Eliot: Murder in the Cathedral

Murder in the Cathedral, written for the Canterbury Festival on 1935, was the first high point on T. S. Eliot's dramatic achievement. It remains one of the great plays of the century. Like Greek drama, its theme and form are rooted in religion and ritual purgation and renewal, and it was this return to the earliest sources of drama that brought poetry triumphantly back to the English stage. Though best known for his poetry, T.S. Eliot was also an accomplished playwright. Murder in the Cathedral is a beautiful, haunting poetic take on the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket in 1170. Becket sees his death coming, but embraces it. This strange duality – a martyr’s death as both tragic and glorious – serves as the basis for the action.