Murder in the Cathedral
Murder in the Cathedral is a verse drama by T. S. Eliot, first performed in 1935 (published the same year). The play portrays the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral during the reign of Henry II in 1170. Eliot drew heavily on the writing of Edward Grim, a clerk who was an eyewitness to the event.[1]
For the films, see Murder in the Cathedral (1951 film), Murder in the Cathedral (1962 film), and Murder in the Cathedral (2020 film).Some material that the producer asked Eliot to remove or replace during the writing was transformed into the poem "Burnt Norton".[2]
Criticism by Eliot[edit]
In 1951, in the first Theodore Spencer Memorial Lecture at Harvard University, Eliot criticised his own plays in the second half of the lecture, explicitly the plays Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party. The lecture was published as Poetry and Drama and later included in Eliot's 1957 collection On Poetry and Poets.