The Work
T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral was commissioned for the Canterbury Festival of 1935 and premiered in the Chapter House of Canterbury Cathedral on June 15, 1935, directed by E. Martin Browne. The play dramatizes the murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, by four knights of Henry II on December 29, 1170, in the north transept of Canterbury Cathedral. Eliot had been commissioned to write a play on a religious subject for a Christian audience, and he chose the Becket martyrdom as a subject that would allow him to explore the theological distinction between true and false martyrdom - between the act of dying for God and the act of dying for oneself dressed up as dying for God.
The play is in two parts: Part I covers the weeks before Becket's return to England from his seven-year exile in France, during which he is tempted by four Tempters who offer him successively sensual pleasure, political power, alliance with the barons, and - most dangerously - the temptation of spiritual pride (the temptation to become a martyr for the wrong reason). Part II covers the events of December 29, 1170, from Becket's Christmas sermon through the murder itself. Between the two parts is Becket's Christmas sermon, which is athe theological heart of the play. The play concludes with the knights addressing the audience directly in modern prose, justifying their actions with arguments drawn from twentieth-century bureaucratic rationalism.
Biblical Engagement
Colossians 1:24 ('Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church') is the Pauline text that most directly underlies the play's theology of martyrdom. Eliot's Becket understands his suffering not as a private spiritual achievement but as participation in the ongoing suffering of Christ in his church. The martyrdom is not something Becket does for God but something God does through Becket - a distinction that is the play's central theological argument.
Isaiah 52-53 (the Fourth Servant Song) is the Old Testament background for the play's understanding of innocent suffering that redeems. The Servant of Isaiah 53 - 'despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief' - is the figure who 'was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed' (Isaiah 53:5). Becket's death participates in this pattern: not simply a political casualty but a redemptive suffering that purges the cathedral and the church.
Matthew 10:39 ('He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it') is the paradox of martyrdom that the play's fourth tempter uses as a trap and that Becket must escape. The fourth tempter - the most dangerous - offers Becket the temptation of willing his own martyrdom for the sake of the spiritual glory it will bring him. He quotes exactly the language of Christian martyrology back to Becket: 'What earthly glory, of king or emperor, / What earthly pride, that is not thrown down? / Pride by sin was Lucifer thrown down. / King is forgotten, when another shall come: / Saint and Martyr rule from the tomb.' The temptation is to will martyrdom as a spiritual achievement rather than to accept it as a divine calling.
Becket's response - 'The last temptation is the greatest treason: / To do the right deed for the wrong reason' - is the play's most quoted line and its most important theological statement. It captures the Augustinian distinction between actus and intentio: the same external act (dying for faith) can be either genuine martyrdom or spiritual pride depending on the will of the person who performs it. This distinction draws on the tradition of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and the casuistic tradition of moral theology that Eliot had absorbed through his Anglo-Catholic formation.
Author and Context
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) wrote Murder in the Cathedral eight years after his confirmation in the Church of England, at a point when his Christian commitment had had time to deepen and become intellectually sophisticated. His choice of verse - the play is almost entirely in verse, varying from alliterative Anglo-Saxon rhythms to the rhyming couplets of the Chorus to the spare prose of the knights' apologia - reflects his conviction that theater had been impoverished by the abandonment of verse and that the combination of the liturgical and the dramatic that verse enabled was essential for religious theater.
E. Martin Browne, who directed the premiere and all subsequent major productions, became Eliot's primary collaborator in religious theater; their partnership continued through The Cocktail Party (1949) and Eliot's other plays. The choice of the Chapter House at Canterbury for the premiere - a setting that placed the audience in the same architectural space as medieval pilgrims - was itself a theological act: it collapsed the distance between the medieval martyrdom and the contemporary audience.
The play was written in the shadow of rising fascism in Germany and the threat of totalitarian politics in Europe. Eliot's portrait of the knights - who justify their murder of Becket in the idiom of modern bureaucratic rationalism - was immediately recognized as a comment on the language of political violence that was becoming familiar in contemporary Europe. The play's argument that genuine authority (Becket's) is spiritual rather than political, and that the political power that murders it (Henry's, represented by the knights) cannot ultimately destroy it, was a theological intervention in the political crisis of 1935.
Structure
The play's structure is liturgical as well as dramatic. The Chorus of the Women of Canterbury - who do not act but suffer, witness, and lament - functions like the chorus of Greek tragedy but is also a figure of the church as the community that endures, is purged by the suffering of its leaders, and ultimately gives praise. Their long choral odes are among the finest verse in the play and the most demanding: they range from visceral descriptions of physical decay to meditations on the cosmic significance of Becket's death.
Becket's Christmas sermon - delivered between Parts I and II - is Eliot's most sustained piece of theological prose in dramatic form. Becket preaches on the paradox of the Christmas liturgy: that the church celebrates the birth of Christ and simultaneously commemorates the feast of St. Stephen (December 26), the first martyr. He argues that martyrdom is not something human beings seek but something divine grace brings about, and that the Christian martyr is not a heroic figure but an obedient instrument. This sermon is the key to the play's theological argument.
Critical Reception
The play was an immediate critical success and rapidly became the most performed religious play in the English-speaking world. It was produced in London's West End in 1935, filmed in 1951 (directed by George Hoellering, with Eliot supervising), and has been performed continuously in churches, theaters, and cathedrals since its premiere. It established the possibility of serious Christian theater in the twentieth century and inspired a generation of religious dramatists, including Christopher Fry (The Lady's Not for Burning) and Dorothy L. Sayers (The Man Born to Be King).
Theological Significance
The play's theological significance lies in its dramatization of the distinction between genuine and false martyrdom - between obedient surrender to God's will and willful self-destruction motivated by spiritual pride. This distinction is difficult to dramatize because it is entirely interior: the same action (dying for faith) can have two completely different theological meanings depending on the will of the person performing it. Eliot's genius is to make this interior distinction externally visible through the structure of the temptations.
Legacy
The play is widely regarded as the finest religious drama in English since the medieval mystery plays, and it remains a touchstone for Christian theater practitioners worldwide. Its influence on subsequent religious drama in England has been comparable to T.S. Eliot's influence on modernist poetry: it established a standard of theological seriousness and formal ambition that subsequent practitioners have worked toward and against.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should work with Matthew 10:32-42 (confessing Christ and losing life), Colossians 1:24-29 (filling up Christ's sufferings), Isaiah 52:13-53:12 (the Suffering Servant), John 10:11-18 (the Good Shepherd laying down his life), Acts 6:8-7:60 (Stephen's martyrdom - the first and paradigmatic Christian martyrdom), and Revelation 12:11 (overcoming by the blood of the Lamb and the word of testimony).
Further Reading
- E. Martin Browne, The Making of T.S. Eliot's Plays (1969) - the definitive account of the play's composition and production by Eliot's primary collaborator. - Carol Smith, T.S. Eliot's Dramatic Theory and Practice (1963) - the most comprehensive study of Eliot's work as a playwright. - Robert Speaight, The Christian Theatre (1960) - essential context for the revival of religious drama in which Murder in the Cathedral was the central event.