas is shaken by this temptation, since it is something he has often entertained in his private moments. He recognizes that to die for pride, which is "the wrong reason," would compromise the integrity of a martyrdom, so he must overcome that impulse if his death is to have meaning. While he considers the dilemma, all of the characters thus far mentioned (except the Herald) give a long address considering the uncertainty of life.
When they finish, Thomas announces that his "way [is] clear" – he will not seek martyrdom from fame, but instead will submit to God's will. He has accepted his fate. Part I ends here. Between Part I and Part II, Thomas Becket preaches a sermon in an Interlude, in which he restates the lesson he learned at the end of Part I. The Interlude is set in the cathedral on Christmas morning, 1170. In the sermon, Thomas considers the mystery of Christianity, which both mourns and celebrates the fact of Christ's death – Christians mourn the world that made it necessary, while celebrating the sacrifice that enables others to transcend that world.
He suggests that the appreciation of martyrs is a smaller version of that mystery, and defines "the true martyr [as] he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in his submission to God" (199). He closes his sermon by admitting he might not preach to this congregation again. The first scene of Part II is set in the Archbishop's Hall on December 29th, 1170. The terrified Chorus begins with an ominous address, after which four boorish knights enter. They insist they are there on Henry's business from France and demand an audience with Thomas despite attempts by the priests to distract them. Thomas arrives and is immediately insulted and chided by the knights for what they perceive as disloyalty toward Henry and misuse of the archbishop's position to incite opposition to England.
Thomas denies their interpretationvof events but also reveals a serenity and readiness to die when necessary. The knights attempt to attack him but are interrupted by the priests. A more specific political argument follows, during which Thomas continues to deny their claims and insults them as overly concerned with petty, political matters. Angry, the knights threaten the priests with death if they let Becket escape, and then the knights leave. The Chorus gives a brutal, evocative speech, and Thomas comforts them.
He acknowledges that by bearing necessary witness to the ritual of his death, their lives will grow more difficult. But he maintains that they can find comfort in recollection on having been here this fateful day. As the knights approach again, the priests beg Thomas to flee, but he refuses. The knights force him from the hall and into the cathedral, against his protestations. As the scene changes, the women of the Chorus steel themselves for the death soon to follow.
The priests bar the doors, which the knights then begin to besiege. The priests' arguments do not convince Thomas, who accuses them of thinking too much of cause-and-effect, rather than accepting God's plan. Finally, the priests open the door and the knights drunkenly enter. They demand Thomas lift all the excommunications he has put upon English rulers. He refuses, and they murder him. While Thomas is being murdered, the Chorus gives a long, desperate address lamenting the life they will now have to lead in the shadow of Thomas's martyrdom.
After the murder is done, the four knights address the audience directly. They wish to explain themselves and defend their actions. The First Knight admits he has no facility for argument, and so acts as an MC to introduce the other knights. The Second Knight says he understands how the audience and history will hate them, but begs the audience to realize the knights were "disinterested" in the murder; they were merely following orders that were necessary for the good of England (216).
The Third Knight presents a long, complex argument suggesting that Becket was guilty of betraying the English people and hence was killed justly. The Fourth Knight suggests that Becket willed his own death by pursing martyrdom for the sake of pride, and hence is guilty of suicide, making theknights not guilty of murder. Once the knights leave, the priests lament Thomas's death and worry about what the world will become. The Chorus gives the final speech, revealing that they have accepted their duty as Christians.
They acknowledge that living up to the sacrifice Thomas made is difficult, but that they will be spiritually richer for undertaking this challenge, and they beg mercy and forgiveness from Thomas and God.
Thomas recognizes his pride for what it is. Thomas: Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain: Temptation shall not come in this kind again. The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason. This begins when the Chorus, opening the play, comments directly to the audience. It is compounded when Thomas, having become aware of his pride and having resisted the Fourth Tempter, speaks to the audience directly: "I know What remains to show you of my history –/ Will seem to most of you at best futility, –/ Senseless self-slaughter of a lunatic, –/ They do not kill Thomas out of hand."
Instead they try to arrest him. However, he has the protection of his Three Priests and so the Knights leave, ordering only that he be detained until they return. Thomas' reply to them, as they leave, reminds us tllat a proud man does not cast pride away so easily, and it causes us to wonder. The murder of Thomas, when it finally comes, is almost an anticlimax, for it has been obvious that it would come ever since the play began.
However, when it comes it serves to fulfill the action that the Chorus called for in the opening of Part II. It will "clear the air! clean the sky! wash the wind!" Thomas himself explains how it will do this. The Chorus does this by pointing out its own choral function. "For us . . . there is no action, –/ But only to wait and to witness." (The Chorus, for example, cannot at first relate to spiritual reality. It is more afraid of God and God's justice than it is of earthly pain and sorrow and injustice.
It represents all the common men who fear the blessing of God, the loneliness of the night of God, the surrender required, the deprivation inflicted; Who fear the injustice of men less than the justice of God; Who fear the hand at the window, the fire in the thatch, the fist in the tavern, the push into the canal, Less than we fear the love of God. Eliot's concept of dramatic form can best be made by pointing out that Eliot is one of those who believe that mind is the key to whatever is in the universe.
Critical Comments: As Robin Grove notes in an illuminating chapter on Eliot’s work for the theatre, in "The Cambridge companion to T. S. Eliot" (Cambridge companions to literature). Francis Fergusson has so ably pointed out, Dante is probably the most dramatic of poets, and the definition of dramatic form which Eliot derived from Dante can be applied with some success to Murder. Eliot's dramatic form is the degree to which history, or tradition if one prefers, informs its character. George Williamson has pointed out that for Eliot "the historical sense is a sense of the changing and the permanent which sharpens the perception of both and makes one aware of their simultaneous existence."
Cross-Reference: In 1951, in the first Theodore Spencer Memorial Lecture at Harvard University, Eliot criticized his own plays in the second half of the lecture, explicitly the plays "Murder in the Cathedral", "The Family Reunion", and "The Cocktail Party." The lecture was published as Poetry and Drama and later included in Eliot's 1957 collection On Poetry and Poets. The Rock (1934), a verse drama written to be
performed at Sadler's Wells Theatre on behalf of the Forty-five Churches
Fund, 8 moved him a step closer, but like Sweeney it was more of an experiment
in verse than an attempt to devise a dramatic form.
Textual Reference: George Bernard Shaw’s earlier medieval play, Saint Joan (1923), which had sought to demystify Joan of Arc’s martyrdom.
Theme: Eliot's creations into intellectual life is his rejection of the barren, arid quality of man's contemporary spiritual state, which is evidenced in the poems by a number of "imagistic forms sand and dry rock, gashouse ugliness, sandwich paper litter, parvenu vulgarity, prostitution, hysteria, betrayal, death and half death; underlying all of which are the two main tokens of spirItual failure neutrality and separation."
In writing Murder, however, lle was faced with the problem of using this verse. The primary way in which this Chorus corresponds to its Greek ancestor has been touched upon by Eliot in "The Need for Poetic Drama," where he points out that "the chorus has always fundamentally the same uses. It mediates between the action and the audience; it intensifies the action by projecting its emotional consequences, so that we as the audience see it doubly, by seeing its effect on other people." Also in this episode we have the first actual foreshadowing of the murder. The death images contained in the opening choral ode (sombre, death, darkness, danger, etc.) have created a sense of foreboding, and the foreboding becomes premonition when the Herald points out that It is common knowledge that when the Archbishop parted from the King, he said to the King, My Lord, he said, I leave you as a man Whom in this life I shall not see again. (p. in a particularly revealing passage, he locates that point on the line between liturgy and reality where tension (and thus drama) exists.
Power and Politics on Motifs: In "Murder in the Cathedral," power and politics are depicted as inherently intertwined. King Henry II seeks to assert his authority over the Church by appointing Thomas Becket as Archbishop of Canterbury, expecting him to prioritize the interests of the state over those of the Church. However, Becket's refusal to compromise his principles and allegiance to the Church leads to a power struggle between the two men. The play illustrates the corrupting influence of power and the lengths to which individuals will go to maintain or challenge it.
Faith and Religion: Central to the play is the theme of faith and religion, as Becket grapples with his spiritual beliefs and the responsibilities of his position within the Church. His unwavering commitment to God's will and the Church's autonomy contrasts with Henry's secular concerns, highlighting the tension between worldly power and spiritual authority. Through Becket's martyrdom, the play explores the triumph of faith over earthly concerns and the enduring power of religious conviction.
Martyrdom: The Martyrdom is pervasive throughout the play, culminating in Becket's ultimate sacrifice. Becket willingly embraces martyrdom as a means of upholding his principles and defending the Church against the encroachment of secular authority. His martyrdom serves as a powerful symbol of resistance against oppression and tyranny, inspiring others to follow his example and stand up for their beliefs.
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