| Title | : | Murder in the Cathedral |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0156632772 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780156632775 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 148 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1936 |
The Archbishop Thomas Becket speaks fatal words before he is martyred in T. S. Eliot's best-known drama, based on the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1170. Praised for its poetically masterful handling of issues of faith, politics, and the common good, T. S. Eliot's play bolstered his reputation as the most significant poet of his time.
Murder in the Cathedral Reviews
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A fabulous verse-drama about the martyrdom of Thomas Becket. Most of the action is in Thomas's head, as he rejects the easy solutions presented by his Tempters, and decides to stick to the course which inevitably leads to his death. My favorite lines are the following:
The last temptation is the greatest treason
It sounds convincing, but I've never been able to decide if I agree. Given how uncertain people generally are about their motives, isn't what you do the most important thing? For example, when you read about the background to many great works of art, you'll often find that they were composed for the most trivial and ridiculous of reasons; impressing some random woman that the author was keen on, settling scores with a rival, winning a bet, or, most often, just paying an overdue bill. I don't think that makes any difference at all.
To do the right deed for the wrong reason
But Eliot's poetry is so compelling that you only think of this stuff afterwards... while reading it, I just find myself swept along by the verse. It's one of his best pieces, and surprisingly unknown compared to Prufrock and The Waste Land.
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It took me almost a month to get through this small play because I had to keep going back and re-read certain parts. As I was reading the play I kept comparing Eliot to Shakespeare. Maybe that was wrong and one of the reasons why it took me so long to read because they are both writers of a different caliber, but for me, Shakespeare's writing flows with delicacy and beauty, while Eliot's writing is stiff and dare I say, dull. He certainly didn't grab my attention the way Skakespeare does.
That being said, I did enjoy learning about Thomas Becket because I didn't know that much about him. The parts I loved about the play were the Christmas sermon and the climax at the end. -
Human kind cannot bear very much reality.
The structure of this play is gripping. The use of the chorus was very effective, whereas the depiction of a conflicted Becket in dialogue with his temptations could’ve been explored further. The absence of Henry II makes matters more human and inchoate. The state is thus shorn of personality. The debate of ideas and sacrifice reminded me of the debate surrounding Edward Snowden. Unfortunately I began to ponder and compare the fixed points of liberty and security and my attention drifted. -
Finished a re-read, after first reading
Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel, by
John Guy, and watching the movie,
Becket, starring Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton (1964).
I got a lot more out of Part I and the Interlude, 2nd time thru. Not much more out of Part II, tho.
I read this book because of a recent read of
The Pillars of the Earth, by
Ken Follett. The two books together, and the movie, have made me interested to learn more, particularly about Eleanor of Aquitaine.
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Can't rate yet ...
I had to finish, I wanted to see what came next ... well, I knewwhat was to come next, but I wanted to see how it was handled.
Not 'done' with this book tho. Definitely going to back up, and re-read, and do some learning, especially about Part I and the Tempters ... -
Really thought-provoking. T.S. Eliot didn't just set up a straw man for Thomas Beckett's hagiography. To what extent do we seek the good of the culture in the present? To what extent can our commitment to running counter to it allow us to slip into religious pride?
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The play's format leans heavily on the format of Medieval and Early Modern morality plays. Like in morality plays, we see the fight between good and evil. Unlike those earlier morality plays, there is a new player: knights serving the interests of king and money. The emergent merchant class asserts its interests. The argument is no longer strictly State v God. The argument now is about who has the money and about how that interest will be served. . . .If I return to this play, I will have to consider what was happening in England that T. S. Eliot felt that this play needed to be written/helped this play be popular.
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A Political Martyr
4 July 2020
I never realised that T.S. Elliot actually wrote plays, but then again I’m not all that familiar with his works, which, to be honest, I should really consider rectifying. This particular play was written for the Canterbury Festival in 1935 and depicts the events that lead up to the murder of Thomas Beckett by four knights who took King Henry II’s statement ‘will nobody rid me of that troublesome priest’ a little too literally. Mind you, murdering a priest really didn’t go down all that well in 12th Century England, though the knights did end up fleeing, but from what I gathered from the notes included in the text, they weren’t exactly welcome anywhere.
Elliot used the Ancient Greek style of playwriting for this particular piece, with the setting being Canterbury Cathedral, and the action is his murder. He also has a chorus of women, and there are only at most three people communicating with each other at one time. Okay, the events take place over a number of days, considering that Beckett’s Christmas sermon is included, and Beckett was murdered on 29th December, but I’d say that the events are all close enough so as to sit well with the unity of time.
There are a few interesting things in this play, though the focus tends to be mostly on Beckett’s martyrdom. For instance, we have the tempters that are encouraging Beckett to flee to the continent, which not only brings back images of Socrates in
the Crito, where there is a discussion between Socrates and his friends as to whether he should escape from Athens. Of course, images of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane are also apparent, particularly where Christ is tempted to flee the cross. In a way, Beckett can see his martyrdom approaching, and he chooses to stand firm and face it.
Yet I struggle to see this as a martyrdom in its true form. Like, the whole conflict between Henry and Beckett seems to come down to two possibilities – the struggle between the Church and the State, and the struggle between England and continental Europe. In a way, the struggle between the church and state had been brewing for quite a while, and in reality, England sits on the outer edges of the church’s domains. Yet, I can see images of Brexit as well, something that seems to permeate through the ages.
So, the idea of church and state is the question of who holds the greater authority – the King, or the Pope – London, or Rome. For centuries kings had risen, and fallen, at the will of the Popes, and pretty much all continental policy was formed out of the Vatican. While the kings held dominion over temporal affairs, and the Pope holding dominion over spiritual affairs, the reality of the situation was that Rome pretty much pulled the strings. This is where the whole Beckett controversy arose.
Basically Henry wanted a weaker church in England, namely so that he could do things without having to get permission from Rome. When the previous Archbishop died he decided to appoint his old friend Beckett, who had been Lord Chancellor. Well, it turned out that loyalties didn’t seem to stick, or you could say that Beckett saw his allegiance to God is greater than his allegiance to the king. I suspect things like that still happen these days, especially when judges are appointed to the Supreme Court and the people that appointed them suddenly discover that these judges actually have a mind of their own.
Another interesting idea is the whole Brexit mess. Okay, I’m certainly one of those people who has accepted the fact that Brexit will happen, despite not thinking that it will be a good idea. Then again, a united Europe certainly does scare an awful lot of people, and attempting to break it apart is the goal of a number of not very pleasant people. However, it seems that this struggle between Europe and England has been going on for centuries. It’s like England, or even Britain, don’t see themselves as being a part of Europe because of, well, the moat. Mind you, moats are absolutely wonderful things, but it certainly seems that Brexit really isn’t anything new.
So, yeah, I really don’t see Beckett as being a martyr, at least not in the traditional sense. No, it seems to have more to do with the conflict with state power. It was clear that Henry really didn’t appreciate Rome meddling in his affairs, which was why he decided to install Becket as archbishop. However, one also gets the impression that he really didn’t mean to have Beckett killed, it was just that these knights decided to act out on their own. Mind you, one interesting thing that the editor does say is that the actual historicity of the event is pretty difficult to determine considering that much of what was written, was actually written by Beckett sympathisers. As such, we tend to have resources that tend to support Beckett much more than Henry. -
I never liked T.S. Eliot. When I was a teenager, “The Waste Land” was agony. Now that I’m an adult, I see the truth in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” but that’s another review altogether. Nevertheless, I was weary of “Murder in the Cathedral.”
But I have a soft spot in my heart for Thomas Becket. Thomas worked for his education. While studying law, he was mocked by his peers because he didn’t come from a wealthy family and didn’t have the same experiences that they had. But then, he rose in the ranks of English society to become the second most powerful man in England — more accurately, he became the other most important man in England. Until. . . .
Henry II tried to destroy the wall between the English church and the English state so that the state could control the church. If he had succeeded, Henry would have become the most powerful man in England. Thomas defied him.Saint and Martyr rule from the tomb.
We meet Thomas in the final days of his defiance. Everyone knows what is coming, and an ominous pall hangs over Canterbury.
I liked that Eliot personified the temptations that Thomas faced: his friendship with Henry, the chance for earthly power, the good of the English church, and the glory of martyrdom. The glory of martyrdom is the most seductive of all: “The last temptation is the greatest treason: / To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”
The scenes with the temptations mirrored Christ’s agony in Gethsemane, except that Eliot gave voice to the thoughts that would have restrained Thomas. The Bible never takes that liberty.
Eliot breaks the rhythm of the poem to allow Thomas to preach to the audience. I loved that Eliot allows Thomas this opportunity. It gives lie to the idea that Thomas does the right deed for the wrong reason: “[T]he true martyr is he . . . who no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of being a martyr.” Eliot’s Thomas has no self-service on his conscience.
Then there is the martyrdom.
I thought the play would have ended with Thomas’ death. Then, Eliot breaks down the fourth wall again. The soldiers address the audience. I liked that Eliot allows this, too. One of the soldiers speaks a truth that I had not considered: one generation earlier, the kingdom was divided by the Anarchy, and the rift between Thomas and Henry threatened to divide it again. I had always seen the struggle between the men as a power struggle. Thomas’ Third Temptation and the Second Knight say the nation itself was in jeopardy. The martyrdom unified the kingdom.
The play is not merely a hagiography. The play isn't Eliot aggrandizing himself. The play is bigger than either Thomas.
Thomas Eliot and Thomas Becket, together, are magic. -
A short essay that I wrote about the relevance of Murder in the Cathedral in modern times.
Murder in the Cathedral was first staged in the 1930’s when the importance of the church in the individual’s life was on the decline. Moreover, the religious order and the Catholic Church were being persecuted in many countries across Europe, especially in Germany, Spain and Mexico. Writers such as James Joyce had already begun to express dissent against the Catholic Church through novels like A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In the novel, a young Stephen Dedalus begins to struggle with his suspicion for the doctrines of the church which he used to follow very rigidly.
So it must be remembered that the audience in the 1930’s for a play like Murder in the Cathedral was almost certainly one which was getting used to the idea of subordination of church to the state. Such an audience would reject all kinds of superstitions and notions such as sacredness of the Catholic Church. Murder in the Cathedral is significant in this regard because T.S.Eliot tried to reimagine an important event that took place in the 12th century for a 20th century audience. Eliot is attempting to explain the concept of sacredness to a 20th century audience whose psyche has been ravaged by industrialization, war and materialism.
It must also be noted that fascism was on the rise across Europe in the 1930’s when Murder in the Cathedral was first staged. The brutal murder of Becket by the four knights may represent the innate tendency of fascists to commit heinous acts of violence and use propaganda to convince the public that there was no other way to solve the problem at hand. After the four knights murder Becket, they address the audience and try to rationalize and explain the horrible murder committed by them. This is one of the two instances in the play when Eliot uses prose. The First Knight tries to arouse patriotic sentiments among the audience by saying that as Englishmen they should follow the long-established principle of Trial by Jury. The Third Knight also tries to arouse patriotic sentiments by saying that he and his compatriots were four normal Englishmen who put their country first. The Second Knight justifies the use of violence to secure social justice. The Fourth Knight blames the murder on Beckett by saying that he invited the murder upon himself as he was determined upon a death by martyrdom. The speeches of the four knights may be compared to the propaganda spread by the Nazis in the 1930s which tried to arouse patriotic sentiments and also rationalize unspeakable acts of violence.
Murder in the Cathedral is a very significant play because it tried to explain the concept of sacredness of the Catholic Church to a 20th century audience while also making it relevant by comparing the four Knights to the Nazis who were creating havoc across Europe. -
OK was as good as I could do with this one. I could not imagine sitting through a performance of this. It's not Shakespeare, it's not Greek, it is Eliot, though, I suppose. Theater doesn't seem to fit him as well as poetry, in my opinion.
Becket returns to England knowing he's a marked man. Reconciliation with the king will not happen. And after a temptation scene and advice from friends, he stands firm in the knowledge he will become a martyr. With a few tweaks this sounds like Jesus' last visit to Jerusalem as found in the New Testament accounts. Becket joins the ranks of the faithful following after the founder of the church.
No points for an original story line, no points for the character of Beckett, and very few points for his poetic presentation. It's Eliot using his play as a rather obvious vehicle for defending a position he feels needs it. State versus the church loyalties. And in the end he decides for neither, but a higher calling still.
I'd much prefer to revisit the movie Becket. -
Uma peça de teatro poética sobre o assassinato, no dia 29 de dezembro de 1170, de São Thomas Becket, Arcebispo de Cantuária.
Um horror... de chato; para mim, claro, pois numa espreitadela rápida nas reviews vi muitas com cinco estrelas. -
This is a drama written by the poet and Nobel prize winner T S Eliot, concerning the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett in 1170.
Thomas Beckett was made Chancellor (a political position) by King Henry II of England and later he made him Archbishop of Canterbury (an ecclesiastical position) which is the major see of the church in England. Thomas had a battle of conscience because he recognised that church and state would now in law be joined. He decided in favour of his faith and God and renounced the chancellorship. King Henry wanted the church to be under the power of the state, or King, and in the ensuing disagreement, Thomas fled to France and was in exile for 7 years. The Pope put England and the King under excommunication and thus the King had to back down and allow Thomas to return as Archbishop. Obviously, the king was not a happy man about all this and is claimed to have said words to the effect of wanting someone to get rid of this man for him;
"Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?"
Four knights stepped up to the challenge and the rest, as they say, is history.
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/be...
There are some wonderful lines in the drama where Thomas is tempted 4 times;
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right thing for the wrong reason.
Interesting choice of word, treason; to act against one's nation or sovereign. But in this case Eliot means not merely King Henry II and the English people, who he wants to be faithful to, but his higher monarch of the Lord Jesus Christ and the church of God.
I am glad I took the time to read this short work. -
هذا هو الكتاب رقم 500
أنا سعيدة بوصولي لهذا الرقم رغم الدراسة والوقت الكبير اللي كانت بتاخده
تخرجت من الكلية على خير ومرت هذه الأيام بحلوها ومرها -
(2.5) At about the time her memoir came out, I remember Jeanette Winterson describing this as her gateway drug into literature: she went to the library and picked it out for her mother, thinking it was just another murder mystery, and ended up devouring it herself. It is in fact a play about the assassination of Thomas à Becket, a medieval archbishop of Canterbury. The last time I read a play was probably eight years ago, when I was on an Alan Ayckbourn kick; before that, I likely hadn’t read one since my college Shakespeare class. And indeed, this wasn’t dissimilar to Shakespeare’s histories (or tragedies) in content and tone. It is mostly in verse, with some rhyming couplets, offset by a couple of long prose passages.
I struggled mostly because of complete unfamiliarity with the context, though some liberal Googling would probably be enough to set anyone straight. The action takes place in December 1170 and is in two long acts, separated by an interlude in which Thomas gives a Christmas sermon. The main characters besides Thomas are three priests who try to protect him and a chorus of local women who lament his fate. In Part I there are four tempters who, like Satan to Jesus in the desert, come to taunt Thomas with the lure of political power – upon being named archbishop, he resigned his chancellorship. The four knights, who replace the tempters in Part II and ultimately kill Thomas, feel that he betrayed King Henry and the nation by not keeping both roles and thus linking Church and state.
Most extraordinary is the knights’ prose defence late in the second act, in which they claim to have been completely “disinterested” in killing Thomas and that it was his own fault – to the extent that his death might as well be deemed a suicide. I always appreciate a first-person plural chorus, and I love Eliot’s poetry in general: there are some of his lines I keep almost as mantras, and more I read nearly 20 years ago that still resonate. I expected notable quotes here, but there were no familiar lines. As usually is the case with plays, this probably works better on stage. A nice touch was that my 1938 Faber copy, acquired from the free bookshop we used to have in our local mall, was owned by two fellows of St. Chad’s College, Durham, whose names appear one after the other in blue ink on the flyleaf. One of them added in marginal notes relating to how the play was performed by the Pilgrim Players in March 1941.
Originally published on my blog,
Bookish Beck. -
The Basics
An historical play written in verse that tells of the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1170.
My Thoughts
Talk about going outside of your comfort zone. I don't read a lot of poetry. I don't read a lot of plays. And I don't read a lot of historical fiction. That title, though. I couldn't resist that title. Also, T.S. Eliot is a famous poet, and I've read some of his more famous works, enough to make me intrigued when I see his name. In the end, what can I say? I enjoyed it.
There are some stories that, while the plot may be vaguely intriguing and you could cite only having somewhat of an interest in what goes on, the language makes it. The style and the poetry and the language are what makes this sing. Particularly the passages for the female chorus. I'm not saying the story isn't interesting, because it is. But it's also very basic. The Archbishop is in a bad position politically, he won't do what he's told by the higher-ups, so he dies. There are no surprises here, but the way Eliot chooses to tell the story, everything from word choices to the style of the play, makes up for a lot.
The one thing that felt like a completely bizarre choice on Eliot's part was a portion of the play when the knights step forward to tell their tale. It seemed humorous to me, and I can't honestly tell if it was supposed to be funny. That's maybe its weakest spot, but it's a nitpick when really I was reading this play to experience some great poetry, and I received that.
Final Rating
4/5 -
Magnifica tragedia.
La drammatizzazione del martirio di Tommaso Becket é, nella sua leggerezza e brevità, qualcosa di biblico, epico, potentemente introspettivo. T.S. Eliot ha un occhio spirituale sottile e perspicace, limpido e completamente libero da pedanterie teologiche. Coglie con straordinaria brevità gli aspetti più delicati del rapporto tra l'uomo e Dio, i giochi del potere, la cognizione del dolore e della morte.
I quattro tentatori dell'Arcivescovo Becket si sovrappongono alle tre tentazioni nel deserto del Cristo, con l'aggiunta di una tentazione, la più 'infida'; segui il tuo destino, accetta il martirio come 'vendetta' sui tuoi assalitori. E' questa una visione molto fine, interessante e critica di un certo cristianesimo, che rischia di fare del perdono o dell'accettazione della persecuzione la sua 'wild card' per un posto in Paradiso e garanzia di rivendicazione nei confronti dei persecutori. Tommaso Becket rifiuta questa tentazione con maggiore indignazione rispetto alle tre precedenti tentazioni 'materiali'.
Stupendi i cori, evocazione del grande teatro classico greco; il coro delle donne di Canterbury dopo l'uccisione del vescovo, è una perla luminosa della Letteratura che ho trascritto interamente nelle note a margine. Anche qui Eliot scava con profondità nel fragile animo umano, che preferisce quella soglia di dolore 'tollerabile' e privato, che può essere lenito dal sonno o dall'affaccendarsi che sgombra i pensieri, e teme quel dolore che colpisce in maniera universale, che sconvolge il mondo, che lo insozza. Che sopporta più o meno la propria parte, ma non riesce a portare il fardello di un dolore 'mondiale'. Come non pensare a noi, alla nostra ormai estinta capacità di una visione mondiale e globale, rassegnati al nostro stretto orizzonte privato...
E per finire, stupenda l' 'auto-assoluzione' degli assassini. Una giustificazione in perfetto fair-play inglese, perfino a tratti convincente, una stilettata dopo l'altra, una subdola persuasione ad accettare il sangue per un'ideale equivoco di Libertà; con la raccomandazione finale, da regime sovietico, di non formare crocchi sospetti all'uscita dal teatro... -
This was quite a different reading experience from what I'm used to. T.S. Eliot wrote this short play for the Canterbury Festival in 1935, so it is good to keep in mind the context of the times along with the historical story of the matrydom of Thomas Becket, the estranged Councillor and Archbishop of King Henry II. Although Henry thought that having the same man in a job that needs to account for both England's political strategies and Christian principles, for Thomas it was a conflict in which he decided to put God first, in front of king, a mixture that the rich and powerful in the land were not too keen about.
The play is set around Christmas 1170, when Thomas has just returned from an exile in France, and a group of knights is about to settle the issue of this "meddlesome priest" once and for all. Some readers of the play may be confused without at least some knowledge of the historical context.
Overall, it is such an interesting and unusual depiction of the events, with a Greek Chorus and an ending where some of the players (the murderous knights) address the audience directly in 20th century-style. The poetic flow of the narrative and the setting of mood is incredible and worth the reading. Eliot leaves the audience pondering the meaning of "doing the right thing" when the divisions of church and state, councillor and friend, pragmatism and idealism all become somewhat blurred. -
Own.
I've never read any Eliot before and reading this does not dissuade me from reading more. I loved this.
I didn't get most or all of it, I'm sure, but the parts I did comprehend are good and true and beautiful.
All men seek peace. We seek peace wrongly, we seek wrong peace, we misunderstand the peace that is given in Christ. Eliot shows us glimpses of this as he looks at peace - temporal and eternal - through temptation and death. The hinge of Becket's Christmas Day sermon shows us this.
The first half - with the chorus awaiting his return after seven long years - reminds us that life is both static and dynamic. The seasons change and go on and work continues in its repetition. But going back for repetition of situation is not possible. The chorus is waiting for Becket almost as we wait for Jesus to return; almost, but not quite. I think we're supposed to consider that, though. Waiting is not the peace that is left for us.
The temptations are sent to destroy Becket's peace, even as Jesus was tempted in the desert. If the test fails - particularly the last tests - both would fail in the work they've been given. Becket's temptations - memory and nostalgia of a good life; secular power over the church; ecclesiastical power over the state; and the final, most spiritual battle with himself, when being humble is the highest virtue how does one avoid humility for gain?You only offer
Dreams to damnation
andNow is my way clear, now is the meaning plain:
Temptation shall not come in this kinda gain
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
andTo become servant of God was never my wish.
Servant of God has chance of greater sin
And sorrow, than the man who serves a king.
For those who serve the greater cause may make the cause serve them,
Becket defeats the temptation, not in the same way as Christ who used scripture against his tempter, but through reason. And so he can preach,A martyrdom is always the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. It is never the design of man: for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, and who no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of being a martyr.
And then the knights arrive.
The second part goes quickly. It's action and violence, accusation and pulling away. Becket stands open to what is in store for him, refusing even to bar the church closed. His priests are afraid for him - pulling, hurrying, pleading, attempting to protect. They're rushing him from here to there to avoid the fate he's expecting. If the chorus was waiting for his return, he is expecting the events. What is the difference here between waiting and expectation? And which gives us peace? Which fear?Thomas: Peace! be quiet! remember where you are, and what is happening;
No life here is sought for but mine,
And I am not in danger: only near to death.
Emphasis mine.
Becket is at peace because he is expecting the events to unfold as they do. He knows that the church stands not as the world does and that Christ's peace is not as the world gives. He demands the doors unbarred. He demands,You think me reckless, desperate and mad.
You argue by results, as this world does,
To settle if an act be good or bad.
You defer to the fact. For every life and every act
Consequence of good and evil can be shown.
He knows thatNot to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast
And have conquered. We have only to conquer
Now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.
Now is the triumph of the Cross, now
Open the door! I command it. OPEN THE DOOR!
The knights kill him. The chorus grieves.
Then they return to their work, because time marches on and there's nothing they can do.
The knights return to try to excuse their complicity - with arguments of honour; loyalty and duty ("only following orders"); reason and law; and, finally, victim blaming. They leave with warnings of possible riots and the dire consequences thereof. They have not brought peace.
The priests return. They don't really understand, either. One waits for the potential consequence of atheism in the country. Another is not so fearful, but is certainly cynical about martyrdom and its cost. They have no peace.
Eliot weaves many themes - waiting and expectation, peace and fear, and the march of time together to create a whole. Eliot's time moves ever forward. It is inexorable. How will we use it? Will we, like the chorus wait, endlessly striving at vain work in fear? Or will we work in peace with expectation toward the Kingdom coming? What will tempt us away from patient expectation? Who will attack? Are we seeking peace, peace where there is no peace? or are we receiving from the Prince of Peace the peace that only He can give? -
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Wonderful writing. Deals with the thoughts of Thomas Becket before he is confronted with his royal assassins. I don't have the slightest idea how this could ever be performed as a play however. The lines are too personal, too absorbed in the folds of their own meaning to be neatly expressed to a large group of festival onlookers (the original design of the work).
Eliot's writing is weighty as per usual and does not lose its touch from being written into theater. The strangest part of this entire work is the Knights behavior post-murder, since they decide that after their bloody deed the best course of action is to face the crowd and give a Ciceronian style oration one by one in defense of their actions. Either way a good read, and it doesn't get too religious on you.
They know and do not know, what it is to act or suffer.
They know and do not know, that acting is suffering
And suffering is action. Neither does the actor suffer
Nor the patient act. But both are fixed
In an eternal action, an eternal patience
To which all must consent that it may be willed
And which all must suffer that they may will it,
That the pattern may subsist, for the pattern is the action
And the suffering, that the wheel may turn and still
Be forever still -
The spiritual barrenness of the modern age subsists in T. S. Eliot's verse drama, Murder in the Cathedral. The play is based on the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury. After seven years of absence, Becket returns to England and becomes a martyr. Peace is brought unto the people.
The Christian idea of peace and martyrdom are the gyre of the play. Eliot was commissioned to write Murder in the Cathedral for the Canterbury Festival in 1935. The religious limbo of the modern age is clearly visible in the sufferings of the chorus. They serve as the common person who are the worst sufferers of any change. The chorus, the women of Canterbury, the ones who have "seen [...] things in a shaft of sunlight", keep waiting for the cloud of gloom to pass,
"For us, the poor, there is no action,
But only to wait and to witness."
Murder in the Cathedral is not one of the best plays I have read, but it certainly is one of those plays that makes one think about the past gone by. I now understand Eliot's criticism of the play. In the face of rigid human sufferings, how can clinging on to the strands of religion give even an iota of peace? -
A perfect book.
Review to come. -
This is a very fine work which treats the murder of a twelfth century Archbishop so as to reflect on universal questions of morality concerning spiritual obligations and political expediency. Particularly powerful are the great statements of the Chorus which begin in fear and despair but end in hope.
The outer conflict is between Henry and Becket; the inner conflict is within Becket and the universal level is between the eternal/spiritual and temporal/material.
The chorus is wonderful. They are not mere commentators but crystalise very real concerns related to everyday life. They question the relevance to martyrdom in the world. They must deal with reality:
"Now I fear disturbance of the quiet seasons:
winter shall come bringing death from the sea,
Ruinous spring shall beat at our doors,
Root and shoot shall eat our eyes and our ears,
Disastrous summer burn up the beds of our streams
And the poor shall wait for another decayin October. "
The three priests are icons of belief approaches.
The first priest is basically pessimistic.
"Shall these things not end
Until the poor at the gate
Have forgotten their friend, their Father in God, have forgotten
That they had a friend?"
The second priest is politically conscious and willing to take an optimistic line.
"The Archbishop whall be at our head, dispelling dismay and doubt.
He will tell us what we are to do, he will give us orders, instruct us.
Our Lord is at one with the Pope, and also the King of France."
The third priest is the most spiritual and the least worldly; he has a deep sense of the mystery of destiny's great wheel:
"for good or ill, let the wheel turn.
The wheel has been still, these seven years and no good.
For ill or good, let the wheel turn.
for who knows the end of good or evil?
Until the grinders cease
And the door shall be shut in the street,
And all the daughters of music shall be brought low."
The speeches by the priests are followed by an extended chorus--one which tries to find peace by simply avoiding conflict and running away from the problem:
"O Thomas, Archbishop, leave us, leave us, leave sullen Dover, and set sail for France. . . set the white sail between the grey sky and the bitter sea, leave us, leave us for France."
So even in these opening pages we get a striking dramatic rendering of the deep spiritual conflicts the play wil explore.
These conflicts continue in the Temptations of Thomas which follow and which provide a series of attempts to outline the inner strengths and weaknesses of the Archbishop and which dramatise the significance of the coming martyrdom of Thomas and probe the deeper levels of the meaning of that act.
The second section is a sermon by Thomas which prepares for the final conflict and it is immediately followed by a splendid chorus opening of the final section. The chorus are now reacting to the message of the sermon of the Archbishop. The poetry clearly reveals a deepening awareness of the necessity of the sacrifice in the Lord that Thomas must make.
"The peace of this world is always uncertain, unless men keep the peace of God.
And war among men defiles this world, but death in the Lord renews it,
And the world must be cleaned in the winter, or we shall have only
A sour spring, a parched summer, an empty harvest."
The section with the three priests heightens the drama through references to Christ's sacrifice which will now be emulated by Thomas. We again note the deeper insights of the third Priest.
"Every day is the day we should fear from or hope from. One moment
Weighs like another. Only in retrospection, selection,
We say, that was the day. the critical moment
That is always now, and here. Even now, in sordid particulars
The eternal design may appear."
The murder focuses on the refusal of Thomas to recant, thereby remaining true to his spiritual values and loyalty to the Church and ultimately to God. Again Eliot gives wonderful powerful speeches filled with beauty and deep layers of psychological and spiritual significance to the Chorus.
The four knights turn to the audience and--in prose--give their justifications for the murder. Nothing they say links to the world of the Spirit. Instead they refer to the political situation. Thomas has made things uncomfortable. He has to be removed. Political expediency can justify anything--including murder.
"Unhappily, there are times when violence is the only way in which social justice can be secured."
Eliot clearly states that in the modern world the attitude that the secular state must always be more significant than the Church is still a dominant position. The audience must face the unpleasant truth that they are partners in the murder.
"We have been instrumental in bringing about the state of affairs that you approve. We have served your interests; we merit your applause; and if there is any guilt whatever in the matter, you must share it with us."
The Fourth Knight really accuses Thomas of rocking the boat rather than avoiding the problem. He insisted on standing up for Spiritual principles which the Secular State found annoying and brought his death on himself by advocating them to the point of death. And it was his own fault.
" . . . he could still have easily escaped; he could have kept himself from us long enough to allow our righteous anger to cool. That was just what he did not wish to happen; he insisted, while we were still inflamed with wrath, that the doors should be opened. Need I say more? I think, with those facts before you, you will unhesitatingly render a verdict of Suicide while of Unsound Mind. It is the only charitable verdict you can give, upon one who was, after all, a great man."
Much the same could be said of Christ.
But the Knights do not have the final word. Eliot returns to poetry and the play ends with the priests and the great final Chorus.
This is a magnificent, deeply spiritual drama probably the greatest of its genre since Milton's "Samson Agonistes".
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Be mindful of what tempts you.
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As a practicing Catholic I would like to give this drama more than three stars but I simply cannot overlook its serious faults. "Murder in the Cathedral" tells the story of how four knights acting under the instructions of Henry II on December 1170 in Canterbury Cathedral. When it was written in 1936 the play was certainly topical as it invited the audience to reflect on the bloody acts of several European dictators. At the same time in some Anglo-Saxon countries the play was unsettling as it asked the primarily Protestant audience to be outraged at the death of a Catholic clergyman.
"Murder in the Cathedral" does not speak as directly to the issues of Religious persecution in the twentieth century. The assassination of a single clergyman is different from the genocide being practiced today against the Rohingya today or the Bosnian Muslims twenty years ago.
What is left is a badly constructed play with superficial characters. While Eliot is one of the greatest English poets of the twentieth century, the verse in "Murder in the Cathedral" is nowhere near as good as in "The Wasteland." For my money the verse in "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats."
Read this play nonetheless. Eliot's critique of tyranny and religious oppression may be belong to another era but it remains valid. The works of great writers still deserve to be read even in cases where the writer is not at the summit of his art. -
Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot. A play based on the death of Thomas Becket (Archbishop of Canterbury - in the 12th century) by knights loyal to King Henry II. Becket and Henry had been very close friends. Some comparisons established between this relationship and that of Henry VIII and Thomas More; both involve the conflict of the role of the state (secularism) versus the church (religion) in which they regulate human affairs.
The play begins with Thomas returning from exile in France. It marked by the presence of priests and accompanied by a chorus of women whose anxieties for their safety. Their own well - being, increasing their disturbing intensity as the piece reaches its climax. Becket is tempted by four individuals, representing: worldly pleasures; temporal power against the king; temporal power against the king's enemies (the barons), and spiritual power and glory. He eloquently confronts each of them, in turn, almost succumbing, however, to the last of them, which he considered the greatest betrayal. Announcing his original enlightenment, he triumphantly dies at the hands of knights-a faithful martyr; He did not actively seek his death and glory but submitted himself to a destiny ordained by God. The knights, echoing the characteristics of the four tempters, in an attempt to justify their actions, in which Eliot deftly represents. -
I read this because I had heard it drew on the tradition of Greek drama when I was revising the source history with a student, and spotted it in my local charity bookshop.
The Greek drama aspects give the best scope for Eliot to experiment with Christian theology and imagery, which he does in quite a fresh and original way - to me though (I'm an atheist) this just emphasised how unappealing Catholic philosophy and oratory can be, full of references to violence, purity and corruption, the denigration of the body, submission and humiliation. Voiced by the chorus, these references sketch the relationship between the Church 'supreme as long as men will die for it' and the laypeople who 'know and do not know' (ie experience but are too stupid to intellectually grasp!) that 'action is suffering' -
Meanwhile in Thailand, where the law is violating the human's right and twisting the martyrdom into the sacred sacrifice, this book is a parallel for what surrealistically happened in country. It is exploring the execution of a person that is worthwhile for the so-called social justice, and the exhibit institution is maltreating people's belief.
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I LOVE THIS BOOK
