A STUDY OF MODERN ENGLISH POETIC DRAMA

Synopsis of Murder in the Cathedral

The play, Murder in the Cathedral is a dramatic recreation of the killing of Thomas Becket – the Archbishop of Canterbury on 29 December, 1170, by men loyal to King Henry II, at the Cathedral of Centerburg. The play is an abstract of the story written in two parts.

Part 1 takes place in the Archbishop’s hall the very day he returns from exile from France following a truce championed by the Pope and the King of France. It begins with the chorus of Canterbury women expressing forebodings and misgivings about the Archbishop’s homecoming. The priests, three in number, equally express how they felt in those seven years the Archbishop passed away. They also talk about the recklessness of the government. In a moment, a messenger appears to announce the arrival of the Archbishop. As the second priest encounters the chorus for anticipating the death of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop appears and on learning the issue at stake, he tells them that he is willing to accept death than to surrender to the Crown.

This is followed by the appearance of the Four Tempters. The First Tempter promises the Archbishop of physical safety; the second promises him riches and power if he submits to the King; the Third Tempter wants him to join forces with the barons to fight the King, while the Fourth Tempter impresses on him to accept martyrdom.

Part 1 is closely followed by an interlude which is the Archbishop’s sermon on the morning of the Christmas day; the sermon is all about the idea of Christmas as a period of both rejoicing and mourning. It also examines the question of peace and martyrdom. He hints at the end of the sermon that he may soon follow the way of martyrs.

In Part II, which takes place on 29th December, 1170, the knights who claim to have been ordered by the King come to accuse the Archbishop of betraying the King. Becket is neither willing to accept their suggestion of absolving the suspended bishops nor to proceed on exile again. The Knights storm out angrily to arm themselves. The priests force the unyielding Archbishop into the Cathedral and barred the door but the adamant Becket compels them to unbar the door. The door is unbarred and the knights rush in, and after some verbal exchanges, kill the Archbishop. After the murder they tell the people that they killed the Archbishop for not being loyal to the state.

Study of Murder in the Cathedral

Murder in the Cathedral is a religions drama which draws its material from the killing of Thomas Becket – the Archbishop of Canterbury in December 1170 A.D. The play which was commissioned by George Bell, Bishop of Chichester for the Canterbury Festival of June 1935, was used by Eliot to highlight certain presumptions of Christianity and specifically the tortuous path a true Christian can walk for the sake of heavenly glory. The play centers on the antagonism between the crown and the church. In the text, we find the temporal power seeking to undermine the church in order to realise certain pragmatic political goals.

However, Archbishop Becket sees the world order as a cesspool of evils which the church ought to shun. He, therefore, advocates a complete sequestration of the church from worldly entanglements. For him, there is no compromise, it is either you are for the church, or for the state. His position is unmistakable; a friendship with the world is enmity with God. In fact, the Archbishop’s faith in a peaceful eternity endues him with enormous boldness and courage to dare the knights (assassins) for accusing him of treason and for wanting him to absolve the bishops who are on suspension, or to proceed on another exile. Instead of being deterred by the threats of the assassins, or by the priests’ appeal for safety or the forebodings of the chorus, Thomas who has experienced “a tremor of bliss, a wink of heaven” (Part 11, p. 76), tells the knights:

For my Lord I am now ready to die that his church may have peace and liberty

Do with me as you will, to your hurt and shame but none of my people in God’s name

Whether layman or clerk, shall you touch. This I forbid (Part II, p. 81).

The Archbishop is resolute in following the will of God. He has served as the Chancellor of the realm and understands what the lust of the flesh

entails. He is not prepared as a holy shepherd of the flock to condescend to be “living and partly living” likes the Canterbury women who “fear the injustice of men less than they fear the justice of God”. His acceptance to die instead of surrendering to the laws of man is an affirmation of the Christian faith; it is “the triumph of the Cross”.

The text, convincingly, conveys the idea of the ruggedness of the christian faith. It places two cards on the table, earthly life and eternity, but for the playwright, the choice is unmistakable. Becket is used in the play to demonstrate that a true christian is an exceptional man. In his article entitled, “Theatrical Ingenuity and Tact” (1965), Howarth posits that Murder in the Cathedral “examines the agon of one man, and presents his struggle and its difficult choice without concession to the fraity of our understanding.

Becket conquers the lust of the flesh symbolised by the First, Second and Third Tempters, but the Fourth Tempter’s suggestion that he follow the way of martyrdom is seen by Thomas Becket as “the greatest treason”. He remembers his years as the Chancellor of the realm; how he used power and was unwilling initially to “become servant of God”. Realising that as a man it is not easy to submit oneself to be killed, he prayed to his guardian angel to “hover over the swords’ points” (Part 1, p. 51). The problem posed by the fourth temptation constrains Howarth to note:

Becket’s resistance to the three of his tempters is clear, his victory over them perfectly clear. But his resistance to the Fourth Tempter involves a problem beyond the common experience, at any rate, beyond the common awareness: in what state of mind will he receive the death on which he has resolved?

This is the crux of the matter. It is not as if Becket really hates life, but as the one who holds “the pastoral commission”, he submits himself courageously to death in order to “teach his flock… how a Christian can die” (Gardner, p. 95). In this regard Becket is posited as a Christian attitude; a symbol of martyrdom, his submission to death is a token that christianity is not a bed of roses. One must be prepared to make the supreme sacrifice of even accepting to die for the sake of heavenly glory, if need be.

Apart from Christian values, the play has a political undertone. Maurice C. Bradbrook states that “Eliot has said that he wrote the play as a protest against totalitarianism in Europe and the final speeches of the Knights now bear only too familiar a sound”. In Murder in the Cathedral, Eliot’s voluble aristocrats are haunted by fear that their society is disintegrating” (Lawson). The issues of exploitation and oppression harped on by Becket in his last speech in part one of the play, forced, the people to grumble and to live in fear. In fact, as the chorus intones, the people are “living and partly living”. The Third Priest tells his colleagues, in part 1 that:

I see nothing quite conclusive in the art of temporal government But violence, duplicity and frequent malversation King rules or barons rule. The strong man strongly and the weak man by caprice They have but one law, to seize the power and keep it And the steadfast can manipulate the greed and lust of others The feeble is devoured by his own (Part I, p. 25).

The King is seeking or even compelling the Archbishop’s support because he sees danger hovering, violence looming in the sky. He urgently needs Beckett to give moral force to the temporal realm. The Knights epitomise the desperation of government to get the Archbishop by all means. According to the Fourth Knight:

While the late Archbishop was Chancellor, no one, under the King did more to weld the country together, to give it the unity, the stability, order, tranquility, and justice that it so badly needed.

In fact, one can argue that the recklessness of the Crown is symbolised by the killing of the Archbishop, even in the cathedral, in the full gaze of the people.

CONCLUSION

The article examines the essence of the effort to restore poetic drama to the English stage. It looks specifically at the purpose of poetic drama, traces the series of effort to revive the genre. It briefly examines the personality of T.S. Eliot whose Murder in the Cathedral gave fillip to the struggle to restore poetry in the theatre. Finally, the same text is analysed as the best example of the English modern poetic drama.