Murder in Cathedral

                       Author of the drama:

Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 1888 – 4 January 1965) was a British essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic, and "one of the twentieth century's major poets".He moved from his native United States to England in 1914 at the age of 25, settling, working, and marrying there. He was eventually naturalised as a British Subject in 1927 at the age of 39, renouncing his American citizenship.

                           Plot Overview

The women of Canterbury are drawn to the cathedral, knowing instinctively that they are drawn there by danger. There is no safety anywhere, but they have to bear witness. Archbishop Thomas Becket has been gone seven years. He had always been kind to his people, but he should not return. During the periods when the king and the barons ruled alternately, the poor had suffered all kinds of oppression. Like common people everywhere, the women had tried to keep their households in order and to escape the notice of the various rulers. Now they could only wait and witness.

The priests of the cathedral are well aware of the coming struggle for power. The archbishop has been intriguing in France, where he has enlisted the aid of the pope. Henry of Anjou is a stubborn king, however. The priests know that the strong rule by force, the weak by caprice. The only law is that of seizing power and holding it.

A herald announces that the archbishop is nearing the city and that they are to prepare at once for his coming. Anxiously, they ask whether there will be peace or war, whether the archbishop and the king have been reconciled or not. The herald is of the opinion that there had been only a hasty compromise. He does not know that when the archbishop had parted from the king, the prelate had said that King Henry would not see him again in this life.

After the herald leaves, one priest expresses the pessimism felt by all. When Thomas Becket was chancellor and in temporal power, courtiers flattered and fawned over him, but even then he had felt insecure. Either the king should have been stronger or Thomas weaker. For a time, the priests are hopeful that when Thomas returns he will lead them. The women think the archbishop should return to France. He would remain their spiritual leader, but in France he would be safe. As the priests start to drive out the women, the archbishop arrives and asks them to remain. Thomas Becket tells his priests of the difficulties he has encountered, and that rebellious bishops and the barons had sworn to have his head. They sent spies to him and intercepted his letters. At Sandwich, he had barely escaped with his life.

The first tempter arrives to talk with Thomas. When he was chancellor, Thomas had known worldly pleasure and worldly success. Many had been his friends, and at that time he knew how to let friendship dictate over principles. To escape his present hard fate, he needs only to relax his severity and dignity, to be friendly, and to overlook disagreeable principles. Thomas has the strength to give the tempter a strong refusal.

The second tempter reminds Thomas of his temporal power as chancellor. He could be chancellor again and have lasting power. It is well known that the king only commands, whereas the chancellor rules. Power is an attribute of the present; holiness is more useful after death. Real power has to be purchased by wise submission, and his present spiritual authority leads only to death. Thomas asks about rebellious bishops whom he had excommunicated and barons whose privileges he had curtailed. The tempter is confident that these dissidents will come to heel if Thomas were chancellor with the king’s power behind him. Again, Thomas has the strength to say no.

The third tempter is even easier to deal with. He represents a clique intent on overthrowing the throne. If Thomas will lead them, they can make the power of the Church supreme. No more will the barons as well as the bishops be ruled by a king. Thomas declines the offer to lead the malcontents.

The fourth tempter is unexpected. He shows Thomas how he can have eternal glory. As plain archbishop, the time will come when men will neither respect nor hate him; he will become a fact of history. So it is with temporal power, too: King succeeds king as the wheel of time turns. Shrines are pillaged and thrones totter. If, however, Thomas continues in his present course, he will become a martyr and a saint, to dwell forevermore in the presence of God. The archbishop faces a dilemma. No matter whether he acts or suffers, he will sin against his religion.
Early on Christmas morning, Thomas preaches a sermon on peace, saying that Christ left people his peace but not peace as the world thinks of it. Spiritual peace does not necessarily mean political peace between England and other countries or between the barons and the king.

After Christmas, four knights come to Canterbury on urgent business. Refusing all hospitality, they begin to cite charges against Thomas, saying that he owes all his influence to the king, that he has been ignobly born, and that his eminence is due solely to King Henry’s favor. The knights try to attack Thomas, but the priests and attendants interpose themselves.

The charges are publicly amplified. Thomas had gone to France to stir up trouble in the dominion and to intrigue with the king of France and the pope. In his charity, King Henry had permitted Thomas to return to his see, but Thomas had repaid that charity by excommunicating the bishops who had crowned the young prince; hence the legality of the coronation is in doubt. The knights then pronounce his sentence: He and his retinue must leave English soil.

Thomas answers firmly. In France he had been a beggar of foreign charity; he would never leave England again. He had no dislike for the prince; rather, he had only carried out the pope’s orders in excommunicating the bishops. These words availed little. In the cathedral proper, the knights fall on Thomas Becket and slay him.

The knights justify the slaying. It may have looked like four against one, an offense against the English belief in fair play, but before deciding, the people should know the whole story. First, the four knights would not benefit from the murder, for the king, for reasons of state, would deplore the incident, and the knights would be banished.

Second, the king had hoped, in elevating Thomas to the archbishopric, to unite temporal and spiritual rule and to bring order to a troubled kingdom; but as soon as Thomas was elevated, he had become more priestly than the priests and refused to follow the king’s orders. Third, he had become an egotistical madman. There is evidence that before leaving France he had clearly prophesied his death in England and he had been determined to suffer a martyr’s fate. In the face of this provocation, the people must conclude that Thomas had committed suicide while of unsound mind. After the knights leave, the priests and populace mourn. Their only solace is that so long as people will die for faith, the Church will be supreme.

                            Themes of the drama:

Martyrdom

One of the most explicit philosophies Eliot explores is what constitutes a true Christian martyr. As Thomas explains in his Interlude sermon, a martyr is not merely one who dies for God, but rather one who allows himself to be "the instrument of God" (199). He argues that a martyr is not made by accident, but rather by God's will. Thomas's journey in Part I is marked by his acceptance that he wants to seek martyrdom for the sake of his pride and worldly glory, and his subsequent willingness to rid himself of those desires and to die solely for God's cause. Further, the play explores martyrdom in terms of how it impacts the true believers who come afterward. The chorus must come to terms with the fact that a martyr's death saddles them with a burden to validate the sacrifice through their own lives. In many ways, a true martyr must die as Christ did – because God wills it – and those Christians who follow are expected to subsume their own lives in service of God for that reason.

                           Time

The question of time runs throughout the entire play and informs the theology behind Thomas's recognition of his role as a martyr. Time is presented as an earthly, human concern in the play. Time leads humans to think of events in terms of cause and effect, and to therefore make decisions on the basis of efficiency and outcome. However, to consider anything from this perspective allows a person to justify his actions, so that the distinction between good and evil is blurred. Thomas considers that his decision – to willingly submit himself to be an instrument of God's will – is a decision made outside of time. It is not made for its effect, and in fact cannot be understood by any human, since no human can understand God. Thomas suggests that from God's perspective, the limitations of time do not apply. The play proposes that humans are tormented by the difficulties and complications that time puts upon us, whereas ridding ourselves of our personalities in order to be God's instruments allows us to transcend those limitations.

                         The wheel

"The wheel" was a common image in medieval theology and helps us to understand the ideas at work in [Murder in the Cathedral]. Associated primarily with the medieval thinker Boethius, the wheel image posits that God sits at the center of a large wheel, and hence understands the system behind its rotations. Humans, who live at various places along the edge of the wheel, are confounded by those rotations and cannot glimpse the order behind them. Thus, serenity comes in accepting that we can never understand the workings of the universe and should instead endeavor to transcend our humanity so as to deserve God's protection after death.
Thomas enters the play prepared to seek martyrdom for earthly reasons, but learns that he must simply submit himself to God's control. In effect, he has to rid himself of his earthly ambitions because they are necessarily flawed. Those ambitions cannot possibly take the universe into account. One of the lessons Thomas learns – and which he teaches the Chorus through his example – is that our lives of suffering and difficulty are illusions that we overvalue. We can never understand them, and so we should not dwell on them. Instead, we should focus on pleasing God, in faith that he knows why and how the wheel turns, and will reward us for our faith in a way we could never reward ourselves because of our limited perspectives.

                            Politics

liot aimed to craft a play built around ritual rather than around human psychology, and yet the story of Thomas Becket is too heavily political to support a solely theological framework. Politics are present throughout the play, from the exposition given by the priests before Becket arrives to the arguments the knights make to Thomas and directly to the audience. To some extent, these political elements are there to round out the story, to give an informed audience its expected details. However, the political arguments also represent the aspect of Thomas's personality that he must overcome in order to be worthy of true martyrdom. By acknowledging Thomas's political nature and past, Eliot endows him with a palpable quality that the audience will see him overcome. He wishes to be God's instrument, and so refuses to concern himself with political questions. Interestingly, Thomas cannot help himself from engaging in some political banter with the knights in Part II, which suggests that no person can ever fully rid himself of his personality; he can only endeavor to do so up to the limits of his humanity.

In terms of the chorus, the complicated politics stand in stark contrast to the reality of their everyday lives. They are interested in political issues only insofar as they complicate the suffering of their daily toil. By emphasizing the chorus so strongly in the midst of such a political story, Eliot implicitly suggests that the nuances of politics are less valuable and spiritual than the community of Christians who attempt to please God through their simple, everyday lives.

                        Suffering

"Suffering" in the play has two meanings. In its most common usage, suffering means "to undergo pain or distress." The horrific imagery of the chorus's speeches, as well as the detail they give about their daily toil, stresses how much suffering they undergo. Because of this suffering, they wish mostly be left alone. Eliot's ultimate message, of course, is that for true spiritual fulfillment, we must not simply retreat into our earthly suffering, but rather overcome it and devote ourselves to serving as God's instruments. However, the extent to which he presents extreme suffering as a fact of life certainly informs the play's messages.
"Suffering" is also manifest through the dichotomy Thomas presents between "action" and "suffering." In this context, suffering is best defined in terms of patience and waiting. From this definition, the theme is less about overcoming physical distress and more about remaining patient in the face of worldly events that we cannot understand. Thomas suggests that some people act to change their fates, while some simply wait to see what happens. His perfect middle road is an active patience, an active choice to be submissive before God's will.