The Cocktail Party The Cocktail Party The Cocktail Party is a play by T. S. Eliot. Elements of the play are based on "Alcestis", by the Ancient Greek playwright Euripides. The play was the most popular of Eliot's seven plays in his lifetime, although his 1935 play, "Murder in the Cathedral", is better remembered today. It was written while Eliot was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1948. "The Cocktail Party" was first performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1949. In 1950 the play had successful runs in London and New York theaters (the Broadway production received the 1950
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