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.