Murder in the Cathedral
An Analysis of Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral
Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral is certainly a uniquely dramatic work. Eliot (1951) has written his own intention concerning its style: "As for the versification, I was only aware at this stage that the essential was to avoid any echo of Shakespeare…Therefore what I kept in mind was the versification of Everyman" (p. 27). Everyman, a medieval morality play that likely influenced the Bard, is (like Murder) directly religious and unabashedly direct. Yet Everyman was written for a Christian audience at a time when Christendom had not yet quite come completely undone. Eliot's poetic drama, coming four full centuries later, hardly has the self-same audience (even if it was penned for a religious festival). Eliot's audience, whether Christian or not, is modern: and Eliot's...
And even though he attempts (in style) to distance himself from Shakespeare, he still has more in common with the Bard than with Osborne or Shaw. The latter carry a certain sense of cynicism that Eliot has none of. The author of The Waste Land is a collector of ancient literary scraps and cultural artifacts, attempting to salvage what he can and make sense of the fragments. The author of Cathedral is a man who has found faith (Eliot converted to the Church of England after his migration from America) and is attempting to make sense of it in the modern world.
Murder in the Cathedral, therefore, is a work that is at once both medieval and modern -- a point that makes it unique among all dramatic works of the 20th century. Yet, unlike Hamlet (who also has one foot in the medieval world and one foot in the…
