Murder in the Cathedral

T.S. Eliot is most often mentioned, to the extent that he is mentioned, in relation to his poem “The Waste Land.” Academics and aesthetes may have read “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and film buffs might know “The Hollow Men” from Apocalypse Now (Redux), which features a portion of Eliot’s poem. Although Eliot's 1965 New York Times obituary identified the final four lines of that poem as "probably the most quoted lines of any 20th-century poet writing in English” I, born in 1973, am skeptical that lines from any poet of any century are quoted by anyone ever. But did you know that Eliot also wrote plays?

I think I could make a case for one of them, Murder in the Cathedral, as worthy of mention. If for no other reason, Eliot’s play feels quite contemporary, as it provides a poetic rendition of the modern construct known as cancellation. The play is about the 12th century murder of Thomas Becket Archbishop of Canterbury at the behest of King Henry II. In modern parlance, it could be summarized as the ultimate takedown of a powerful man who refused to bow to the political orthodoxy of his day. The play offers relevant musings.

“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.”

These lines rather sum up a certain political environment. If you are not familiar with the term “malversation,” I humbly implore you to employ a dictionary to rectify the situation. The word will come in handy. On the subject of looking things up, I cannot help but think of pedagogical trends when I read the following:

“We do not know very much of the future

Except that from generation to generation

The same things happen again and again.

Men learn little from others’ experience.”

My favorite line in the play:

“What peace can be found to grow between the hammer and the anvil?”

What peace, indeed, and how strangely apt today.