Murder in the Cathedral - T.S. Eliot
[alert-success] Murder in the Cathedral - T.S. Eliot [/alert-success]
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[alert-primary] Critical Analysis [/alert-primary]
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Like many morality plays, Murder in the Cathedral is about temptation, but Becket, as the great archbishop, shows that he is stronger than his tempters. Eliot's choruses, which were written to be sung by the working women of Canterbury, are one of the best examples of his skill as a poet.
In this play, Eliot has tried out more ways to find verse forms that work well for ritualistic drama. He didn't have any living stage traditions to look at, but he thought that a chorus could still do something similar to what it did for the ancient Greeks. It could "mediate between the action and the audience." It could "intensify the action by projecting its emotional consequences, so that we as an audience see it twice, by seeing how it affects other people."
Eliot's women are there to watch and suffer, and almost all of their feelings are very sad.Their feelings range from fear of the unknown to horror at the fact that Becket was killed. Their lines are mostly iambic, but they can be very long or very short. Eliot avoided the pentameter as much as possible. He tried out some of Hopkins' sprung-possibilities rhythm's and sometimes used it to make patterned prose that was sped up by alliteration and internal rhyme. He was very skilled at planning his speeches around the lengths of natural breaths.
The actors that Eliot has created are also defined by the verse they speak. For example, the First Tempter, who tries to get Becket to follow him by reminding him of old pleasures, speaks in a soft, lilting way, while those who try to get Becket to follow them by offering power, either through the Chancellorship or a new alliance with the barons against the King, speak in a strong, blunt way. The Fourth Tempter is at the top of a scale that goes up. Becket didn't want to be chancellor again or have worldly pleasures right now, and a coalition with the barons could only get him excited for a short time. The Fourth Tempter, on the other hand, is something he didn't expect and tempts him with his own deepest thoughts. ... This was Becket's first speech in the play, where he thought about the Chorus's situation, and the Fourth Tempter almost says it back to him word for word. It shows how far Eliot has come in his understanding of Dante's idea of grace by how firm its doctrine is.
Eliot doesn't just think about "the eternal burden" like he used to. Instead, he thinks about the possibility of "the perpetual glory" in the way he weaves together suffering, striving, and acceptance. But by making the Fourth Tempter reach the same level of deep understanding, Eliot dramatises Becket's main danger, which is the temptation for a proud mind to become so sure of its own wisdom that it wants a martyr's crown as a reward and takes it for granted: "The last temptation is the biggest act of betrayal: doing the right thing for the wrong reason," says the Bible. In the meditation at the end of the first act, Becket comes to realise that no one can will himself to death. "I will no longer act or suffer to the end of the sword," he says in the end, and he gives up his will in favour of God's.
In the sermon that comes between the two acts, Becket shows that he is sure of this deeper trust. He then faces the wrath of the Knights, who are the same four Tempters from the first act, and goes to his death without fear. The Knights' actions are blasphemous, and the fact that they kill people using words from spirituals and revival hymns right after the Chorus sings a sad passage makes it even worse. The Knights then turn to the audience and, in a dramatic shock, drop into the prose of modern debate and try to explain their actions by using all the reasons that make sense at the time. But the ending belongs to the Priests and the Chorus as they build up to a prayer for "blessed Thomas."
Eliot wasn't writing a play about pride gone wrong like Lear. Instead, he was writing a play about pride being overcome. After he stood up to the temptations, Becket became a "sanctified being," as Eliot said in the beginning of this chapter. Certainly, such a picture simplifies a lot the real person, about whom historians still disagree on whether he fought to the end "for an idea" or "to humiliate" his opponent Henry II. Becket is a martyr in Eliot's Anglo-Catholic faith, but the poet makes him a saint even in this life. He doesn't talk about how angry the natural man got when he met Reginald FitzUrse, the leader of the murderers, and yelled at him, "You pander!" as the story goes. But if Eliot lost something of the human in the ritualistic priest, and even if his Becket, in the knowledge of his mission, barely escapes from "the pride that apes humility," Eliot still managed to show lasting problems.
He was able to do it because, unlike in The Family Reunion, he understood the social context. He knew that his view of history was different from the secular age in which he lived, and one of his most powerful passages is when Becket addresses the audience with a prophetic vision: "I know that what I still have to show you of my history will seem to most of you at best like the senseless self-slaughter of a madman or the arrogant passion of a fanatic." The Fourth Tempter also looks ahead to the Reformation, when Becket's shrine will be ransacked.
Eliot could give these thoughts a sense of urgency because he was not just writing about the past. As Becket went on to criticise indifference, oppression, and exploitation, and as he gave his life "to the Law of God above the Law of Man," Eliot was writing against the rising threat of Fascism, when violent men like Reginald FitzUrse took power into their own hands. Eliot proved again what he said about Pound's translations, which was that a poet could hint at the present by knowing about the past. When he wrote "The Waste Land," he also showed that the opposite was true, but in "The Family Reunion," he was unable to do so. Maybe the more he thought about how bad and broken the modern world was, the less he cared about immediate problems like the ones Becket had to deal with. Even though he wrote an essay about "the idea of a Christian society," when he was asked about loyalist Spain, he said, "While I am naturally sympathetic, I still feel convinced that it is best for at least a few men of letters to remain isolated and not take part in these collective activities..."
Eliot couldn't find a way to give his Eumenides any of the meaning that they had for the Greeks as a whole. One could also say that a mind as full of St. John's "dark night of the soul" as Eliot has shown himself to be in his Quartets might be able to write deep contemplative poetry, but it probably wouldn't be close enough to people to show their problems in a real way. ... Even with the sad grandeur of its choruses, Murder in the Cathedral is the most sustained English poetic drama since John Milton's Samson Agonistes. It can also be played, while that work was not meant to be. Even though the content is very limited, Eliot's drama is very impressive when compared to the dead commercial theatre of the past ten years. ... Even though the war went on for a long time and Eliot's thoughts were hard and made him feel alone, it is possible to hope that his playwriting is not yet over.
Murder in the Cathedral was a huge success for what it was meant to do in the Canterbury chapter house. It showed what Eliot meant when he wrote in the last lines of his "Dialogue" that "what we need is an hour and a half of intense interest that doesn't stop." Even though a chorus is hard to do on a modern stage, the play showed this again during a long run at London's Mercury Theatre... It was one of the biggest hits at the WPA theatre in New York, where the Chorus lines were split up and spoken by different people. In the spring after France was freed, it won again at the Vieux Colombier, which is a translation.
Eliot's women are there to watch and suffer, and almost all of their feelings are very sad.Their feelings range from fear of the unknown to horror at the fact that Becket was killed. Their lines are mostly iambic, but they can be very long or very short. Eliot avoided the pentameter as much as possible. He tried out some of Hopkins' sprung-possibilities rhythm's and sometimes used it to make patterned prose that was sped up by alliteration and internal rhyme. He was very skilled at planning his speeches around the lengths of natural breaths.
The actors that Eliot has created are also defined by the verse they speak. For example, the First Tempter, who tries to get Becket to follow him by reminding him of old pleasures, speaks in a soft, lilting way, while those who try to get Becket to follow them by offering power, either through the Chancellorship or a new alliance with the barons against the King, speak in a strong, blunt way. The Fourth Tempter is at the top of a scale that goes up. Becket didn't want to be chancellor again or have worldly pleasures right now, and a coalition with the barons could only get him excited for a short time. The Fourth Tempter, on the other hand, is something he didn't expect and tempts him with his own deepest thoughts. ... This was Becket's first speech in the play, where he thought about the Chorus's situation, and the Fourth Tempter almost says it back to him word for word. It shows how far Eliot has come in his understanding of Dante's idea of grace by how firm its doctrine is.
Eliot doesn't just think about "the eternal burden" like he used to. Instead, he thinks about the possibility of "the perpetual glory" in the way he weaves together suffering, striving, and acceptance. But by making the Fourth Tempter reach the same level of deep understanding, Eliot dramatises Becket's main danger, which is the temptation for a proud mind to become so sure of its own wisdom that it wants a martyr's crown as a reward and takes it for granted: "The last temptation is the biggest act of betrayal: doing the right thing for the wrong reason," says the Bible. In the meditation at the end of the first act, Becket comes to realise that no one can will himself to death. "I will no longer act or suffer to the end of the sword," he says in the end, and he gives up his will in favour of God's.
In the sermon that comes between the two acts, Becket shows that he is sure of this deeper trust. He then faces the wrath of the Knights, who are the same four Tempters from the first act, and goes to his death without fear. The Knights' actions are blasphemous, and the fact that they kill people using words from spirituals and revival hymns right after the Chorus sings a sad passage makes it even worse. The Knights then turn to the audience and, in a dramatic shock, drop into the prose of modern debate and try to explain their actions by using all the reasons that make sense at the time. But the ending belongs to the Priests and the Chorus as they build up to a prayer for "blessed Thomas."
Eliot wasn't writing a play about pride gone wrong like Lear. Instead, he was writing a play about pride being overcome. After he stood up to the temptations, Becket became a "sanctified being," as Eliot said in the beginning of this chapter. Certainly, such a picture simplifies a lot the real person, about whom historians still disagree on whether he fought to the end "for an idea" or "to humiliate" his opponent Henry II. Becket is a martyr in Eliot's Anglo-Catholic faith, but the poet makes him a saint even in this life. He doesn't talk about how angry the natural man got when he met Reginald FitzUrse, the leader of the murderers, and yelled at him, "You pander!" as the story goes. But if Eliot lost something of the human in the ritualistic priest, and even if his Becket, in the knowledge of his mission, barely escapes from "the pride that apes humility," Eliot still managed to show lasting problems.
He was able to do it because, unlike in The Family Reunion, he understood the social context. He knew that his view of history was different from the secular age in which he lived, and one of his most powerful passages is when Becket addresses the audience with a prophetic vision: "I know that what I still have to show you of my history will seem to most of you at best like the senseless self-slaughter of a madman or the arrogant passion of a fanatic." The Fourth Tempter also looks ahead to the Reformation, when Becket's shrine will be ransacked.
Eliot could give these thoughts a sense of urgency because he was not just writing about the past. As Becket went on to criticise indifference, oppression, and exploitation, and as he gave his life "to the Law of God above the Law of Man," Eliot was writing against the rising threat of Fascism, when violent men like Reginald FitzUrse took power into their own hands. Eliot proved again what he said about Pound's translations, which was that a poet could hint at the present by knowing about the past. When he wrote "The Waste Land," he also showed that the opposite was true, but in "The Family Reunion," he was unable to do so. Maybe the more he thought about how bad and broken the modern world was, the less he cared about immediate problems like the ones Becket had to deal with. Even though he wrote an essay about "the idea of a Christian society," when he was asked about loyalist Spain, he said, "While I am naturally sympathetic, I still feel convinced that it is best for at least a few men of letters to remain isolated and not take part in these collective activities..."
Eliot couldn't find a way to give his Eumenides any of the meaning that they had for the Greeks as a whole. One could also say that a mind as full of St. John's "dark night of the soul" as Eliot has shown himself to be in his Quartets might be able to write deep contemplative poetry, but it probably wouldn't be close enough to people to show their problems in a real way. ... Even with the sad grandeur of its choruses, Murder in the Cathedral is the most sustained English poetic drama since John Milton's Samson Agonistes. It can also be played, while that work was not meant to be. Even though the content is very limited, Eliot's drama is very impressive when compared to the dead commercial theatre of the past ten years. ... Even though the war went on for a long time and Eliot's thoughts were hard and made him feel alone, it is possible to hope that his playwriting is not yet over.
Murder in the Cathedral was a huge success for what it was meant to do in the Canterbury chapter house. It showed what Eliot meant when he wrote in the last lines of his "Dialogue" that "what we need is an hour and a half of intense interest that doesn't stop." Even though a chorus is hard to do on a modern stage, the play showed this again during a long run at London's Mercury Theatre... It was one of the biggest hits at the WPA theatre in New York, where the Chorus lines were split up and spoken by different people. In the spring after France was freed, it won again at the Vieux Colombier, which is a translation.
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