Critical Evaluation
T. S. Eliot, best known as one of the greatest English poets of the modern age, also produced several poetic dramas, of which The Confidential Clerk, first staged in Edinburgh in 1953, is perhaps the least known and appreciated. Eliot is reported to have said at a press conference after the play’s first stage production that “if one wanted to say something serious nowadays it was easier to say it in comedy”; this play can be considered both a serious tale conveyed comically and a high farce dramatized in serious tones. Certainly Eliot was inspired by Greek tragicomedies. The plot of The Confidential Clerk is based on Euripides’ In (c. 411 b.c.e.; Ion; 1781). With its lost children, searching parents, and mistaken identities, Eliot’s play also resembles the kind of comedy of manners made famous by Oscar Wilde. Despite the appearance of frivolity, however, a serious undertone is integrated into the pattern of events, and behind the farcical interchange of parents and children lies the spiritual revelation that all earthly relationships are swallowed up in one’s relation to God.
Eliot explored the worlds of spirituality and religion widely and deeply in all his writing. In this play, the central concept is Colby’s search for a way to integrate the outer world of action with the world of spiritual being, the two aspects of reality. He discovers, in the course of the play, that the path lies through the fulfillment of his true relationships to others, especially to his dead father (the failed musician Herbert Guzzard) and to God, and it is hinted that he may finally find his true vocation in the church. The other characters in the play find their spiritual peace in their own way. Eggerson, for example, finds physical and spiritual solace in retiring regularly to his “secret garden,” where he tends vegetables to bring back to his wife.
The play exists simultaneously at two levels: There is the comic, farcical world, in which long-lost relatives, parents, and children are revealed and reunited, and there is the world of spiritual discovery, in which self-knowledge is the goal. The play’s ultimate revelation is that the only way to unite the outer (public) and inner (private) worlds is through love and communion with another human being and/or with God. As in much of Eliot’s other work, especially the plays The Family Reunion (1939) and The Cocktail Party (1949), a choice is made between normal family life and a dedicated life that leads away from family, probably to God. Lucasta wisely discovers that though she feels an attraction to Colby, he does not really need another human being and that her family-oriented future lies with Kaghan and the Mulhammers. Sir Claude, who craves human closeness and desires Colby for a son, has to learn the hard lesson that he must let Colby go. Eliot emphasizes the need for people to try to understand each other’s needs and motivations. Even Lady Elizabeth, who despite her idiosyncratic nature is wiser at the end of the play, expresses the hope that she and Sir Claude may try to understand each other better “and perhaps that will help us to understand other people.”
Colby’s brief presence among them inspires these new attempts at understanding; his departure does not split the family but reinforces their newfound solidarity. This allows Eliot to end the play on a note of hope. Although Colby’s departure saddens the Mulhammers, it makes clear to them the need for self-knowledge and mutual understanding, which are the two prominent themes of The Confidential Clerk.
The play is structured...
(This entire section contains 889 words.)
See This Study Guide Now
Start your 48-hour free trial to unlock this study guide. You'll also get access to more than 30,000 additional guides and more than 350,000 Homework Help questions answered by our experts.
Already a member? Log in here.
in three acts: Act 1 introduces and explains, act 2 develops, and act 3 provides revelations and closure. A preliminary dialogue between Sir Claude and Eggerson clarifies the situation for the reader/audience, after which the rest of the characters are introduced slowly. Eliot carefully leads up to Lady Elizabeth’s entrance and then gives the actual moment dramatic flair: Sir Claude, Eggerson, and Lucasta have all talked about her and raised suspense about how she will react to Colby; her unexpected arrival quickly becomes a comic anticlimax when she declares that it was she who had interviewed and recommended Colby.
Act 2 begins with another exploratory dialogue, which, however, approaches the level of intensity associated with poetry. The poetry is not sustained in this play but appears in passages in which Eliot highlights religious and spiritual experience. At other moments, the tone is conversational, with only a touch of poetic language giving it elegance or depth at moments when the characters are expressing their innermost thoughts and feelings.
Act 3 unravels the mysteries and provides closure. In the course of the play, a sense of unity is established among the characters, each of whom seems equally important and involved in the play’s development. A weakness in the play may be that there is no compelling, central episode, no passage of heightened poetic beauty. Instead, Eliot’s message is in the design of the entire plot and in the relationships of all the characters to one another. Eliot is considered a writer of poetic drama, but The Confidential Clerk exists at the borders of prose, where the dramatist, instead of confining the focus to a single revelation, has concentrated on overall plot development and the experiences of an entire group.