Murder in the Cathedral

Murder in the Cathedral is not a realist play but a meditation on the importance of doing the right thing, even if it means dying for it. Although set in the 12th century (1170) and concerning a...

T. S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral uses a chorus of women of Canterbury in a similar fashion to many of the plays of ancient Greece. Here the Chorus opens the play with a reflection on the...

Murder in the Cathedral tells the story of the events that led to the demise of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. The Archbishop is murdered in the cathedral by four knights in the last part...

Christianity is clearly at the very forefront of this play as Thomas in his position as Archbishop of Canterbury is forced to choose between devotion to God and his understanding of spirituality...

The three priests represents the institutional church wanting to protect its own. They also represent the church taking a worldly view of the events that are unfolding as Henry II moves against...

T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral represented a significant transition in the history of dramaturgy. Before Eliot wrote Murder in the Cathedral, it had been assumed that verse was somewhat...

The archbishop is silent after the fourth temptation because it really does tempt him. The fourth temptation is to do the right deed for the wrong reason. Becket knows he should stand firm against...

In Murder in the Cathedral Eliot does not exhibit a modernist approach in the manner of Genet, Beckett, Ionesco, and many other twentieth-century dramatists. Nor can he be said to deal with...

The chorus in Murder in the Cathedral functions like a chorus in a Greek drama, commenting on the play's unfolding action. The women who comprise the chorus voice the thoughts of the average...

The title Murder in the Cathedral is factual and straightforward: it describes what happened to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett, who opposed the will of King Henry II. He was murdered...

I would argue that Murder in the Cathedral doesn't so much concern the conflict between the individual and the state as that between an individual representing a higher social and moral principle...

T. S. Eliot’s play centers on the difference between spiritual and terrestrial responsibility. Thomas Becket has taken an oath to support the king, Henry II of England, who is the embodiment of...

Thomas Becket is the tragic hero in this play for two reasons. One, his friendship with Henry II, who supposedly made the comment, "Will anyone rid me of this priest?!" in the midst of his guards...

While Becket has honorable qualities and espouses his ambitions as being toward holiness only, his world view permitted competition against the ambitions of the King of England to be an element of...

Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot is a drama based on real-life assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. The play is derived from the eyewitness account provided by...

Murder in the Cathedral is about the Archbishop of Canterbury's moral struggle against Henry II. Henry has stripped him of the chancellorship of England because the archbishop has excommunicated...

Did Thomas Becket have a tragic flaw? In the classical sense, I suppose you could say that his flaw was pride. However, that pride manifested itself in obedience to the church and fulfilling his...

I believe this play's themes can be considered "modern," and that the play itself, then, can be considered a modern drama. If one looks at the play literally, there are still places in the world...

Hello! 'Murder In The Cathedral' highlights the controversial enmity between King Henry II and Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Becket's eventual murder at the hands of knights loyal to...

The historical events behind Eliot's verse drama pertain to an on-going quarrel between King Henry II--who is reported to have shouted, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"--and Thomas...

T.S. Eliot was first and foremost a poet, and in this 1935 play, commissioned by George Bell, the bishop of Chichester, to critique Nazi abuses of power, Eliot writes primarily in verse. In fact,...

Like much twentieth-century drama, Murder in the Cathedral was experimental in form. Eliot moved away from nineteenth-century prose drama by writing the play, with the exception of the Christmas...

It is very important to remember that Eliot wrote the play to be performed as part of the 1935 Canterbury Festival, and it was actually performed only a very short distance from the actual place...

The scene containing the knights' speech provides comic relief, and its function is to force the audience to think about the gravity of the situation. The knights and their justification of the...

The external conflict is between the temporal power represented by King Henry II and the spiritual power of the Church as represented by his former friend, Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of...

To use a well-worn phrase, I beg to differ with the previous answer. The conflict between Becket and Henry II had everything to do with conflict between church and state. When Henry maneuvered...

T. S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral is based on an actual historical event, the murder of Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury, on December 29, 1170, in Canterbury Cathedral, probably at...

The Tempters and the Knights have completely different roles in Murder in the Cathedral, although, depending on the individual production, they may well be played by the same actors. The Tempters...

Eliot sought to combine his poetic talent with the form of drama in this excellent and outstanding text. It is easy to see the massive influence that poetry has on this play, as there are only two...

One of the really interesting aspects of this play is the way in which history is shown to merge with the present in a very real and tangible way. The play was originally written for performance as...

T. S. Eliot's magnificent play, Murder in the Cathedral, deals with the last days of Thomas Becket following his return from exile in France in 1170. Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had spent...

In T. S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral, one reason Archbishop Thomas Becket is isolated is due to the fact that he went into exile in France for seven years. The second reason Becket is...

What is significant about the way in which Eliot uses history in this play is that he takes a historical event about which little is known and fleshes it out into a spiritual drama that...

Because it's written in verse. You might hear it called a poetic play, or indeed, a "verse drama": all that means is that the dialogue is patterned into a verse form. If you looked at a...

The political comparison that is clear from this play is the temptation of power and the battle that occurs when different parties believe that they have the most power and should be obeyed. This...

You will find it helpful in response to this question to analyse the function of the Chorus in Greek drama and compare it to how Eliot utilises the Chorus in this masterful example of modern drama....

Eliot wrote Murder in the Cathedral in the 1930s at the request of the Bishop of Chichester, who commissioned the play as a commentary on the situation in Nazi Germany. Many in the English and...

In Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot, martyrdom is related to the the theme of obedience and the internal warfare within man of flesh vs spirit. The historical Thomas Becket was a friend to...

The qualities that set Murder in the Cathedral apart from a typical realist drama of the 1930s are its use of a Greek chorus and its Medieval miracle play motif. Murder in the Cathedral is a...

In his play Murder in the Cathedral, T. S. Eliot makes use of the chorus found in Ancient Greek plays. In Ancient Greek plays, the chorus was a group of characters who "described and commented upon...

You would do well to view the Chorus in this excellent play as a continuation of the kind of Chorus that is found in ancient Greek plays. The Chorus functions as something of an intermediary or a...

T. S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral reflects his own religious beliefs, which are usually described as Anglo-Catholic. This means that he was a member of the Church of England (Anglican) but...

To answer this sort of multiple choice question about T. S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral, you should think through each of the possible choices carefully, and begin by eliminating the...

Murder in the Cathedral was commissioned by George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, to critique a particular historic event: Hitler's Rohm purge, also known as the Night of the Long Knives. In this...

In his play Murder in the Cathedral, T. S. Eliot includes a chorus, which is an element that he adapted from ancient Greek drama. In his play, which takes place in Canterbury, England, the chorus...

The chorus in Murder in the Cathedral functions in almost exactly the same way as a Greek Chorus: commenting on the deeds of the characters and interpreting the significance of events within the...