Chapter IV
Dramatic Techniques of Eliot
In his plays as well as in poetry, Eliot was chiefly confronted with the problem of
communication between the contemporary artist and society. The situation of the artist
which is best explained by the word “alienation” is particularly relevant in the writing of
theatre-poetry. The early poems of Eliot are experiments in the discovery of a new
medium for dramatic expression. Even his plays are experimental in this sense. As each
poetic dramatist discerns his own beautiful, consistent, and intelligible dramatic idea, he
finds the public is not with him, distracted by commercially profitable aspects of the play.
In his latest plays, however, Eliot has managed to entice his audience into the
participation in the drama, bringing them into consciousness and perhaps even into
spirituality by offering them something which from a distance looks familiar. All the
influences that moulded the poetry of Eliot have to be taken into consideration in
discussing the evolution of his dramatic technique.
Early in his career Eliot was influenced by the French Symbolists like Mallarme,
Laforgue, Baudelaire and Corbiere. They regarded poetry as consisting in the musical
evocation of moods, vague, subtle and evanescent. They concentrated on the suggestive
power of word-music and on suggestion by means of association of ideas. This indirect
method of evoking the theme is a characteristic common to all the plays of Eliot.
The main theme in Eliot’s plays is the theme of isolation, the isolation felt by a
soul in the loneliness of sin, confronted with the means of expiation. This theme of
loneliness of man in the complex and ugly modern civilization is a problem for the
modern dramatist. In a cultured and sophisticated society, pain and suffering are
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expressed in decent silence, and not in crying out or wailing. In order to give expression
to the inner conflict which is expressed neither in words nor in action, have the dramatist
to use symbolic suggestions. Eliot’s plays are moulded on the basic patterns of the Greek
tragedies which help him to suggest the theme, which defies expression by the usual
methods of dramatic expression. This is a method that he has tried with success in the
poems like The Waste Land.
The fortunes of the house of Agamemnon had exercised a fascination over Eliot,
Sweeney Agonistes and The Family Reunion are based on the basic symbolism of the
story of Orestes and Elektra and the furies arc also inspired by the Greek plays. The myth
of expiation was close to the conception of purgation which underlies the ending of The
Waste Land and its image of Arnaut Daniel leaping into the fire. It involved the
additional element that the deed which Orestes must expiate was, though a crime, a duty.
The Aeschylean conception of a man's duty to commit a crime and to accomplish his
expiation for it, as revealed in the story, Orestes and the Furies, haunted Eliot’s
imagination and he became its great modern expositor. In his later plays, Eliot continues
to use the symbolic suggestion of Greek plays. Alcestis, Ion and Oedipus at Colonus.
The influence of Symbolism is revealed in Eliot’s use of evocative power of
word-music. Much of Eliot's verse is incantatory in nature. The plays make use of ‘the
ritual’ as an ordinary person would understand it: a religious ceremony. It was Eliot’s
conviction that in great theatre, the very plots and episodes approximate to acts of
sacrifice or consecration or communion, and that the audience is the tribe gathered to
participate in the ceremony, as in the ceremony of the Mass at Church. The Symbolists
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influenced Eliot not merely in the general outline and pattern but also in the musical
effect of words, imagery and even in the conversational rhythms.
The influence of imagism was less profound in his plays than in the poems. The
magnificent reserve, skillful characterization and the variety of moods in the poetry of
Ezra Pound had a deep influence on Eliot's poetic style and it is evident in the plays.
All Eliot’s plays record mystic experiences. Becket, Harry, Celia Copplestone,
Colby Sunkins and The Elder Statesman, all of them experience a consciousness which is
beyond expression. It lifts them above the ordinary plane of human experience and the
plays record their reactions to such an experience. Inevitably Eliot is not always
successful in conveying the feeling to the audience either by words or action. The
audiences is led to the experience or share this mystic experience just as we would take
part in a ceremony of purgation and feel ourselves lifted above the strife of ordinary
world. The characters are set in such a situation where they “set in motion forces in your
life and in the lives of others which cannot be reversed. Whether they are spiritually
exalted like Celia, or belong to the ordinary sensual type they accept the conditions of
their choice, and work out their salvation with diligence. The two levels of choice hinted
at The Family Reunion where Harry dedicates himself to the higher aspiration, and
Agatha spends her life as the ‘efficient principal of a women’s college.’ Even the minor
characters, apparently unaffected by the main incidents, attain a clear perception of their
role, when freed of the clogging personality; they speak in the chorus as a family-
community.
It is this undercurrent of mysticism that gives to the plays of Eliot what he himself
has described as the ‘doubleness’ of poetic drama. It as if the action took place on two
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planes at once. The drama gains “an under pattern, less manifest than the theatrical one.”
Harry and Agatha in The Family Reunion share in some experience beyond the physically
perceptible, to share in some other order of being as well. The doubleness is suggested
also by ‘difficulty in communicating his experiences to the other members of his family;
for he does not talk in their language. It is this mystic experience, inexplicable to the
ordinary human mind that makes Eliot’s characters isolated figures incapable of
communicating themselves to others.
Eliot’s bent towards Classicism is at once an aesthetic doctrine and a rule of life.
In his preoccupation with form, in his acceptance of an already existing poetic
background and traditional symbols, in his technique of allusion and quotation, as
indicative of his acceptance of an objective symbolism, in his use of classical mythology
as the background which will provide imagery and symbolism, in his eagerness to
eliminate the excessive blurring of the object which was the result of Romantic
diffuseness, in all these Eliot reveals his aspiration for conventional classicism. Eliot was
the first to combine in his poetry the manner of Augustan wit with the purpose of
metaphysical wit. His admiration for the Jacobean dramatist is also an indication of
Eliot's bent towards Classicism. Eliot has successfully transmuted the traditional system
and given it new significance.
Eliot’s Classicism is best revealed in the scheme and structure and even the
themes of his plays. He began his career as a dramatist with the fragment Sweeney
Agonistes which he described as an Aristophanic melodrama. In the next two plays, The
Rock and Murder in the Cathedral, Eliot has treated the Christian myth of redemption by
martyrdom. The two great tragedies of the fall of man and the crucifixion are the two
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episodes in the “divine comedy” of Murder in the Cathedral. Martyrdom and sainthood
are two chief themes in Eliot’s play and the happy ending of the comedy is substituted by
reconciliation and forgiveness. Some Greek tragedies put the tragic action within a larger
action that concludes in a tone of serenity or even happiness. Four such tragedies, viz.,
Aeschylus's Eumenides, Sophoclcs’s Oedipus at Colonus, Euripides’ Alcelis Ion have
provided Eliot with the basic pattern for his plays. But once he has devised a central
situation which corresponds with the central situation of the Greek play he works very
freely. But throughout the play echoes or reminiscences from the play enrich our
perception of the play's situation. It was indeed a bold venture on Eliot’s part to conscript
a Greek tragedy, Furies and all on the modern stage. The Family Reunion was only a
partial success because of the alien element in the play. Eliot was greatly indebted to the
Greek tragedies for the use of the chorus. He found that the chorus could mediate
between the action and the audience; it could intensify the action by projecting its
emotional consequences, so that we, as audience, see it doubly, by seeing its effect on
other people. Eliot’s use of the chorus, however, differs considerably from its Greek
origin. His device is comparable to some of O’ Neill’s previous experiments in having his
character withdrawn momentarily from the action to voice their inner thoughts. They are
unlike the usual Greek Chorus in that their role is not to illuminate the action, but to
express their baffled inability to understand what is happening.
Eliot’s conception of the language of poetry and drama is influenced greatly by
his belief that a cultivated reader of today possesses an extensive consciousness of the
past. This demand on the reader’s intelligence explains Eliot’s chief reason for
introducing so many reminiscences of other poets into the texture of his verse. In the
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language for drama, Eliot was conscious of the different levels of appeal. He knew that
he has to thin k of as large and miscellaneous an audience as possible and that is the half
educated and ill-educated rather than the uneducated who stand in his way. He was
greatly fascinated by the several levels of significance. “For the simplest auditors there is
the plot, for the more thoughtful the character and conflict of character, for the more
literary words and phrasing, for the musically sensitive the rhythm and for auditors of
greater sensitiveness and understanding a medium which reveals itself gradually.” In
discovering the medium of verse for drama, Eliot found that half his problem was solved.
It took him almost twenty-five years to develop his language which in the later plays has
a quite inimitable explicitness as though people were capable of saying what they wanted
to. Clarity of discourse is achieved by using those components of poetry which can
enhance the defining powers of colloquial speech.
Throughout his career, Eliot took for granted that drama is talk and the talk in his
earlier plays is formed, abstracted, circumscribed. But in the later plays he has succeeded
in using a language and a verse pattern which draws the mind forward through the verse.
Eliot took a time settling the characteristic four-beat measure which can relax towards
colloquial intimacy, and contract in meditative deliberation. In Murder in the Cathedral
the tone of the verse spans a scale from doggerel to exaltation. The most remarkable trail
of the Eliotic measure is its selflessness, its unassertive nature. The words appear to be
writing themselves. At its best the dramatic verse of Eliot attains “the dynamics of
personal intercession, the voice moving from exposition through intimacy to, passing
through lyric, expending itself in overheard meditation without ever allowing us to intuit
the impurities of personal presence, transforms at last into self-sustaining technique the
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anonymity which Eliot always devised by one means or another as the indispensable
condition of his poetry.
Everything in Eliot’s plays depends on the language and versification. The
drawing-room self of a man is always his real self with a mask and Eliot has expressed
his self through the voice and thus adds an extra dimension to the play. The distinctive
use of verse and language is seen in The Family Reunion where Eliot has arranged for
the “poetical” parts of the play to be spoken by a man half crazed by contact with the
literal Furies, a sibylline aunt, and a chorus this actually does pass from a badinage to a
state of trance before the audience's eyes. The verse of the play encloses everyone who
speaks it. What is usually called poetry on the stage is rhetoric and what rhetoric signifies
Eliot has very carefully dissociated into moral components. In The Cocktail Party
rhetoric which clangs on the prison bars of self-dramatization is gone and it is the first
Eliot work in which anything happens.
The Family Reunion reminds us of the Orestes rhythm, on a symbolic level. He
has a wider symbolic interest. The theme of a family curse and its expiation is symbolised
in Harry’s conversion and his acceptance of the path of purgation. Harry’s haunting sense
of evil is beyond expression and he can express it only in symbols of guilt. He is,
therefore, anything but the plain action of a well-to-do family; he is a symbolic character,
a kind of Hamlet at odds with his world. He is Everyman in search of purity. He could be
cured by psychoanalysis or by faith. The aunts and uncles are also at least as ambivalent
as he is; they arc what they are, at the same time, the commenting chorus. They are also
the Erinyes who have to be turned by penance and acceptance of guilt, into the
Eumemdcs ; and, as such, they have given endless trouble lo their author and to various
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producers who have directed the play. Then, there is the chauffeur, the police inspector
and Harry’s simpleton of a brother; we have altogether, a naturalistic setting, a veneer of
naturalism for the characters, and we have everywhere the lurking shadows of a symbolic
world which carries the action deep down into the pas! And far and wide, beyond the
social context lo which these characters belong.
Eliot tries to communicate the idea indirectly by means of metaphor and symbol,
by a suggestive association of ideas. His associations are with traditional literature and
past eras. This juxtaposition of past and present is Eliot's method of showing the
temporary characteristics of the present time. A basic symbolism reinforced by other
devices is used for the conscious creation of the field of the present out of the past. A
direct statement of the interrelationship between the past, present and future occurs in the
words of Harry:
How can we be concerned with the past And not with the future ? Or with the future And not with the past ? The chorus has got its own symbolic function. The members of the chorus use
‘theatrical imagery’ lo express their role in the play. They continually see themselves as
unwillingly playing parts assigned to them by Amy. They are like amateur actors who
have not been assigned their parts. They slick to their worldly values. They want to be
reassured of their normal life, but gradually they become aware that a great spiritual
drama is being enacted before their eyes. By their fear and glimmering awareness they
reveal the victory of the spiritual over the worldly things. Thus the play is marked with
symbolism of various levels.
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The action of the drama moves on two planes - - the spiritual and the physical. On
the spiritual plane, the play embodies Christian myth of original sin, suffering for that sin
and through suffering redemption from it. Harry has committed the murder of his wife (at
least he thinks so). He seems to be daunted by sin of his father who also intended to kill
his wife. This fills Harry with anguish and the result is that he is haunted by the Furies.
The interest of the drama lies in the course of action when Harry comes to the realization
of his sin through a process of spiritual torture. He ultimately goes out to expiate his sin
and thus achieves liberation.
On the material plane, The Family Reunion is a comedy of manners dealing with
family intrigues in the contemporary age. The ironic-satiric picture of the life of a noble
family has been portrayed. Harry, Lord of Monchenscy returns to Wishwood after the
gap of eight years. His mother Amy, wants him to take up his rightful place as head of the
family so as to assume family responsibilities. During the period of eight years, Amy has
tried to keep the house intact and the uncles and aunts have also been instructed give this
impression. But Harry upsets Amy's ambition. He leaves Wishwood for spiritual
salvation. Thus the theme of the play is ironically handled by Eliot.
The play can be read with several themes in mind. The central theme apparently is
sin, suffering and redemption. Harry comes to realise his sin. He suffers for a long time
and finally leaves home for redemption. Then there is the theme of oneness of time.
Eliot's view about time is, as also taken up by him in his poetry, that past is not to be seen
in isolation with the present. Past is never dead. It lives in the present. It also determines
the future. Both past and future fuse and mingle with the present. The concept of
‘pastness of the past’ is embodied in the theme of the play. Amy tries to hold the time in
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check. She thinks that nothing can be changed even after eight years. But her notion is
only a whim. A great change has taken place in her son Harry. His behaviour clearly
exemplifies that past cannot be left aside. It continues in the present and determines the
future. Yet another theme is the spiritual isolation of men in the contemporary times. This
isolation creates difficulties of communicating with others. Harry suffers from this
isolation even in the midst of his family. He is not able to communicate his feelings to the
other members of the family.
The Murder in the Cathedral was Mr. Eliot’s first verse drama written in 1935 for
production (in an abbreviated form) at the Canterbury Festival in June, 1935, Mr. E.
Martin Browne was the producer of the play, and it is said that the title of the play was
suggested to Mr. Eliot by him. The play is an exposition, in Becket, of the nature of
Saintliness, and contains an urgent suggestion that the problems by which he was beset
are present today. In form it is something between a Morality and Chronicle play, the use
of introspective symbols being subtly interwoven with simplified historical narrative. So,
Murder in the. Cathedral Eliot has returned to the most primitive form of tragedy on the
model of the earlier plays of Aeschylus in which there is one great situation, the poet
steeping our mind, with at the most one or two sudden flashes of action passing over it.
The tragedy, Murder in the Cathedral, contains history. It is a sort of historical
dramatic narrative. It sheds light on the antagonism between the forces of virtue and vice
through the conflict between Henry II and Thomas-a-Becket. Thomas Becket was
Chancellor, and later on he became the Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry II. His
mother was a native of Caen; his father, who came of a family of small Norman
landowners, had been a citizen of Rouen, but migrated to London before the birth of
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Thomas, and held at one tune the dignified office of Post-reeve, although he ended his
life hi hard circumstances. The young Thomas received an excellent education. At the
age of twenty he was compelled, through the misfortunes of his parents, to become a
notary. About 1142 a family friend brought Thomas under the notice of Archbishop
Theobald, of whose house-hold he at once became an inmate. With him he visited many a
country. In 1154 he was promoted to be archdeacon of Canterbury. In the following year,
Henry II, at the primate’s recommendation bestowed on him the important office of
chancellor. Here he found ample opportunities to become exceedingly-friendly with the
young prince Henry II who was thirteen to fourteen years his junior. Later on Thomas
proved himself to be a very good envoy in bringing peace between England and France.
On the death of Theobald in 1162 he was appointed by Henry II the Archbishop of
Canterbury. But Becket did not allow himself to be made the king’s tool and acted
independently even at the cost of conflict with the King.
The King and the Archbishop came into open conflict at the Council of
Woodstock (July, 1163) when Becket successfully opposed the king's proposal that a
land-tax, known as the sheriff's aid, should be henceforth paid into the exchequer. On
account of these conflicts, Becket fled to France in Nov., 1164. He at once succeeded in
obtaining from Alexander III a formal condemnation of the Constitution. After six years
Henry II and Becket were reconciled and Beckel returned to England. But he was
murdered within a month of his return by some over-zealous courtiers.
It is this murder of Becket which forms the main theme of the play. The
martyrdom of Becket was an obvious choice for a Canterbury play, made more attractive
and effective by the association of the saint's name. The conflict of the spiritual and the
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secular powers: the relation of church and state were very common subjects. And on
these themes Eliot has said much in prose. The story of Becket’s life would seem lo
exercise great dramatic and tragic effect because the 'deed of horror' takes place between
persons who were at least closely bound by old ties of friendship if not closely related;
and the deed has a peculiar horror by the addition of the sacrilege to the guilt of murder.
But although the conflict of church and state is present in the play it is subordinated to
another theme, and the drama of personal relationships, Eliot deliberately voids. The king
does not appear and the knights are not persons, but at first a gang, and then a set of
attitudes. They murder for an idea, or for various ideas, and arc not shown as individuals
disturbed by personal passions and personal motives. The central theme of the play is
martyrdom, and martyrdom to its strict, ancient sense.
The action, which accompanied throughout by the tragic comments of a chorus of
Canterbury women, describes Becket’s return to England, his resistance to the
persuasions of Tour Tempters’ who represent the innermost working of his own mind, his
death and his murderer’s attempt to justify their action. The play is an exposition, in
Becket, of the nature of saintliness, and contains an urgent suggestion that the problems
by which he was beset arc also present today.
Murder in the Cathedral stirred a wave of revolution in the world of English
drama, since it was a play in which its author succeeds in reanimating a literary form
which in England had been dead or dormant for nearly three centuries. The emotional
sublimity heightened by the tragic splendour, which Mr. Eliot created most artistically in
this play, makes it almost a land-mark in the neo rhymed dramatic epoch of the history of
English literature. In this play “Eliot has succeeded in combining lucidity and precision
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with an uncommon vigour that fully justifies his departure from the customary forms of
dramatic verse.” According to Eliot, the finest dramatic and intellectual impact in the
Chorus is “really something poetic to have contributed to drama, though the dialogue in
the play gives an indication of my immaturity as a poet-dramatic.”
In his Murder in the Cathedral, Mr. Eliot has immortalized Becket, who would
have eternally as an ever inspiring symbol, showering blessings to all, even to those who
murdered him. Becket’s Crucifixion and his Resurrection have been shown in one and the
same play. However, it must be noted that the importance of Murder in the Cathedral
does not be so much on the plot or on the character of its hero; its cardinal significance
lies somewhere else. We have to examine this play - - the first verse-play of an ultra-
twentieth century poet-dramatist - - as a typical pattern of verse drama, upon whose
success or failure depends the hope or disappointment of this new school of poetic drama.
Mr. Eliot, through Murder in the Cathedral, sees only a kind of mirage of the
perfection of verse drama, which would be a “design of human action and of words, such
as to present at once the two aspects of dramatic and musical order. Eliot wrote Murder
in the Cathedral to be staged on religious festival, to be witnessed by “an audience of
those serious people who go to ‘festivals’ and expect to have to put up with poetry - -
though perhaps on this occasion some of them were not quite prepared for what they got.
And finally it was a religious play.”
Although the theme was taken from the remote pages of history, and was
religious. Yet the greatest problem that Eliot had to solve was that of language. The story
is of the twelfth century England, when English language, especially spoken one, was
entirely different from that which the twentieth century audiences speak and can
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understand. So Eliot kept the style of the play neutral, committed neither to the present
nor to the past. What he had to avoid was the echo of Shakespeare as it was the main
cause of the utter failure of Shakespeare as it was the main cause of the utter failure of the
nineteenth century poetic drama. Here he uses the versification of every man. There is a
little symphonic effect in it.
T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, in fact, “forms a distinct milestone in the
journey toward the resuscitation of a modern poetic drama since here an author regarded
by many of the younger generation as their chief master, turned to the theatre and sought
to apply his characteristic style to its purposes. The emotional power given in the play,
gave assurance to those who had been pleading for the application of poetry to the stage,
and convinced those who had hitherto doubted of the possibility of finding a dramatic
speech based on the prevailing qualities found in modern verse.”
Tragedy as a dramatic form is usually defined as the story of a noble individual
who struggles against himself or his fate in the face of almost certain defeat. Perhaps the
ideal example of tragedy is Sophocles’s Oedipus the King (5th century BC) in which
Oedipus, the King of Thebes, attempts to cleanse his city against an evil that is plaguing
it, only to learn that this evil is found in himself. Eliot’s play does employ several
classical tragic conventions, such as the use of a Chorus to comment on the action, the
characters’ speech written in verse, and a plot which culminates in the hero’s death.
Thomas is a tragic figure in his larger-than-life passion and search for what can be
done to solve the problem with which he is faced. Unlike many tragic heroes, however,
Thomas’s character harbours no “flaw” or (as Hamlet called it) “mole of nature”: he is
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not blind to his fate (like Oedipus), he is not the slave of passion (like Othello) and he is
not a man destroyed by the promises of his own imagination (like Willy Loman).
Instead, Thomas is steadfast and assured; even when he questions his own
motives for seeking martyrdom, he summons enough strength in himself to determine
that he will allow himself to be the “instrument” of God. While Thomas is eventually
killed, something more wonderful than terrible occurs when the Chorus finally
understands the will of God and praises Him for His wisdom and power. Unlike Hamlet,
who dies amongst a litter of corpses and evokes the audience's pity and fear, Thomas dies
as he describes Christ as having done: bringing the “peace” of God to the world. Murder
in the Cathedral makes use of the tragic form, but the tragic outcome is to be found in its
physical plot only - - the spiritual life of its hero is stronger than death.
Murder in the Cathedral was written especially for performance at the 1935
Canterbury Festival and was performed in the Chapter House of the cathedral, only fifty
yards away from the very spot on which Becket was killed. Aside from its being written
for the Festival, Eliot must have had other artistic aims in having it be performed in a
non-traditional theatre space.
Foremost among these is the fact that anyone in the original audience would be
conscious of the fact that he was not in a theatre as he viewed the play; instead, he was in
a place resonant with the history of the play' s protagonist. The effect of such a setting is
obvious: by having the action take place in the Chapter House, Eliot stressed the
relationship between the past and present. While the action of the play occurs in 1170, a
1935 audience member would become more aware of the fact that the play's issues are as
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contemporary as its audience. As the cathedral still stands, so are the issues explored by
the play still relevant to modern life.
There are only two sections in the play in which characters do not speak in verse:
Thomas’s sermon on Christmas Day and the “apologies” by the Knights to the audience.
Both of these sections feature a speaker (or speakers) attempting to manipulate language
in order to convince their listeners of a certain point (rhetoric) and trying to deliver the
words in a way that gives them the greatest impact (oratory). In Thomas’s sermon, he
attempts to engage the congregation in the same mental processes which he himself has
been experiencing, specifically, to consider the paradoxical nature of martyrdom. To do
so, he offers a number of paradoxes for them to consider, such as the idea that “at the
same moment we rejoice” at the birth of Christ, we do so because we know that he would
eventually “offer again to God His Body and Blood in sacrifice.”
He similarly attempts to convince his followers that God creates martyrs upon a
similar paradoxical principle: “We mourn, for the sins of the world that has martyred
them; we rejoice that another soul is numbered among the Saints in Heaven, for the glory
of God and the salvation of men.” Because he suspects that his people will soon “have
yet another martyr,” Thomas wishes to convince them to consider the reasons for - - and
bounties of - - martyrdom, which they do at the very end of the play.
When directly addressing the audience, however, the Four Knights prove
themselves to be more adept at cliched political hustling than sincere attempts at public
speaking. The First Knight attempts to ingratiate himself to the audience by addressing its
members as “Englishmen” who “believe in fair play” and will certainly “not judge
anybody without hearing both sides of the case.” The Third Knight stresses the point that
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the four of them “have been perfectly disinterested” in the murder; they are not lackeys of
the King, but “four plain Englishmen who put our country first.” The Second Knight
promises that, while defending their actions, he will “appeal not to your emotions but to
your reason,” since “You are hard-headed, sensible people ... and not to be taken in by
emotional clap-trap.”
Again the viewer sees another example of a Knight attempting to ingratiate
himself to the audience through hollow rhetoric and flattery. Following this lead, the
Fourth Knight then employs the language of pseudo-psychology in an attempt to offer a
“logical” and “scientific” view of Thomas’s actions: he calls him “a monster of egoism”
and explains that “This egoism grew upon him, until it at last became an undoubted
mama,” as found in the “unimpeachable evidence” that the Fourth Knight has gathered.
He concludes his speech (and the Knights’ presentation of their “case”) with the aplomb
of a trial lawyer: “I think, with these 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.”
Despite these attempts at sounding logical (“with these facts before you”)?
proclaiming their confidence in the audience’s judgment (“you will unhesitatingly
render” a “charitable verdict”), use of jargon (“Suicide while of Unsound Mind”) and
attempt to seem dispassionate and logical about the murder (“who was, after all, a great
man”), the Fourth Knight, like his companions, stands as an example of one who uses
language to defend his temporal action and fulfill a political agenda - - unlike Thomas,
who uses his rhetorical skills to help his listeners understand the will of God.
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According to The Times, “In form the play is something between a Morality and
Chronicle play, the use of introspective symbols being subtly interwoven with simplified
historical narrative”. The play begins with a Chorus, sung by semi hysteric and somewhat
broody type of sentimental Women of Canterbury, describing the wretched life they have
been leading for seven years since the departure of the Archbishop from England. The
Chorus is followed by the conversation of three Priests, and immediately the messenger
comes and informs them of the arrival of Becket - - the Archbishop. After a few minutes
we find the Archbishop on the stage - - a typical Catholic soul - - an ideal servant of
Christ. Then arrive of the four Tempters, who try to tempt him one by one. These
Tempters are the auto-suggestive reflections in the mind of the Archbishop, cris-crossing
alternatively. With the departure of the Tempters there is an Interlude. The Interlude is an
early form of drama. But the modern playwrights, especially Shaw and Eliot, have
reintroduced this form in the modern dramatic Art. The Interlude in this play serves a
number of dramatic purposes. In the first place it infuses a spirit of sanctity into plot, and
creates a Catholic atmosphere in the play. Through the mouth of Becket - - the
Archbishop of England about eight centuries ago - - Eliot sermonizes the Christians of
the twentieth century England. Secondly, the Interlude produces suspense, which is an
essential element in a drama. While the Archbishop preaches his sermon, we speculate
about his fate. Thirdly, the Interlude produces a soothing and tranquillizing effect on the
mind of the audience. After the Interlude there arrive four Knights in furious rage fully
determined to murder the Archbishop. The scene is pathetically thrilling, at the same time
grimly horrible - - ‘ghastly ghostly/ And yet, the scene sheds a divine radiance,
immortalizes the martyrdom of Becket. It puts before us another picture of the Blessed
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Crucifixion. The murder of the Archbishop in the Cathedral makes him an eternally
inspiring symbol of hope and faith to the fleeting march of generations. It is a tragedy,
but a Divine tragedy.
The play, Murder in the Cathedral, was to be produced for festival stage. “It was
to be produced for a rather special kind of audience - - an audience of those serious
people who go to festival and expect to have to put up with poetry. And then it was a
religious play and people who go deliberately to a religious play at a religious festival
expect to be patiently bored and to satisfy themselves that they have done something.”
But the most intricate problem that faced Eliot was that of language. He was to write a
play whose action had taken place eight hundred years ago when the language spoken
was much different from that of the present age.
“Fortunately,” says T. S. Eliot, “I did not have to write in the idiom of the twelfth
century, because that idiom, even if I knew Norman French and Anglo-saxon, would
have been unintelligible. But vocabulary and style could not be exactly those of modern
conversation - - as in some modern French play using the plot and personages of Greek
Diana- - because I had to take my audience back to an historical event and they could not
afford to be archaic, first because archaism would only have suggested the wrong period,
and second, because I wanted to bring home to the audience the contemporary relevance
of the situation.”
Regarding versification of the play, Eliot was careful to avoid any echo of
Shakespeare because he was aware of the fact of the primary failure of 19th century
poets, when they wrote for the theatre. Therefore he followed the versification of
Everyman. Besides verse there are two prose passages in the play - - the Sermon in the
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Interlude, and speeches of the Knights, addressing the audience after murdering Becket.
These two prose-passages, according to T. S. Eliot, could not have been written in verse.
“The fusions of these elements of the Christian drama of the Middle Ages with
the pre-Christian drama of the Greeks yielded a highly original form. Although nearer to
Aeschylean tragedy than to any intervening form it has been perfectly adapted to
Christian theology and is very much of its time. Milton's adaptation of Greek form a
Biblical theme is a less radical transformation, for all its touches of the baroque. Eliot's
work is nearer to the stylization of the Byzantine. Yet it has a functional simplicity which
is peculiarly twentieth-century. It resembles certain of the vocal works of Stravinsky
more than anything in English dramatic art.” (David E. Jones).
“The form arose out of Eliot's conception of this particular subject and could not be adapted for general use. As we shall see, it allowed mere obvious poetic effects than Eliot has since permitted himself in drama. At this time, in fact, Eliot had a different view of the tactics, necessary for the reintroduction of poetry into the theatre from one he has since evolved. In his talk on ‘The Need for Poetic Drama’, broadcast in 1936, he spoke of ‘the necessity for poetic drama at the present time to emphasize, not to minimize, the fact that it is written in verse”. (David E. Jones, 35)
Speaking about the form and technique of Murder in the Cathedral, J. L. Styan
writes in his book, The Dark Comedy. “In his essay on John Marston, which appeared
just before Murder in the Cathedral, Eliot wrote, “It is possible that what distinguishes
poetic drama from prosaic drama is a kind of doubleness in the action, as if it took place
on two planes at once.” This ‘doubleness’, or, as he calls it later in the essay, this ‘sense
of something behind’, this ‘pattern behind the pattern/ Eliot attempted to exploit as a
method in his own plays. The ironic address of the Knights in Murder in the Cathedral
springs immediately to mind. Naturally, most of the characters in this play are
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apprehending their situation on a plane lower than that of the hero Thomas-a-Becket,
whether the Tempters, the Priests or the Women of Canterbury. The Knights not only
think and feel with all the limitations of their calling, but offer the only instance in the
play where the difference of levels is realized for the audience in the theatre or the
congregation in the Church. When, after the killing of Thomas, they step out of the play
with all the force of an aside in Moliere and Bertold Brecht rolled into one, they cease
suddenly to be symbolic figures in an abstract design, and become recognizable
representative men from modern political life. This abrupt shaking of the audience's
confidence in the image they have been creating is sufficient to jolt it into reassessing the
play’s meaning in modern terms. The untrammelled direct address to the audience has
become more and more familiar in the contemporary theatre, and even in television and
the cinema. It is proving a refreshing means of shattering the image of an audience
largely lulled into anticipating a complete naturalism. This device of the Knights is a
fully legitimate shock tactic.”
However, the play is not entirely on Greek Model. Most of the critics of this play
have called it a specimen of the Greek Tragedy. No doubt, Murder in the Cathedral
fulfils some of the basic conditions laid down by Aristotle. According to Aristotelian
concept of tragedy, the play must have a single plot; the plot is to be invigorated and the
play to be made interesting through the use of choruses; and that the story of the play
must rotate round some religious or heroic deed. Murder in the Cathedral fulfils all these
conditions. It has no under-plot or side-plot : its theme is only the murder of the
Archbishop ; three choruses in the play, heightening the sublimity of the character of the
hero and finally the theme is a religious one. Yet the play is a departure from two of the
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fundamental concepts of Aristotle. In Greek tragedy no ghastly or sensational scene is
exhibited. “There should be no Murder or Rape scene on the stage,” said Aristotle.
Murder is conveyed to the audience - by a messenger or messengers in the Greek plays.
Milton also avoided showing the death-scene of Samson on the stage. But Eliot has
shown the murder of Becket in a heartbreakingly, ghastly manner on the stage. Secondly,
according to Aristotelian concept, the tragic hero's ultimate fate is caused by his folly or
error of judgement, and that he is overtaken by the Nemesis. Aristotle says, “A tragic
hero must be a man of noble qualities - yet not perfect : and-that he must have some lack
in him, to be the cause of the tragedy.” But Becket is a perfect man - - almost a superman
or an ideal hero. He has no sign of imperfection. Thus, Murder in the Cathedral is not on
the perfect model of Aristotelian conception of Tragedy.
The fusion of the elements of Christian drama of the Middle Ages with the pre-
Christian drama of the Greeks has, indeed, yielded a highly original form. Although
nearer to Aeschylean tragedy than to any intervening form, it has been perfectly adapted
to Christian theology and is very much of its time. By mixing the ancient and the modern,
the political and the religious, Eliot has attained a maturer and more original form of
poetic drama than any other modern poetic-dramatist could attain. It is, indeed, his
dramatic triumph.
In Murder in the Cathedral, the images are used in a comparatively naturalistic
way. Eliot explores spiritual life by means of the evocative symbols he has evolved. It is
all to the good that many of them are personal and elicit personal responses from us, for
this makes them fields of force, of attraction and repulsion, which combining both an
emotional and an intellectual content, make it possible to throw an integral light forward
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in the direction of ultimate truths. Relevant thoughts are attracted and arranged in a
pattern which the intellect alone would hardly have been able to produce. And by
grouping the symbols, the poet achieves an effect similar to that of connecting electric
batteries in series to increase the current. All this at least gives poetic satisfaction.
Whether it comes anywhere near sounding the deeps of spiritual reality as whether it is
just a reaching for the impossible and illimitable is a question which for time being must
be left unanswered.
A symbol, one might say, is a point at which pure form and concentrated meaning
strive to come to terms, so that the more the poet relies on symbolism, the more formal as
well as meaningful does his expression become. T. S. Eliot weaves in this play the
introspective symbols with a simplified historical narrative.
The form of the play is something between a morality and chronicle play. The
play begins with a Chorus. The Chorus is followed by the conversation of three Priests,
and immediately the messenger comes to inform the arrival of Becket. After the arrival of
Thomas Becket, arrive four Tempters to tempt Becket. But Becket prefers Martyrdom to
any other temptation. There are some more interludes and choruses in the play.
The play has been written in the idiom of the twentieth century, and not in that of
the twelfth. But vocabulary and style are not exactly those of modern conversation. The
verse of the play avoids any echo of Shakespeare. Here the versification of Everyman is
followed. Besides verse there are two prose passages in the play ; the sermon in the
interlude, and speeches of the Knight, addressing the audience after murdering Becket.
These two prose-passages, according Eliot, could not have been written in verse.
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Thus the fusions of these elements of the Christian drama of the Middle Ages
with the pre-Christian drama of the Greeks yielded a highly original form. Although
nearer to Aeschylean tragedy than to any intervening form, it has been perfectly adapted
to Christian theology and is very much of its time.
The versification of the dialogue in the play has only a negative merit. It has
succeeded in avoiding what had to be avoided, and thus has solved the problem of speech
in verse for writing today. The play follows the versification not of the Elizabethans but
of Everyman.
The play has been set in the twentieth century idiom but vocabulary and style
could not be exactly those of modern conversation. However, too much use of iambic is
avoided by the introduction of alliteration and occasional unexpected rhyme. The style is
natural and language easy.
In Murder in the Cathedral, the images are used in a comparatively naturalistic
way. Eliot explores spiritual life by means of the evocative symbols he has evolved. It is
all to the good that many of them are personal and elicit personal responses from us.
There are certain passages of which though the meaning is plain, the aesthetic purpose
remains obscure - - namely, those in which Mr. Eliot employs a limping jingle that
reminds the hearer nothing so much as the book of a pantomime.
The versification of the dialogue in the play has only a negative merit. It has
succeeded in avoiding what had to be avoided and thus has solved the problem of speech
in verse for writing today. The play follows the versification not of the Elizabethans but
of every man.
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The play has been set in the twentieth century idiom but vocabulary and style
could not be exactly those of modern conversation of alliteration and occasional
unexpected rhyme. The style is natural and language easy.
In Murder in the Cathedral, the images are used comparatively naturalistic way.
Eliot explores spiritual life by means of the evocative symbols, he has evolved. It is all to
the good that, many of them are personal and elicit personal responses from us. There are
certain passages of which though the meaning is plain, the aesthetic purpose remains
obscure namely, those in which Mr. Eliot employs a limping jingle and reminds the
hearer nothing so much as the book of a pantomime.
The influence of the medieval Morality and Miracle plays is seen in the role of
four Tempers. In the morality plays, the characters are personified voices and virtues.
Here also the four Tempers are the personifications of inner self of Thomas Becket.
The first and second Tempers are voices from the past while the third and fourth
speak of what lies in the future. The dialogue of Thomas with the four Tempers is a
clever device used by the playwright to dramatize the inner struggle, doubts and
uncertainties of the Archbishop. In this way, he has vividly represented the temptation
that a person has to face before he can be a martyr in the true sense of the word. In this
way the grandeur, the greatness and the nobility of the Archbishop are vividly brought
out. We are shown the spiritual suffering and anguish which a martyr has to undergo just
before the martyrdom.
From the words of the Tempers we also know all that is necessary, to know about
the early life of Thomas and the former conflict with the evils outside and within him.
Thus the Tempers help in the development both the plot and character.)
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The drama like Eliot’s poetry rarely tells us directly what the poet thinks and
feels. It relies to an unusually great extent on images and symbols. The precision of many
of the images gives clearness of outline and a formal objective beauty independent of the
intrinsic importance of the objects.
In Murder in the Cathedral the images are used in a comparatively naturalistic
way. Eliot explores spiritual life by means of the evocative symbols he has evolved.
Relevant thoughts are attracted and arranged in a pattern which the intellect alone would
hardly have been able to produce. And by grouping the symbols, the poet achieves an
effect similar to that of connecting electric batteries in series to increase the current. All
this at least gives poetic satisfaction. Whether it comes anywhere near sounding the deeps
of spiritual reality as whether it is just a reaching for the impossible and illimitable is a
question which for the time being must be left unanswered.
A symbol, one might say, is a point at which pure form and concentrated
meaning strive to come to terms so that the more the poet relies on symbolism, the more
formal as well as meaningful does his expression become. T.S. Eliot weaves in this play
the introspective symbols with a simplified historical narrative. Broadly speaking, he uses
the following symbols in Murder in the Cathedral - - God represents pure act, likewise
angels for pure intellect, man for intellect and sense, animals for sense, rats for
Corruption, plants for growth, fire for destruction and inanimate matter for mere
unchanging existence.
It will be seen that the maintenance of order in creation depends upon
subordination in man of the sensual to the spiritual and this is the weak link, the point at
which Evil may concentrate its attack upon the Divine order. By inflaming the animal
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part of man causing it to dominate the angelic part, evil turns the order topsy-turvy at its
key point. Man turns his back on God and becomes mere animal.
Denis Donoghue, writing about T. S. Eliot’s popular play The Cocktail Party in
his 1959 book The Third Voice, explained the play’s structure as sort of a trap that
“ensnares” its audiences. The play starts out looking like a reflection on light, silly
comedies that had been popular and had in fact passed their prime by the time that Eliot
was writing. As it progresses, however, Eliot leads his audience into darker psychological
territory. Donoghue points out that the play’s deceptive style is Eliot’s way of dealing
with the issue that was addressed by almost all serious twentieth-century artists: that of
alienation.
The silliness of the first few scenes is inviting to audiences precisely because it
makes the characters into distant, abstract objects, which, though entertaining, limits the
degree of seriousness that the author can use in writing about them. The artistic goal of
revealing the human condition and the ways that humans behave amongst each other
contrasts with the entertainment goal of laughing at the characters’ weaknesses. The shift
in tone that The Cocktail Party undergoes from its first page to its last allows the play to
balance both agendas: audiences feel comfortable with both the detached distancing that
mirrors contemporary interest in alienation and the insight that Eliot required of his work.
The first scene presents a situation that would have been familiar to audiences
from dozens of British comedies, going back at least to the tight, witty bantering Oscar
Wilde gave his characters in such works as An Ideal Husband and The Importance of
Being Ernest, half a decade before Eliot wrote. The drawing-room conversation bounces
along cheerfully, from one unlikely subject to the next tigers, Lady Klootz, champagne,
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wedding cake, and even the hackneyed old symbol of faded English glory, the crumbling
castle. All this presents audiences with a world that is non-threatening, comic because it
is unbelievable. Julia Shuttlethwaite, the meddling, scatterbrained old dowager, is a
character well familiar to audiences. Her inability to keep up with the conversation is
funny because the characters on stage are not talking about anything that really matters.
When literary critics write that artists, starting around the 1920s, presented
“alienation” as the basic human condition, they are basically addressing the idea of
personality, applying the concept to both literary characters and the flesh-and-blood
humans who create them. What is too often taken for granted is the extent to which the
very idea of alienation affects the artist's approach to her or his own work. Comedy is, by
necessity, alienating: audiences cannot identify with others’ weaknesses and at the same
time watch they hurt. It is only when seeing their problems (and our own) objectively, at
arm’s length, that they can be laughed at. If the characters in The Cocktail Party are
comic in the opening scenes, it is because audiences are able to view them as objects, as
the type of props that are always on stage in these sort of drawing-room comedies.
Throughout the twentieth century, audiences became more and more accustomed
to this sort of distance from characters, not just in comedies but also in “serious” works
of art. Once, an audience might have taken characters in a play as being just what they
claimed to be, suspending disbelief, accepting the moment without dwelling on the
circumstances that brought this artwork into being. The rise of modernism during the
1910s and 1920s is often studied in terms of how artists became aware of their freedom in
choosing the forms they used to convey themselves, but it ended up with audiences being
aware of form, too.
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The role of the artist, and the artist's role in creating the character, became more
conspicuous, making it harder to accept characters as what they claimed to be without
looking at what they represent in the larger picture of the process. This carried forward,
beyond Eliot's time, eventually touching all manner of popular art and even advertising
with a shade of ironic distance that tries to acknowledge the artist's style while at the
same time working within it. By the century’s end, everything from potato chip
commercials to weddings included a self-aware nod toward the tradition preceding it. The
glib partygoers of The Cocktail Party, coming from a comic tradition of glib partygoers,
draw their humor from the same device as a contemporary car commercial that presents a
corny, fast-talking, deep-voiced announcer: both try to convey a message, while at the
very same time telling viewers, “I know we both know I'm trying to convey a message.”
The challenge for Eliot in The Cocktail Party was to transcend his own ironic
distancing technique, to make his play about more than just his own awareness of
himself, without producing a play with two distinct, separate, and reconciled moods. His
transition from distant and lighthearted to somber is gradual. First, Edward discusses his
marital problems with the Unidentified Guest. The subject of broken matrimony can be a
serious one with life-shattering impact, as it does develop later in the play, but it is also
the subject of the sort of light-hearted complications that drive romantic comedies.
Adding to the level of safe distance for the audience is the stranger's claim that he can
“bring Lavinia back.” With no evidence of how or why he might be able to do this, his
claim implies supernatural power. Modern audiences can have trouble taking a play’s
issues seriously if they feel that problems can be solved by intervention from some
controlling hand.
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It turns out that the controlling hand here is the hand of science, not magic Sir
Henry Harcourt-Reilly is no magician, but a psychiatrist. By introducing him in the
manner that he does, and by keeping mysteries about him up in the air, Eliot is able to
connect the ancient world which was his inspiration with the modern one, providing a
commentary on how little has really changed since mankind accepted magic as a fact of
life. In addition, Sir Henry also offers good evidence of the ideas that were changing even
as Eliot wrote. This play was first produced fifty years after Sigmund Freud first
published his theories about psychoanalysis. The world had had about forty years since
psychoanalysis was discovered by artists and intellectuals, when it soon began to appear
in novels and dramas as the binding force that shaped personality and motivated
characters in their actions.
The Cocktail Party plays with the audience's familiarity with the “psychiatrist”
character that appeared frequently in twentieth-century plays, who was as often just an
insightful person who could explain things as an actual, degreed professional. Eliot does
offer the psychological explanation here, which was practically required in the modern
work, but the context is that of magic, not science. Sir Henry’s professionalism in this
drama amounts to putting Edward and Lavinia into the same room and having them
figure out what to do about each other, and in telling Celia to do whatever she thinks best.
His main function, though, is to put audiences in a pre-rational frame of mind.
As a character, Sir Henry is easy for modern audiences to accept, because his
relevance is clear: he hardly has any importance to the play except for drawing attention
to the uneasy balance between reason and mystery. The true focus of the play, the center
of what is important, is Celia. She is presented as a sincere person. If she were on stage
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by herself, without the drawing-room comedy and the state-of-marriage-today analysis
that surround her, audiences would reject her earnestness as being a little too sentimental.
If the play did not have Celia, though, it would amount to a clever little satire, and
nothing more.
In act one, Celia fulfills the part of the jilted mistress. Still, there is potential for
her religious growth in her speech about realizing, upon hearing that Edward is a free
man, that the dream she had been living is not enough anymore. For the most part, her
role as Edward's mistress is one that could have been left two-dimensional, with Celia
representing the sort of woman who would get herself involved with that sort of man, to
be dismissed in that sort of way. It is clear that she has little regret about the affair. What
Celia does regret is the bored, witty, upper-crust lifestyle in general. Audiences, who see
this play, up to the second act, as taking place in a cartoonish world peopled by
stereotypical characters, can imagine what it must be like to be a real person who finds
that she has voluntarily participated in such a shallow life. This is Celia’s dilemma.
Celia’s death represents both types of reality that the play juggles: the
exaggerated, self-aware one that audiences watch for entertainment, and the narrow,
humane one that Eliot's Christian ethos requires. Caring for diseased people in poverty is
the sort of unglamorous, brutal job that makes audiences uncomfortable, and if the play
presented Celia's ministry onstage, attention spans would lag. As it is presented in the
play, though, her kindness and self-sacrifice are wrapped in a cocoon of silly business
drawn straight from a boys' adventure magazine. Monkey-worshipping cannibals may
indicate symbolic things about primitivism and communion, but beyond symbolism they
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have more to do with the author's message about storytelling than they do with any
person's actual life, even in the 1940s.
When Eliot wrote The Cocktail Party, the trend was toward art that sowed
awareness of the traditions it came from, the tools that it used. The same trend occurs
today, with films that mimic scenes from earlier films as "homage'' and with music that
“samples” portions of earlier songs. For Eliot to introduce serious ideas to a popular
audience, he had to work with this trend, but he also had to use the familiarity that it
requires to bring something new to audiences. The tone does shift throughout the play,
and main characters are conspicuously absent for long periods of time (Lavinia in the first
act, Celia in the last). Still, this play shows Eliot achieving one of the most difficult feats
in art: using two different styles without ending up with a fractured piece.
Sweeney Agonistes is the earliest example of Eliot’s dramatic creations. It consists
only of two disconnected pieces of poetry, yet the work as a whole is based on all that
Eliot has theorized on the nature of his new drama. Its scheme shows the promise of a
well-conceived dramatics, which he was able to develop gradually in his later plays.
The descriptive sub-title to Sweeney Agonistes, ‘Fragments of an Aristophanic
Melodrama’, is meaningful in more than one sense. First, it shows that the play is
incomplete; secondly, it gives the impression that it is a melodrama; and thirdly, it
suggests an Aristophanic model. The “Fragment of a Prologue” performs the same
functions as the aristophanic prologue: it processes the exposition, sets the atmosphere,
and helps in creating a particular mood. The ‘Fragment of an Agon’ has a different design
it lacks even the functional purpose of its prototype. The play does not embody any
conflict for the obvious reason that the characters have no mutual interest either to
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content or to coalesce. It is, however, Aristophanic in structure as well as in spirit (Grover
Smith, 65).
The play presents a satirical view of contemporary life. While Eliot’s intention to
convey a tragic reading of the world remains dominant in it, the touch of levity, which
provides a cover to its serious atmosphere, is characteristically Arislophanic. It is a
melodrama for two reasons: first, it is interspersed with songs; and secondly, it has
situations which are highly dramatized. Of the action very little can be said except that
the quotation from Aeschylus’s ‘Oresteia’, used as an epigraph and the tense atmosphere
released by the episodes of the ‘Fragments’, create a feeling of fear and horror. The
device of occasional knocks at the door, as adopted by the dramatist, further accentuates
the same feeling.
The relevance of such a classical structure may best be explained in terms of
Eliot’s own dramatic theories. It is not a mere coincidence that, while the structure
chosen is, remote, the source of the verse, spoken by Sweeney and his friends, is much
nearer at hand. The dramatist uses new rhythms from the colloquial speech for reasons,
which have been .elucidated earlier vis-a-vis Eliot’s theory of dramatic language. He goes
back to remote drama, because he decides to “get away from Shakespeare”. In matter
also, ‘Sweeney Agonistes’ records a departure from the vogue of the realistic drama. The
play provides entertainment through criminal plantasy, a device which Eliot seems to
have borrowed from the Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatists. Even the kind of
characters, he presents in the play, conform to the theoretical directions he was planning
for the revival of the drama. As he says:--
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My intention was to have one character whose sensibility and intelligence should be on the plane of the most sensitive and intelligent members of the audience; his speeches should be addressed, to them as much as to the other personages in the play - - or rather should be addressed to the latter, who were to be material, literal-minded and visionless with the consciousness of being overheard by the former (T.S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and Use of Criticism,153)
Obviously, the reference to the exceptional character pertains to Sweeney, the
hero of the play. According to Eliot, his sensibility and intelligence were at the level of
the most sensitive and intelligent members of the audience. Doris, Dusty, and the other
visitors to his flat were presented as “material, literal-minded and visionless”. In fact, the
whole scheme of these characters is in complete conformity with his theory of dramatic
levels. By presenting characters of various degrees of consciousness, Eliot tries to appeal
to the sensibility of a heterogeneous audience. In this context, Sweeney exists at a level
of understanding or experience far beyond the comprehension of ordinary persons. His
quasi-philosophic remarks are not directed towards the audience as a whole, but towards
a more intelligent section thereof. As Sweeney meditates:--
You’d be bored. Birth, and copulation, and death. That's all the facts, when you come to brass tacks: Birth, and copulation, and death. (T.S.Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays of T.S.Eliot,122)
These meditations of Sweeney isolate him, not only from the ordinary mass of
audience, but also from the rest of the play’s cast. It is worthwhile to mention that by
following the peculiar scheme of ‘dramatis personae’ in Sweeney Agonistes, Eliot has
been able to construct more than one dramatic level for his audience. Significantly, the
playwright himself is at one level while Sweeney at another, Doris and Dusty are at a
third, and some of the members of the audience may rightly claim to be at a fourth level.
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Even the verse, assigned to these characters in the play, falls in different categories
which, again, strengthen the impression that the playwright, by means of these tactics,
aims at creating various dramatic levels in Sweeney Agonies (Grover Smith, T.S.Eliot’s
Poetry and Plays, 111)
In one sense, Sweeney is Eliot’s mouthpiece. He is the third voice of the
dramatist. Being the main protagonist, he occupies a major place in the play. But he does
not seem to be “Apeneck Sweeney” of Eliot’s earlier poems. He is altogether a different
character. At his best, he may be called the ancestor of Harry in The Family Reunion, of
Celia in The Cocktail Party, and of Colby in The Confidential Clerk. Nevertheless,
‘Sweeney Agonistes’ remains separated from all other plays by a gap, not of time but of
spirit. The play, by virtue of its typical atmosphere, belongs to the world of ‘The Waste
Land’, ‘Gerontion’, and ‘The Hollow Men’. It could not have been written after ‘Ash
Wednesday’. It is true that Sweeney, like his other counterparts in the later plays,
searches earnestly for a true significance or spiritual realization in life. Yet, he cannot
attain his goal through the same process - - the process of choice - - which the prota-
gonists in other plays do attain.
It is significant that Sweeney belongs to a different world, the world of ‘The
Waste Land’. His predicament being different, the solution, the playwright offers, is
bound to be different. However, the quotation from St. John of the Cross which is the
second epigraph- - “Hence the soul, cannot be possessed of the divine union, until it has
divested itself of the love of created beings”-- (The Complete Poems and Plays of T.S.
Eliot.,115) - - establishes his close affinity with Harry, Celia and Colby. Although, all of
them are at the same level of spiritual awareness, the solutions, they arrive at, are
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materially different from each other’s. Eliot, like James, presents characters of “differing
degrees of consciousness” (F.O. Mathiessen, The Achievement of T.S.Eliot, 159)
This leads to the consideration of another vital aspect of the play. Eliot, as already
stated, has regarded the poetic drama as the most direct and ideal medium for “the social
usefulness of poetry” (T.S.Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, 153). He
has also maintained that the dramatic form may occur at various points along a line the
termini of which are “liturgy and realism” (T.S.Eliot, Introduction to Savonarola, 1926).
Taken together, the twin emphasis provides clues to the thematic scheme of Sweeney
Agonistes. It is on account of this scheme that the Sweeney-myth, which Eliot uses
earlier in ‘Sweeney Erect’ and ‘Sweeney Among the Night-in-gales’, gains an added
significance. The hero of the play - - Sweeney himself - - is best suited to the theme of a
melodrama, which is meant to project contemporary life, set against a satirical back
ground. It is not unlikely that Eliot here was indebted to Baudelaire who claimed that "the
sexual act as evil is more dignified, less boring, than the natural, ‘life-giving’, cheery
automatism of the modern world” (T.S.Eliot, Selected Essays, 148). Besides, the kind of
music-hall treatment, which the playwright has rendered possible, gives the play a new
complexion. Naturally, the result is an exquisite blending of a serious theme with the
vulgar speeches, which are marked by a systematic strain of rhythms and idioms of a
crude society.
Eliot appreciates Marlowe’s ‘The Jew of Malta’ for what he calls its quality of
“savage comic humour” (Ibid.,123) This humour is perfected through a style, which
secures its operation by hesitating on the edge of caricature at the right moment. Eliot
also commends Ben Jonson’s “comedy” for its simplification of detail and design (Ibid.,
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148). Commenting again on the worth of its humour, he states that it is art of caricature,
of great caricature, like Marlowe’s (Ibid., 159). What is significant in these comments is
the appreciation of the satirical method, which the two dramatists - - Marlowe and Ben
Jonson - - developed to present their respective view-points in life. In their plays, “satire”
assumes the form of medium for communicating the “essential emotion” in the drama. It
is never directly but only incidentally that the satire becomes an open criticism on the
actual world. In Eliot’s view, such a method, being less direct, “illuminates the actual
world”, since it provides a new .point-of-view to inspect various facets of “reality” in life.
(Ibid., 156)
Apparently, Eliot adheres to the same method to present his theme of Sweeney
Agonistes. The focus of his satire like that of Marlowe and Jonson, is never direct. It
derives meaning more from the playwright’s vision of the play’s essential emotion - -
Sweeney’s attitude towards murder - - than from any direct comment on life itself.
Hence, the halo of “satire”, that surrounds ‘Sweeney Agonistes’, not only illuminates the
theme of murder, but also provides a new yardstick the audience to re-measure their
existing notions about murder, and is possible implications in actual life. It is significant
that by this kind of manipulation of the theme in Sweeney Agonistes, Eliot succeeds in his
efforts to provide to the audience more than one dramatic level to enjoy.
Virtually, Eliot has followed the same practice in his .ritual plays—Sweeney
Agonistes, The Rock, and Murder in the Cathedral. In Murder in the Cathedral this
practice is, perhaps, comparatively closer and more diversified. The very design of the
play is enough to establish its affinity with the classical models of a tragedy. Consider,
for example, the variety as well as the type of references the play abounds in: the liturgy
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of the Church which the choruses resemble; the mystery and miracle play of the medieval
age; the Morality play with its Temptations; the Greek drama; Samson Agonistes’, whom
Becket recalls during his own temptation; ‘Paradise Regained’; the Book of Job; and the
Biblical style in general. Finally, no less significant is the symbolism of the history and
tradition of Becket, which, notwithstanding the other aspects of the play, prepares the
audience for identifying themselves with the higher ideals underlying Becket’s
martyrdom. The play, in this sense, becomes rooted both in our time and in Becket’s
time.
In Eliot’s plays, language seems to re-assert its control in actual performance,
which accrues directly from the appropriate control over the use of rhythms. Nowhere
else has Eliot displayed such an acute sense of the music combined with the natural ease
of a dramatic language. For example, in the lines quoted above, expressions such as:
“Delegate to deal the doom of damnation”, and “A doom on the house, a doom on
yourself, a doom on the world”, are particularly effective in the alliterative emphasis of
their well-controlled rhythms. It was with Sweeney Agonistes that Eliot started his
linguistic experiment. In The Rock he carried it further; but the success, he achieved in
Murder in the Cathedral, is remarkable. To put it in his own language, Eliot in Sweeney
Agonistes beats the drum, maybe rightly, but still too violently. By the time he comes to
realize that a solo-beat, however exciting, will not do the job-Hence, he tries to develop a
new variety, the kind of which The Rock furnishes many examples. In Murder in the
Cathedral he moves much faster: he displays a more scientific attitude towards the aural
effects of the rhythmic beats. He not only removes their earlier monotony and violence,
but also secures a better control over them. By doing so, he gives his verse a new music,
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simplicity, ease, and intensity. However, for the quality of transparency in Eliot’s
dramatic verse, one is yet to look forward to his subsequent plays, The Family Reunion,
in particular.
Like Sweeney Agonistes, Murder in the Cathedral depicts various levels of
consciousness. In fact, these levels co-exist within the framework of its dramatic pattern.
They get life from the chief constituents of the play: its action, theme, plot, structure of
feeling and Thomas Becket, the main character. The web of symbolic relationship, that
surrounds the different characters, is another factor that substantiates the same feeling.
If one looks at the plan of action of Murder in the Cathedral, one feels that the
play exists at more than one, level. It is important to note that Eliot exploits here the
historical context of the death of Becket; yet, he is not writing the history of the Christian
martyr. In fact, Eliot, though, Becket’s sacrifice, tries to dramatize the need for total sub-
mission before the will of God. In this sense, Becket is a Sweeney but, perhaps, a better
one. Unlike Sweeney in Sweeney Agonistes he does not indulge in uttering vague words.
Instead, he reacts to a vision. His final decision of martyrdom is not prompted by any
kind of external pressure. He is rather moved by an inner realization, better to be called
“communion”. Even his language, when he explains his decision in terms of “action and
suffering”, becomes mysterious for the common man. Moreover, in his conception of
order and reality, he comes to terms with something that is beyond the earthly
experience.
The essential action of Murder in the Cathedral is somewhat limited. To put it in
Eliot's own words: “A man comes home foreseeing that he will be killed and is killed”.
(T.S. Eliot, On Poetry and Poets, 80) This man is none else than Thomas Becket. Despite
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many temptations, such as the usual rewards of power and glory, his resolve to face a
voluntary death remains undeterred. He accepts death in perfect humility, commending
his cause and that of the Church to “Almighty God” (T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and
Plays of T.S. Eliot, 275)
The death of Becket in its formal aspect may be regarded as martyrdom; but in its
substance it may imply a deeper significance, not so much in terms of martyrdom as in
terms of sacrifice, suggesting thereby a general truth the natural and human order, man
without such a sac is a mere beast. It is the act of blood and the receiving of blood which,
in its final analysis, redeems human beings, and thus entitles them to a status, superior to
that of beasts. Hence, in form as well as in substance, the motif of in Murder in the
Cathedral constitutes two dramatic levels martyrdom and redemption. The ordinary
members of the audience will generally interpret Becket's death as martyrdom, while the
more intelligent members may consider act of redemption.
Similarly, the plot of Murder in the Cathedral has separate appeals. What happens
in Part- I is just a prelude to what is going to happen in Part II. The struggle in the first is
at the psychological level; it is inner struggle. The struggle in the second is at the physical
level: it is an external struggle. Nevertheless, the two struggles are part parcel of the same
pattern. Part I is essential, since, Becket suppresses the Tempters, it will be impossible
him to suppress the Knights. Besides, in order to render credibility to the theme of
martyrdom or redemption, whatever one may call it, it is necessary to portray as a human
being. Hence, Part I shows him suffering a complex of various temptations, likely to
irritate ordinary human beings. But in Part II he is shown as a dill man. The audience in
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both the states remains at a different level. Most of its members either do not know
Becket’s temptation, or do not understand its implications.
Even the characters in Murder in the Cathedral play two levels of development.
At one level they are static figures, while at the other they are individuals she every
chance of further development. In this respect, Becket, the Women of Canterbury, and
the Priest are all at the same footing. Initially, all are rigid, but as the play advances they
show a remarkable sense of flexibility. To start with Becket’s desire is imperfect. He is
full of pride, but as his vision develops, his sensibility gains a new realization. He feels
inspired, a fact, which finally leads him towards a higher level of consciousness. Similar
is the case with the Women of Canterbury. In the beginning it is difficult for them to
understand the implications of “action through suffering”. They remain passive spectators
in the drama of Becket’s temptation, and his final redemption. But after his death, they
also show a better realization of what has happened. It is through his sacrifice that women
now come to accept their lot, as also the meaning of “suffering”. Even the Priests, who, to
begin with, counsel Becket to avert action, are changed persons after his martyrdom.
They also accept what they are not prepared to accept earlier. As the Third Priest pays his
tributes.
Symbolically, the dramatic levels of Murder in the Cathedral have a deeper
significance. The play resembles a tragedy, and presents a moral flaw, a catastrophe, and
a sense of its justification. It goes to the credit of Eliot’s craftsmanship that, instead, of
conferring all the three aspects on the protagonist, as is usual in a tragedy, he has
demonstrated them through all the characters of the play. Thus, the moral flaw is
presented through the implorations of the Tempters, the sufferings of the Chorus, and the
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acts of the Knights. The catastrophe is brought upon Becket, the protagonist. The
justification of the tragic act is manifested through the exaltation of the martyr, the
condemnation of the murderers, and the salvation of the sufferers. In this sense, the
Knights symbolize sin, the Women suffering, and Becket sacrifices. According to
Theodore Spencer, the Characters—the Priests, the Women, the Knights, Becket
himself—live at different levels of moral consciousness, which is the resultant outcome
of the way, each character looks at reality under divergent conditions of life (Theodore
Spencer, Horvard Advocate, 21-22). Francis Fergusson, commenting on this aspect of
Murder in the Cathedral, compares the level’s to the three “orders” of Pascal—“the order
of nature, the order of mind, and order of charity’ (Francis Fergusson, The Idea of the
Theatre, 210) -which Eliot has elaborated in his essay: The Pensees of Pascal (T.S.Eliot,
Selected Essays, 416)
There remains yet another level of consciousness, which equally significant in
Murder in the Cathedral. It is based on the structure of personal feelings. It gives, as
Raymond Williams states, “the variation of levels of consciousness have seen described
in Sweeney Agonistes—the many conscious, the few conscious (Raymond Williams,
Drama from Ibsen to Brecht, 183). At the conscious level play moves parallel to Becket’s
temptation and martyrdom. At the unconscious level the whole atmosphere of the shows
its concern more with what happens through than with what happens to Thomas Becket.
Similarly, at the simple religious level the feeling conveyed is a feeling of recognition in
the Christian terms, while at a purely secular level the feeling would be of a different
kind. However in this play Eliot has succeeded in communicating the nucleus of his
own feelings in a manner, which seems to be “traditional and conventional” (Ibid.,184)
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The play, though religious in every sense of the word, has the intensity to arouse
excitement even in those who are not religious. According to D.E. Jones, this intensity is
the cumulative product of "the ramification of meaning at all the planes of awareness that
man is capable of—intellectual, sensuous and spiritual” (D.E.Jones, The Plays of T.S.
Eliot, 79). The play is a great achievement, since, to quote Eliot, it gets upon the stage a
“precise statement of life”, which is at the same time, “a point of view, a world” (T.S.
Eliot, The Sacred Wood, 68). It is significant that it conveys a definite view of life, yet
no less precise is the illusion of life it tries to present.
It may be contended that the statement of life, which Eliot has tried to project,
exists again at more than one level of understanding. Ordinarily, the play embodies a
feeling of Christian recognition. It also suggests a kind of conflict between the State and
the Church. If an allegorical view is taken, it would also suggest a conflict between
“brute power”, on the one hand, and “saintliness”, on the other. It appears as if the
Second Priest is close-in-spirit to the Knights, just as the First Priest is akin to the
Women, and the third Becket himself. The Second Priest is, indeed, a symbol of moral
strength of the Knight's too much indulgent attitude. He may not be bad, but he is
unsaintly. The Third Priest, unlike the Women, remains passive, though he understands
all the implications of the conflict. In its final analysis, the conflict vindicates the Church,
but a Church dedicated to humility, and represented by the Women rather than the priests.
Eliot means to communicate two feelings; first, that a Church is not only the priests, and
secondly, that a simple and sincere involvement, done out of a sense of humility, as that
of the Women of Canterbury, constitutes the Church itself. In its earlier counterpart, The
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Rock, Eliot tries to communicate a similar feeling. The only difference is that The Rock
conveys it vaguely, while Murder in the Cathedral illustrates it explicitly.
In any case, Murder in the Cathedral proves to be a staggering feat of capturing
large audiences. It is generally regarded as “a landmark in twentieth-century drama”.
However, Eliot himself is alive to its faults. He call the play “dead end”, because
of five reasons (T.S. Eliot, On Poetry and Poets, pp. 79-81). In the first place, it did not
solve any general problem. Secondly, it did not render any technical help to the dramatist.
Thirdly, its vocabulary did not exactly conform to that of the modern conversation.
Fourthly, the Chorus was not closely “integrated into the play.” Lastly, Eliot could not
dispense altogether with the “use of prose”, as his “theory of language” demanded from
him.
In conclusion, Eliot’s ritual plays--Sweeney Agonistes, The Rock, Murder in the
Cathedral-are remarkable mile stones in his onward march towards perfect dramatic art.
Taken together, they give a fine illustration of his own dramatic theories in practice. It
appears as if the dramatist had broken fresh ground with each play. Apart from other
things, these plays possess some elements in common: first, they have a Chorus;
secondly, their setting is ritualistic; thirdly, each successive play comes nearer to the
rhythms of contemporary speech; fourthly, they contain an overt emphasis on Christian
recognition; and. lastly, their plots have a touch of tragic and elements, fused together.
However, Eliot, for reasons; best known to him, abandons some of these elements in his
subsequent plays. In fact, after Murder in the Cathedral he moves more and more
towards the drama of “contemporary people speaking contemporary language”. As he
writes:
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The Family Reunion is Eliot’s first play in the / contemporary manner. It displays
an uneven combination of formalism and realism. It is in this play that he drops the
practice of both the “furnished-flat” atmosphere of Sweeney Agonistes and the historical
setting of Murder in the Cathedral. He opts for the details of contemporary life with
characters selected from the commonplace situations (T.S. Eliot, On Poetry and Poets,
81-82).
In The Family Reunion Eliot uses the picture-frame stage with a conventional
setting: the modern flat, the library, the drawing room, the cigarette, the newspaper, and
the front-door bell. In the matter of verse Eliot comes still nearer to the contemporary
speech. While these changes suggest a shift towards a more realistic drama, the presence
of such expressionistic devices as “beyond-character” digressions choric chants, lyrical
duets, and occasional solos give an impression of the same practices he followed in his
earlier plays. Besides, the appearance of “those ill-fated-figures, the Furies” (Ibid, 84), it
reminds one of the “hoo-ha” tactics of Sweeney Agonistes (T.S. Eliot, The Complete
Poems and Plays of T.S. Eliot, 126).
The Family Reunion is a psychological tragedy. Despite its outward adherence to
the norms of the realistic drama, its basic appeal does not show any .shift from Eliot’s
earlier plays. In theme it is related to Murder in the Cathedral and Sweeney Agonistes
(Raymond Williams, 183). The central concept of the play presents a five-plank
development: first, it projects the fight of a man from his furies; secondly, it shows him
moving from knowledge to self-knowledge; thirdly, it portrays his determination not to
flee but to face; fourthly, it stresses the need of self-control to with stand the rigours of
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expiation; and lastly, Harry’s trials yield a new recognition that the period of physical
desolation to the penitent is a preparation for spiritual rewards.
The plot of The Family Reunion is simple. A son (Harry) has left his home some
seven years back. He returns to participate in his mother’s (Amy's) birthday party.
Meanwhile, he has lost his wife, while travelling on an ocean liner, but he does not
remember how? He has only a kind of feeling that he either pushed her overboard or saw
her slip and drown. Since then, he feels himself being followed as if by the Furies. The
mother looks forward to Harry’s return with the hope that he may settle down in his
ancestral house. The son, however, decides to become a missionary, and leaves for a
foreign country. The decision causes great disappointment to his mother, and she dies.
There are several similarities between the two plays, The Family Reunion and
‘Sweeney Agonistes’. Both the plays derive their plots from a common source, the
“Oreste’s story” in Aeschylus’s ‘Choephcroi’. They have a similar theme, the theme of
purgation. The episode of Harry’s drowned wife seems to be a repetition of the
“murdered girl” in Sweeney’s story. It is no less significant that almost the same sense of
mystery surrounds death in both the plays.
Even the sense of guilt, which arouses new series of consciousness in the minds
of Harry and Sweeney, is not materially different from each other’s. The Chorus also has
been assigned a similar role in each play.
Let it be stated that Eliot’s shift towards a contemporary, setting does not mean a
shift in his dramatic ideals. His basic assumptions, which by and large determine his
theories, remain unaltered. His themes of spiritual election, and the studied impact they
are expected to leave on the secular audience, have always been the focal point of his
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dramatic idealism. At its best the change may be interpreted as a change of tactics rather
than a change of ideals. In resorting to the vogue of contemporary characters and scenes,
Eliot’s chief aim is to bridge the “gap” between the modern audience and the people of
his poetic plays. Looking at the experimental stage of the existing poetic drama, one can
better understand his shift towards contemporary atmosphere in The Family Reunion’. In
this respect, Eliot appears to have been guided by three considerations. In the first place,
he wants to remove the initial inhibitions that the drama of the period is likely to face
from theatrical audiences. Secondly, he decides to meet the challenge of the commercial
theatre on its own ground. Thirdly, he considers it necessary that the poetic drama, in
order to rejuvenate itself, must compete with the prose drama (T.S. Eliot, On Poetry and
Poets, 81). These considerations are largely based on his personal experience. Between
Sweeney Agonistes and The Family Reunion, he learns a lot about dramatic composition.
But more significant is his direct involvement in the theatre through the performances of
The Rock and Murder in the Cathedral. To put it briefly, Eliot by now comes closer to
actors as well as audiences. He begins to realize their difficulties. Instead of confining
himself to his own world, he begins to write about the world of his audiences. Besides, he
decides to dispense with the hackneyed expressions of the earlier dramatists, and by
careful manipulations tries to make them aware of the limitations of their environments,
and the realities associated with them. .
The Family Reunion displays once again Eliot's concern for projecting various
levels of consciousness in much the same way as he did earlier in his ritual plays. It is,
however, significant that he develops in this play a new method of handling dramatic
levels, a method which is consistent with his new approach. It satisfies both the
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playwright and his audience. In Murder in the Cathedral, he presents these levels by
means of many devices pertaining to the, theme, the action, the protagonist, the symbolic
context, the ritual imagery and the Chorus. The underlying feature of the whole scheme is
that, while retaining their distinctness at the surface level, they are merged together into
the dramatic pattern, if and when the situation requires. In this connection, Becket’s
sermon and the final Chorus can be cited as relevant illustrations. Whatever the
advantage of this pattern, it leaves some stigma of artificiality as can be seen in ‘the post-
murder speeches of the Knights, and the occasional addresses of Becket to the audience.
In The Family Reunion, Eliot improves upon this method, and makes it more relevant to
the everyday experience of the audience. He tries to win over his audience to a new way
of life. He uses a negative device. The immediate experience of the audience gets
precedence, but not so much in deference to their expectations, as in the presentation of
errors in their judgments. The world presented on the stage is contemporary in every
sense of the word; still no opportunity is lost by the playwright to shake the confidence of
his audiences in the surface reality of their world of experience. Apparently, the family
(and audience) expects one kind of reunion, but experiences quite another. Similarly,
Mary and Harry present through their relationship a feeling of romantic love, but the play
ends with a positive emphasis on the divine love, which gets precedence over the human
love. The appearance of the Eumenides is, perhaps, the most glaring example of this
device, where the dramatist shatters the conventional belief in the reality of the “make-
believe” on the stage. According to Eliot, the device, though difficult to implement, aims
at a “shock-tactic” analogous to the Knight’s addresses at the end of Murder in the
Cathedral. Even the Chorus in The Family Reunion follows the same pattern. It has been
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closely integrated into the play (T.S.Eliot, On Poetry and Poetics, 81). It consists of
Harry’s uncles and aunts; but its role is essentially different from that usually assigned to
the Greek Chorus. It is no more there in its conventional sense of “illuminating the
action”. On the other hand, it creates a relative feeling of inability to discern what is
happening on the stage. For example:
We, do not know what -we are doing, And even, when you think of it,
We do not know much about thinking What is happening outside of the circle? And what is the meaning of happening? (T.S.Eliot, The Complete Poems and plays of T.S. Eliot, 348) Correlated with this method is the new way in which Eliot's dramatis personae
speak in the play. They suddenly abandon their natural conversations, and begin to speak
as if in a trance. The playwright occasionally suspends the flow of “outward action”, and
tries to reveal some mystery of the “inner life” from the hinterland of man's mind. What
is all the more revealing about these occasions is that the poetry in the trances is stiff and
hierophantic. To use Eliot's own phrase, it is too “much like operatic areas” (T.S.Eliot,
On Poetry and Poets, 83). It is, therefore, beyond the reach of ordinary members of the
audience. It transcends to higher regions of consciousness. The quasi-philosophic strains
of this poetry render it difficult for the common man to follow its implications. Hence,
those members of the audience, who are at the surface level of understanding, have to
remain indifferent till the next change takes place. It may be noted that the main, purpose
of the playwright in using two kinds of poetry—one naturalistic and the other
transcendental—is to mark the distinctness of reality at its two levels. But it can also be
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contended that Eliot in doing so sacrifices one of his basic concepts of dramatic poetry,
which he has explained thus:
Any form of poetry restricts one's liberty; and drama is a very peculiar form: there is a great deal that is high and full poetry that will not go into it (T.S.Eliot, The Criterion,25)
Besides this, the playwright, through abrupt variations of poetic style, has
restricted the play’s action, causing in this manner unnecessary embarrassment to his
audience. There, is no doubt that some of the poetry of these trance-segments is thrilling;
still, it defeats Eliot’s basic consideration. Being too “poetic”, it fails to disguise the
poetic quality of his play (T.S.Eliot, Townsman, 45). Even if one subscribes to the view
that such a poetic style has yielded to the dramatist some higher levels of consciousness,
it is yet doubtful whether the disruption, it causes in the action of the play, it really called
for. Eliot-admitted the same lapse when, in his interview with Donald Hall, he stated that
in The Family Reunion he gave much attention to the “versification”, and neglected the
“structure” of the play (Eliot, T.S. The Paris Review, Vol. 21, 66).
The scheme of characters in The Family Reunion conforms to Eliot’s “theory of
dramatic levels”. The play deals with two kinds of worlds, normal, and spiritual. In the
normal world, which is larger than its counterpart, there exist different layers of reality,
where each character talks and reacts according to his level of understanding. These
characters, like the Knights in Murder in the Cathedral, are ordinary people who are
motivated by simple and elementary desires. They can see events, but are unable to
interpret them in their appropriate context. They belong to the ordinary category of the
audience. The most impressive of these characters is Amy, the mother of Harry. The rest
of the cast includes Amy's sisters, her brother-in-law, Harry’s uncles, and aunts. The
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spiritual world has only one representative, Agatha, Harry’s aunt. Without her, even
Harry, the hero of the play, is passive. It is she who gives him the necessary guidance and
instruction; it would have been otherwise difficult for him to follow preternatural visions
asking him to accept “sin and expiation”.
However, the most disturbing aspect of the whole scheme of characters is the
isolated nature of Harry, the central figure in The Family Reunion. He lives exclusively in
his own world, and thus remains unintelligible to most of the characters. He does not
communicate with them, nor do they show the necessary inclination to communicate with
him. As a result, the levels of consciousness are there, but the dramatic movement of the
whole play is adversely affected.
It may be admitted that the thematic pattern of The Family Reunion is defective.
The play possesses a theme which, even at the surface, has many meanings to convey.
These meanings are directly derived from myth, religion, psychology, and anthropology.
Such a pattern may have revealed several levels of consciousness to the audience, but it
betrays its inherent weakness. There appears a lot of confusion owing to inadequate
differentiation of these levels. Besides, the strange mixture of the literal and the symbolic
contents of the play present another example of a serious drawback; Therefore, The
Family Reunion does not protect a unified impression on the mind of the audience.
Nevertheless, the playwright tries to provide a cogent thread to the various meanings,
which run through the surface levels by means of the “Orestes myth”, and the religious
ritual embodied therein. It is evident that Eliot's main purpose in constructing-this type of
thematic complex was to present a modern counterpart to the experience of purgation
through religion. It is significant to reveal that the playwright has excluded “Christian
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terms” from the action and verse of the play, which may imply that his intention was to
have the “Christian view” of man’s condition emerge from a commonplace setting of the
secular modern life. Such an exclusion, in its final analysis, may be regarded as part of a
larger plan to begin at the beginning, “at the point, where the decay of faith has left
modern mar” (C.L.Barbec, The Southern Review, Vol. VI, No. 2, 387-416) How far has
Eliot succeeded in his purpose is, of course, a different question. The fact, that the
Oresteia of Aeschylus also adheres to a similar pattern, further suggests the connection of
this theme with ritual and myth (George Anthony, The Sewanee Review, Vol. 47). As
Agatha states: “What we have written is not a story of detection, / Of crime and
punishment, but of sin and expiation (Eliot, T.S. The Complete Poems and Plays of T.S.
Eliot. 333).
Eliot’s recourse to the mythical sources is not new, but in The Family Reunion he
exploits these sources in an entirely different manner. The basis for the conflict is pro-
vided by the two ritual struggles between the “order of earth”, and the “order of heaven”.
The sequence of events, as derived from Aeschylus's version of the myth, suggests a
situation through which the dramatist tries to reflect on a religious experience in
contemporary terms. It is worthwhile to mention that Eliot reverts, again and again, to the
Greek sources, since he feels that they can furnish him with material, rich for the purpose
of religious recognition. This has been done as his usual practice; he converts it into
Christian terms, and integrates the same into his ritual plays. In The Family Reunion,
however, he makes a modification; he keeps Christianity and its significance concealed in
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the garb of contemporaneity. Even the characters now do not teach Christianity in an
open manner, as Thomas Becket does through his sermon in Murder in the Cathedral.
Nevertheless; this departure from the usual practice is merely tactical. Eliot,
perhaps, realized that modern audiences, which were accustomed to the secular prose
drama of contemporary life, tended to insulate themselves before anything that seemed to
depart from it. Convinced of the error of direct assault, he works out a comprehensive
strategy of “indirection”. He goes more than “half-way” to cater to the public taste, and
revises his dramatic methods in the light of polite “naturalistic comedy” (Frederick
Lumely, New Trends in Twentieth Century Drama, 127). He starts with the kind of
surface familiar to a modern audience, and develops it gradually according to his
thematic leanings. This is exactly what Eliot has tried to accomplish in The Family
Reunion. It has the same theme as he develops in many of his poems, viz., the suffering
hero, the Hamlet, figure, or the voice at the end of ‘The Waste Land’ (Francis Fergusson,
The Southern Review, Spring, 562). If the play is not that much of a success, the reason
lies in the many lapses that are inherent in the “symbolism of his imagery” (Grover
Smith, T.S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays. 213). Frederick Lumley's comment in this respect
is valuable. He observes that it is because Eliot wanted to say too many things that the
play is “better read than seen performed” (Frederick Lumely, New Trends in Twentieth
Century Drama, 131).
The linguistic aspect of The Family Reunion has been subjected to mixed
comments, favorable as well as unfavourable. “It’s poetry”, says Grover Smith, “is too
symbolically concrete, too imagistic” (Grover Smith, T.S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays, 213).
In Matthiessen’s view, much of it has “deliberate flatness” (F.O.Mattiessen, The
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Achievement of T.S. Eliot,166). According to D.E. Jones, it must appear “a digression,
being too obviously poetic” (D.E. Jones, The Plays of T.S. Eliot,122). George Anthony
regards it as a “flexible verse for the speaking voice” (George Anthony, The Sewanee
Review. Vol. 47, spring, 1939). While C.L. Barber commends it for its “quality of
actuality”—the quality which he asserts: “I never found in the language of Murder in the
Cathedral”(C.L.Barber, “The Power of Development”: The Achievement of T.S. Eliot by
F.O. Matthiessen, 209). Raymond Williams also finds the verse “adequate and flexible”
(Raymond Williams, Drama from Ibsen to Brecht,188-89). E. Martin Browne applauds
the play for what he calls “the firm yet infinitely flexible rhythms of the verse” (Martin
E.Browne, “T.S. Eliot in the Theatre”: T.S. Eliot: The Man and His Work, 124).
However, Robert_Speaight’s assessment is all the more valuable, since it presents an
actor’s point-of-view. “The great conquest of The Family Reunion, he observes, “was a
style of verse which achieved colloquial ease and also, when acquired, a high poetic
incandescence” (Robert Speaight, A Symposium: For His Seventieth Birth day,76). In
this connection, the scene between Charles and Downing can be cited as a perfect
example of an accomplished ease and candour. If this is read or acted, as it should be, the
audience will hardly be aware that they are listening to verse; and yet, as the scene
progresses, will feel that they are not listening to prose. .
Apparently, they were far-removed from modern conversation. But it is in The
Family Reunion that Eliot actually works put the verse idiom he was in search on in this
context, the play deserves to be called a “half-way house” in technical evolution
(C.L.Barber, 209). In order to illustrate this point one is required to have a look at the
prosdial measures of Eliot’s early poetry, which generally comprise a line of varying
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length, and varying number of syllables with a Caesura and three stresses. In Murder in
the Cathedral the metric scheme is conventional, and the stress is determined by all the
syllabic accentuations. In The Family Reunion Eliot makes a significant departure from
this practice. The stress now is determined only by the more dominant accents in each
phrase, leaving ordinary accents unnoticed. Technically, it requires altogether a new
scansion. It was, therefore, natural that it should have its own rules to regulate breaks and
veering’s in the division of lines and sequences. Let it be contended that Eliot's only
consideration in evolving this rhythmical pattern of the verse was to develop “the
transparent” style of which he had spoken in his “New Haven lecture in 1933” (Herbert
Howarth, Notes on Some Figures Behind T.S. Eliot, 323).
It is difficult to agree with those critics who have found fault with the dramatic
language of The Family Reunion. They appear to have done so because of some isolated
lines, picked out in a random manner. It is, therefore, desirable that any assessment of
Eliot’s dramatic verse in The Family Reunion should be made in terms of the play's
language as a whole, and not in terms of its stray lines. The quality of poetry should be
assessed in the context of a total pattern, from the conversational pitch of the lighter
verses to the tightened rhythms of a highly dramatic language. Suffice it to say that Eliot
has offered a verse, which is as conversational as it is cadent. In its design it approaches
prose very closely; still it does not jar on the ears when an intense kind of verse is used.
Thus Winchell’s observations:
Coming along in the fog, my Lady, And he must have been in rather a hurry. There was a lorry drawn up where it shouldn't be. Outside of the village, on the West Road (T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and plays of T.S. Eliot, 323)
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Have enough rhythmical appeal to keep it in tune with Harry’s lines:
To the worship in the desert, the thirst and deprivation, A stony sanctuary and a primitive altar, The heat of the sun and the icy vigil, A care over lives of humble people, The lesson of ignorance, of incurable diseases (Ibid, 339) However, an exact idea of the quality of Eliot's linguistic achievement in The
Family Reunion may be formed with the help of such lines as these:—
O Sun, that was once so warm, O Light that was taken for granted When. I was young and strong, and sun and light unsought for And the night unfeared and the day expected And clocks could be trusted, tomorrow assured And time would not stop in the dark,! Put on the lights. But leave the curtains undrawn. Make up the fire. Will the spring never come? I am cold (Ibid., 285)
Taken together, the passages, quoted above, can give some idea of the linguistic
pattern of the play. The controlled modulations of the conversational tone are clearly
discernible. They contain the model of a style, which “could without prose" in the
'Family Reunion’ (Anne Riddler, T.S. Eliot: A Study of His Writings, 113) Not only do
they exhibit ease, precision, and naturalness, but also show the direction in which Eliot
was to strive his subsequent play, The Cocktail Party.
The Cocktail Party appeared ten years after the completion The Family Reunion.
It was awaited with more than usual interest, since there had been a genuine misgiving in
some quarters that Eliot might return to the formal pattern of Murder in the Cathedral.
However, that was not to happen. Instead, he chooses to follow the pattern he had initial
in The Family Reunion. In The Cocktail Party he moves long way nearer to the style of
the naturalistic drama. He abandons the Chorus in this process. The form remains
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essentially the same as that of The Family Reunion, and the play is as highly poetic. It is a
versified drawing-room comedy in which the playwright has presented, under the cover
of a glowing satire, the theme of a spiritual quest. The structure of the plot, like that of
The Family Reunion, is derived from the sources of the ritual drama.
The central situation of the plot in The Cocktail Party has been taken from the
‘Alcestis’. In the Greek play a dead wife: (who died in place of her husband) is restored
to life by the intervention of Heracles. Here a run-away wife is brought back as if from
the dead. In both the cases, a marriage, that had ended, has to begin again. Although the
reference to Alcestis is remote, yet it helps us to fix our focus right. The play opens with
a cocktail party. It may be regarded as a domestic play dealing with the problems of
nuptial relations, where Edward, Lavinia, and Reilly are the central figures. To the
original triangle of husband, wife, and the saviour are added the amorous entanglements,
which arise out of the presence of subsidiary characters. The central figures are flanked
by two persons, Celia and Peter, who are yet to marry. As Eliot’s practice, he has
adopted the story from the Greek drama, but has tried to interpret the same in terms of
modern life.
When The Cocktail Party first appeared in 1949, the public was startled by the
appendage, “A Comedy”, to its title. The reason was obvious. The audiences received
Murder in the Cathedral and The Family Reunion more or less with the same religious
seriousness as Eliot demanded from them. Hence, most of them were disappointed to
find that the new play was a comedy. They could not realize that Eliot, in resorting to the
use of a comic surface in The Cocktail Party, was guided by serious motives. His logic
was the same as had led him to the use of contemporary setting in The Family Reunion
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the desire to destroy conventional monies of looking at reality. Instead, he wanted to
reassert the reality in more convincing terms. He felt that the comic surface of modern
events could be better exploited for this purpose, since those events, already familiar to
the audience, could better present a sense of the ultimate reality. He starts from a
particular and a local situation, but states that in such a way as to make it appear general
and universal. Eliot’s own explanation in regard to the play is composed, is revealing. He
states:
All that one can aim at in a play of this type, which endeavours to combine the dramatic and the poetic in a somewhat new way, is to provide a plot and characters and action which are, on the imme- diate theatrical level, intelligible. That is, the im- mediate situation and the troubles and conflicts, which agitate people, should be obvious; the characters should not be on the surface, unusual or different form ordinary human nature; and there should be perfectly intelligible things going on with a reasonably intelligible conclusion (T.S. Eliot, The Glasgow herald, 24)
Eliot’s statement makes it evident that The Cocktail Party is meant to affect
different people in different ways, Written in a conversational style the play is sure to
engage the attention of the audience. It provides a plot, action, and denouement, which
are intelligible at the immediate theatrical level. Even the characters have nothing
unusual or different from ordinary human nature. The troubles and conflicts, these
characters have been made to present, are easily identifiable. Hence, the play was bound
to elicit admiration from the audience, since the kind of message it conveyed was, by and
large, a message to the general public. Apparently, Eliot's concern seems to be “mending
other people's marriages or lack of them” (T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays of
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T.S. Eliot). He counsels a quarrelsome couple some stinging truths that send .a sad young
woman to a death, worse than fate, and in a manner, entirely sadistic. At the symbolic
level, the dramatist's purpose appears to be quite serious. It signifies a new kind of
religious awareness. “The loneliness of Gerontion”, observes Robert Speaight, “is in
Edward’s definition of his dilemma” (Speaight, Robert. The Tablet, September 3, 1949)
As Edward remarks:
What is hell ? Hell is oneself, Hell is alone, the other figures in it Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from And nothing to escape to. One is always alone (T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and plays of T.S. Eliot, 397) At the ordinary level the audience may find The Cocktail Party a delightful play,
providing entertainment in more than one way. The Jess intelligent members of the
audience would have enough satisfaction from anything like manners, idiosyncrasies, and
attitudes, which it abounds in while the more intelligent can discern something deeper—
a kind of greater “spiritual consciousness”, running beneath its action, philosophy, wit,
and epigram (The Horizon, Vol. XII, No. 68). Described as a “comedy”, the play should
be assumed to offer an ^ironic interpretation of contemporary life. Nevertheless, one
must be equally alive to its didactic undertones: “to work out your salvation with
diligence”, as suggested to Edward and Lavinia by the divine investigator, Sir Henry
Harcourt Reilly (T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays of T.S. Eliot, 411). It is he
who prescribes cures to his visiting patients, and thus provides to them their moments of
obligatory choice. The cure, lie suggests, is, however, a cure within society. As he
explains to lid ward and Lavinia:
And now you begin to see, I hope
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How much have you in common. The same isolation. A man who finds himself incapable of loving And a woman who finds that no man can love her (Ibid., 410) Sir Harcourt Reilly plays a significant role in resolving complex tangles. It is ho
who brings the couple—Edward and Lavinia—to knowledge of themselves and their
situation- It is he, again, who helps the process of reconciliation. Edward abides by his
advice and says:
Lavinia, we must make the best of a bad job. That is what he means (Ibid., 412 )
Miss Cclia Coplestone’s case is, however, different. She wants to be cured of
“emptiness and failure” towards someone, “outside herself”. Reilly offers her the choice
of a normal life, or alternately, that of choosing faith—“the kind of faith that issues from
despair”. This second choice involves sacrifices, and leads towards a tedious journey. As
Reilly explains:
The second is unknown, and so requires faith The kind of faith that issues from despair. The destination cannot be described; You Know very little until you get there; You will journey blind (Ibid., 418) Celia, unlike Edward and Lavinia, chooses the way of atonement in place of
reconciliation. Her choice is dictated by her realization that life for her can never be the
same again. Her immediate reaction is to withdraw from it .in pursuit of something
higher—“an occupation of the saint”. If she is made to die under horrible conditions in
the play, the reason lies in Eliot’s /desire to bring home to the audience, not only the
implications of Celia’s choice, but also the sense of urgency underlying it. The Cocktail
Party, in this sense, reveals an under-pattern, which runs parallel to the surface pattern of
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the play's action. It is a pattern analogous to that of his earlier plays. Its particular
significance lies in the fact that it derives its existence from the spiritual content of the
play. It leads, therefore, to the creation of a dramatic level that appeal only to the
conscientious section of the audience. In this context, the choice of Celia is essentially the
same as that of Becket, the martyr in Murder in the Cathedral, and the same as that of
Harry, the expiator of the ancestral guilt in The Family Reunion.
According to W.K. Wimsatt, Jr., The Cocktail Party acts at three levels: “literal,
moral and anagogical.” The literal level is constituted by the purely contemporary set-
ling and situation of the play. Being a comedy, it deals with man in society and not with
man in isolation. The play presents the story of commonplace persons who try to discover
the way they are expected to live with their fellow citizens. Their interests as well as
problems are ordinary experience. They are shown acting and reacting to each other's
attitudes, which, literally speaking, are too familiar to need any comment from the
audience. Out of the four suffering characters two are females, but all of them have been
so poised as to face a challenge from an opposite of his or her own sex. Thus, Edward
and Lavinia constitute the first pair; Celia and Peter make the second. Sir Harcourt Reilly
plays the role of an .intermediary, and serves as, the consulting psychiatrist. It is through
him that the play sustains its interest at the spiritual level.
At the moral level, The Cocktail Party may best be described as a “comical
morality” (Ibid., 422). In Murder in the Cathedral Eliot combined the conventions of
Morality with those of Tragedy and the Chorus. In The Family Reunion, he interfused
tragic choric poetry and a contemporary setting: Argos and England. The Cocktail Party
also displays a similar feature. The didactic note is present everywhere. The kind of
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human relationship, which the dramatist has depicted, is nowhere satisfactory in .itself. It
is strange that those, who feel they love, cannot marry, while those, who are married,
simply reconcile. The dilemma each has to face has been made permanent.
The discovery of what, one really wants means discovering what one really ‘is’.
The play is, in this context, suggestive of various choices, but in their final analysis, it
implies only a Hobson’s choice—chooses to be you, or choose not to be. If Edward
accepts to be loved, he may become loving. Similarly, if Lavinia tries to love, she may
become lovable.
At the anagogical level, the mystery underlying The Cocktail Party is deeper,
even more serious. It is the shock of realizing the hard fact that his wife has left him,
which completely upsets Edward and his plans. He is no more the same man. He is only
“an object”, a “broken cup”, or, a “stalled engine”. His plight is best narrated by the un-
identified guest who remarks:
You no longer feel quite human You're suddenly reduced to the status of an object A living object, but no longer a person (Ibid., 362)
Edward himself is aware of his own “Prufroekian” state of mind, as he confesses
before Celia: “I don’t know what has happened or what is going to happen; / And to try to
understand it, I want to be alone (Ibid., 374). However, the most characteristic version of
Edward’s soul-in-agony is offered by Reilly who states:
The centre of reality. But stretched on the table, You are a piece of furniture in a repair shop For those who surround you, the masked actors (Ibid., 362)
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These statements have their dramatic significance in the scheme of the play.
Being precise statements of life under certain conditions, they are bound to leave a
desirable impact on the audience. Not only do they depict the spiritual agonies of
Edward, but also indicate the conditions under which spiritual repair is possible. Even it’
Reilly is not expected to do wonder, still, as a “masked actor”, he is a kind of spiritual
surgeon. Naturally he has to go for repairs, whenever such repair is needed. In this
capacity, his relation with the other spiritually-sick patients, Edward no exception,
parallels those of God with man. As to the conditions of this repair, Reilly’s observations
are revealing: “Only by acceptance / Of the past will you alter its meaning” (439).
Reilly’s ritual identity is suggested by his continuous drinking of gin with drops
of water. Besides this, the playwright presents him as a modern counterpart to Heracles in
Euripides’ play, the ‘Alcestis’. It is through him that he projects the role of divine agency
in the sequence of spiritual renewal of man. It is in this way that Eliot exploits the
mythical source to integrate the various levels of his meaning in The Cocktail Party.
Underneath the ordinary problems of life lies the same theme of spiritual awareness, as
he develops in his ritual plays. :
Sir Henry Harcourt Reilly has many functions to perform. He acts as an
Unidentified guest, experienced' psychiatrist, divine investigator, and spiritual surgeon.
But the most significant part of his character in The Cocktail Party is the way he becomes
the symbol of the divine presence. He attends to the visiting patients, and does not
hesitate to recommend prescriptions. The nature of remedies, he suggests, is, perhaps, an
outstanding feature of Eliot’s thematic plan in this play, since these remedies always
signify a sense of religious recognition on the terms of Christianity. For example, the
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Chamberlaynes in The Cocktail Party accept reconciliation, indicating thereby the
significance of the affirmative way of Christian marriage. Again, Celia's option for
atonement can be better understood in the light of the Doctrine of Christian-sainthood.
Similarly, the concept of choice between ‘destiny’ and ‘freedom,’ which the theme of
The Cocktail Party phases, is another example of Eliot's concern for offering Christian
solutions to the general problems of contemporary life. This concept implies that a choice
is free for the Christian, but a wrong choice brings penalty - - a state of death-in-life. The
right choice, on the other hand, is always fruitful; it leads to reward -- the reward of
spiritual illumination. As Julia remarks:
Everyone makes a choice, of one kind or another; And then must take the consequences. Celia chose A way of which the consequence was Kinkanja. Peter chose a way that leads him to Boltwell :
...... And now the consequence of the Chamber laynes’ choice Is a cocktail party (Ibid., 439). One can rightly contend that the complex of analogies, which Eliot has
manipulated in the structure of The Cocktail Party, leaves the audience in a state of
confusion rather than in “a condition of serenity reconciliation”, an ideal which he has
been advocating long ( T.S. Eliot, On Poetry and Poets, 87). The major defect of the play
is its failure to separate one level of meaning from the other. Despite many improvements
that 'The Cocktail Party' shows, as compared to former counterpart, The Family Reunion,
it suitors from the same defect of ambiguity.
Nevertheless, the remarkable achievement of The Cocktail Party lies in its
transparent poetry. Eliot comments that it is perhaps an open question whether there is
any poetry in the play at all. The play may be said have broken almost completely with
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the conventional mood of poetry. It is the poetry of speech, which the dramatist had been
advocating for the quarter of a century. The verse of The Cocktail Party has metrics at
once pulsating, possesses rhythms, delicately dancing. It is a spoken verse, and yet it
also has the flexibility to become an instrument precise feeling. It is simple, but never
conscious. It may be revealing that towards the end of the play, Eliot also seems
conscious of his achievement, since Reilly questions. “Do you mind if I quote poetry?”
After getting an answer in the affirmative from Lavinia and Edward, he quotes the
Zoroaster lines from Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound (T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems
and plays of T.S. Eliot, 436-37). Eliot’s recourse to this device pin-points his intention
illustrate to the audience the unmistakable difference between the traditional poetry, on
the one hand, and his transparent poetry, on the other. According to Raymond Williams,
the verse of The Cocktail Party is conscious, lucid statement with a generality, which is
quite unlike the normal verse of The Family Reunion. It is verse of the “surface” but not
“superficial” (Raymond William. Drama from Ibsen to Brecht, 190). Here is Edward’s
speech, which illustrates this point:
I see that my life was determined long ago And that the struggle to escape from it Is only a make-believe, a pretence That what is, is-not, or could be changed (T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays of T.S. Eliot, 381)
In our final analysis, it may be stated that The Cocktail Party is a great step
forward in Eliot’s endeavors to revive the drama. Despite its lapses, it is a remarkable
success. It is in this play that he integrates tragedy and comedy. He interfuses speech
and-poetry in such a manner that poetry, while retaining its essential character, sounds
like speech. He takes the audience right into the rites, and yet, does not obstruct the
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action: He elicits an under-pattern of the plot, uses myth for the purpose of extracting
religious recognition on the terms of Christianity, but does not give in any way the
impression of preaching Christianity. Eliot’s next play The Confidential Clerk appeared
in 1953. Unlike its earlier counterpart, The Cocktail Party, it is a man’s play rather than a
woman’s play. Having given already to the lovers of-the drama a pageant, a tragicomedy,
a melodrama, and a comedy, Eliot converts The Confidential Clerk into a farce.
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