The Antiphon The University of Maryland. In 1954, once Barnes had completed writing the play, she sent it to T. S. Eliot at Faber & Faber, who had previously published "Nightwood" and with whom she had developed a strong friendship. Eliot was initially very uncertain of the play's merits, indeed in a letter responding to it he explained that he had struggled to fully comprehend it. Nonetheless, he enlisted the poet and critic Edwin Muir to read the manuscript, who claimed the play "a work of genius and utterly absurd." Muir did, however, suggest some editorial changes, especially to the first act,
T. S. Eliot a character who had appeared in a number of his poems. Although Eliot did not finish the play, he did publish two scenes from the piece. These scenes, titled "Fragment of a Prologue" (1926) and "Fragment of an Agon" (1927), were published together in 1932 as "Sweeney Agonistes". Although Eliot noted that this was not intended to be a one-act play, it is sometimes performed as one. A pageant play by Eliot called "The Rock" was performed in 1934 for the benefit of churches in the Diocese of London. Much of it was a collaborative effort; Eliot accepted credit only