Murder in the Cathedral Murder in the Cathedral Murder in the Cathedral is a verse drama by T.S. Eliot, first performed in 1935, that portrays the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. Eliot drew heavily on the writing of Edward Grim, a clerk who was an eyewitness to the event. The play, dealing with an individual's opposition to authority, was written at the time of rising fascism in Central Europe. Some material that the producer asked Eliot to remove or replace during the writing was transformed into the poem "Burnt Norton". The action occurs between 2 and 29 December 1170,
The Cocktail Party the predominantly secular life of the community to continue. In 1951, in the first Theodore Spencer Memorial Lecture at Harvard University Eliot criticized his own plays in the second half of the lecture, explicitly the plays "Murder in the Cathedral", "The Family Reunion", and "The Cocktail Party". The lecture was published as "Poetry and Drama" and later included in Eliot's 1957 collection "On Poetry and Poets". Edward and Lavinia Chamberlayne are separated after five years of marriage. She leaves Edward just as they are about to host a cocktail party at their London home, and he has to come up