A
verse drama by
T.S. Eliot,
1935.
As
Eliot sank ever more deeply into his
Anglo-Catholic schtick and he no longer had
Pound around to cut the
fat and grain filler out of his work, he turned to writing
verse drama. He wanted to
reach people. He probably wanted to be
Shakespeare.
Murder in the Cathedral was the first of these
verse dramas, and the only one I can even begin to tolerate. The title is intended to evoke a
whodunnit; it may be a ponderous
Eliotian attempt at a "
witticism". The joke,
such as it is, is that the murderee is
Archbishop St. Thomas à Becket, the killers are some of
Henry II's knights, and
the scene of the crime is
Canterbury Cathedral,
anno domini 1170. If you happened to be hanging around
Canterbury in
1935, this was a big win because
Canterbury Cathedral is where the thing was first performed. (If you were hanging around
Canterbury in
1170, call me; we should talk).
The background: King
Henry II wanted to gain influence over
the Church in
England. He appointed
Becket as
Archbishop of Canterbury to that end because
Becket was his boy. Once in office,
Becket's loyalty shifted to
the Church. The two came into conflict over the practice of trying
clergy in
ecclesiastical courts for
civil offenses, and
Becket fled to
France. While in
France he continued to defy
Henry, going so far as to
excommunicate some of
Henry's more loyal
bishops.
At the beginning of the play,
Becket returns from his seven-year exile in
France. He goes straight to
Canterbury, arriving in time for Act I. Four
Tempters
tempt him. Meanwhile,
Henry has put on his
John Stanfa hat and made an offhand remark to some of his
knights about how convenient it would be if
Becket weren't around any more. The
knights draw the obvious conclusion about what he means, and they depart for
Canterbury. When they arrive,
Becket explains that he is loyal to a higher power than the king. They reply that they aren't, and they kill him at the
altar.
The bloodshed is followed by a flourish of self-
exculpatory forensic rhetoric from the
knights: They argue persuasively that they've done
the right thing, but not
too persuasively because the author doesn't agree.
Exeunt knights; some
priests pray at each other and
asperse the audience; good night, good night.
Historically,
Henry disavowed the whole thing, the
knights fell into disgrace, and
Becket was
canonized.
The whole thing suffers from
Late Eliot Syndrome:
No tack is left unsledgehammered. He lectures us about his points rather than demonstrating or
illustrating them, and the writing is often less than inspired. Still, it's better than his other
verse dramas: The form and the language are at least appropriate to the material, and the material holds up under the weight of the Message.
Eliot later attempted to pile similar Messages onto midcentury
English bourgeois melodrama -- in verse! It didn't work.
At the height of his powers,
Eliot might have done something really interesting with
Murder in the Cathedral.