Murder in the Cathedral (1935)

Amazing poetry and performances. On the nature of ambition and opposition to authority. A perfect story for our times. I have access to six recordings of the performance (1938, 1953, 1968, 1976, 1983, 2003) and the version from 1953 with Robert Donat is the best IMO and critically acclaimed. I dipped into the others and they don't have the same gravity or are over-produced, though a wide variety of interpretive performances. The text is quite rich and the play rewards. ( )

Human kind cannot bear very much reality.

The structure of this play is gripping. The use of the chorus was very effective, whereas the depiction of a conflicted Becket in dialogue with his temptations could’ve been explored further. The absence of Henry II makes matters more human and inchoate. The state is thus shorn of personality. The debate of ideas and sacrifice reminded me of the debate surrounding Edward Snowden. Unfortunately I began to ponder and compare the fixed points of liberty and security and my attention drifted. ( )

Profound, beautiful, stays with you. ( )

England Reading
Nobel prize Lit.
TS Eliot born St. Louis — British subject — buried West Abbey
@ Arch of Canterbury murder 1170
a play — church + state — favor + not — good — so different from my regular choices
a London list book — trip upcoming

The Archbishop Thomas Becket speaks fatal words before he is martyred in T. S. Eliot's best-known drama, based on the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1170. Praised for its poetically masterful handling of issues of faith, politics, and the common good, T. S. Eliot's play bolstered his reputation as the most significant poet of his time.

Not quite Eliot's initial foray into verse drama - "Sweeney Agonistes" has that status - and perhaps his most memorable one.

Technically, it was unrepeatable, or at least, nobody, including Eliot, has tried to do so (its successors at Canterbury, by Sayers, Williams, Fry, et al. were far more conventional, as were Eliot's later plays). Eliot uses a chorus taken straight out of Greek drama, and marries it to a structure based tightly on that of the Western mass (down to an actual sermon at the sermon and a martyrdom at the point of the Eucharistic Sacrifice), followed by a Brechtian breaking of the fourth wall. The chorus lets Eliot use a more heightened poetic language than he could have gotten away with in its absence.

And it works. It continues to be performed, and works well in performance (one could say "the theatre", but it tends to be performed in churches). On the page, it is as effective as any drama is outside of performance.

A tour de force which, while it will never be part of the world's greatest drama, is easily a major work at the second rank. Considering that the first rank is Shakespeare, Sophocles, Racine, and so forth, this is still a major achievement. ( )