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,
Murder in the Cathedral Harvard University, Eliot criticised 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". In Series 3, episode 2 (1972), "Monty Python's Flying Circus" used the play as the basis for the weight loss product informercial, Trim-Jeans Theater: In 1982, the play was lampooned by the Canadian/US TV comedy show "SCTV." In a typically surreal SCTV sketch, the play is presented by NASA and "Buzz Aldrin's Mercury