Murder in the Cathedral

By -
Murder in the Cathedral, by T. S. Eliot

To wrap up Modern March, I saved the play "Murder in the Cathedral" for last.   Eliot first wrote it in 1935 for the Canterbury Festival, and subsequently lengthened and changed it a bit.  The edition I read was the 4th and final, from 1938 (I presume, since my paperback is from 1963).

This is a dramatization of the murder of Thomas a Becket in December of 1170, by knights of Henry II.  The form is much like a Greek play; most of the lines are in verse, and there is a chorus of poor women of Canterbury.  It's also, I think, like a medieval mystery play.  It is not divided into acts, but into two parts and an interlude.

First we see Thomas return from seven years' exile on the Continent.  After the women and the priests, he is assailed by three tempters who try to turn him from his path.  I thought the tempters were really interesting; each speaks in a different poetic style, and the second one talks in the alliterative Anglo-Saxon form you see in Beowulf.

The interlude consists of the Archbishop's Christmas sermon on the peace of Christ and martyrdom, foreshadowing his own fate.

In the second part, knights arrive with the intention of killing Thomas.  Each makes his case, and each is meant to mirror one of the tempters.  Despite the priests' pleading, Thomas is adamant that he will not resist his murder.  After the deed is done, the tone changes completely; each knight steps forward and addresses the audience in the style and tone of a modern politician/bureaucrat.  I thought that was just wonderful!  The play then goes back to the priests and chorus.

As ever, I don't understand Eliot much, but I did enjoy reading the play.  Someday I will tackle "Prufrock" and then, the summit of my ambition: the "Four Quartets."

Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 30, 2013 at 2:40 PM

    I keep meaning to read this in concert with the Christopher Fry play about Thomas a Becket, and I keep forgetting! Wouldn't that be interesting though, to read the two of them side by side? I think Christopher Fry and TS Eliot were contemporaries, and TS Eliot got all famous famous, and Christopher Fry is gradually being forgotten (to my complete sadness).

    ReplyDelete
  2. FaithMarch 30, 2013 at 4:08 PM

    I love this play! How it echoes ancient Greek tragedies. How pedestrian the knights are. How St Thomas is fighting his own vanity. I find it haunting.

    ReplyDelete
  3. JeanMarch 30, 2013 at 11:07 PM

    Now I have to go find the Christopher Fry play! What a great idea, Jenny.

    I agree, Faith. I would love to see this performed sometime...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more