The Waste Land, for which he won the Dial Award, was published in 1922. In addition to his large body of poetry, Eliot wrote a number of 'verse' dramas including Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party.
Murder in the Cathedral.
With his best-known play, Murder in the Cathedral (1935), based on the murder of Thomas Becket, Eliot hoped to revive poetic drama. Commissioned for the 1935 Canterbury Festival, it is an effective combination of theater, liturgy, and verse.
Thomas Beckett was killed in 1170 in Canterbury cathedral. The play does not only recall the martyrdom of Thomas Becket. It shows he probably sinned, committed the sin of pride or vanity, though with the best intention: to establish the church as the supreme ruler. Yet this event is also the first fight between the English crown and the church, a fight that will culminate under Henry VIII with the creation of the Church of England.
The short play has two scenes, one about a month before the murder, when Beckett returned to Canterbury from the 7 years of exile in France, and the actual murder itself. As an interlude between them stands Beckett's Christmas Day sermon from that year, and the second scene also includes an interlude in which the four knights who killed Beckett plead their case to the audience. These interludes are in prose, and the rest of the play is verse.
Beckett is one of the more interesting characters from history. Rising from a lowly birth in the Cheapside section of London, largely thanks to the patronage of Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1154 he became both archdeacon of Canterbury and Henry's chancellor. Theobald expected him to defend the prerogatives of the Church, but instead he became fast friends with Henry, lived a sybaritic lifestyle, and extended the power of the State at the expense of the Church. So when Theobald was succeeded by Beckett, Henry expected to have a compliant ally running the Church, but instead Beckett adopted an ascetic lifestyle and became a fearsome defender of the rights of the Church.
