Murder in the Cathedral (Plot Summary)
Part One
The action of Murder in the Cathedral occurs in and around Canterbury Cathedral; Part One takes place on December 2, 1170, the day that Archbishop Thomas Becket returned to England and twenty-seven days before his murder by four knights of King Henry II. When the play begins, a Chorus comprised of the Women of Canterbury huddle outside the cathedral, certain that something is about to happen but unable to articulate any details: “Some presage of an act / Which our eyes are compelled to witness, has forced our feet / Towards the cathedral.” They then describe their lives to the audience and these descriptions mark them as common people who fear any threat of change: “We try to keep our households in order,” they explain, but “Some malady is coming upon us.” Ultimately, they decide that “For us, the poor, there is no action, / But only to wait and witness.”
Three Priests enter and briefly discuss a major issue of the play: the differences between temporal (i.e., worldly) and spiritual power. The Third Priest claims that, “King rules or barons rule” and that politicians “have but one law, to seize the power and keep it.” The First Priest hopes that the Chorus has not become too jaded and hopes that they will realize that they have a “friend” in “their Father in God.” (Clearly, the populace and their religious leaders are living in spiritually trying times.)
A Messenger then arrives and informs them that their archbishop, Thomas Becket, is returning to England after a seven-year absence. Due to a feud with the King, in part over the degree to which the church would assert its power in the British government, Thomas has been exiled to foreign shores and has been seeking support for his ideas in Catholic France. The Priests’ reactions to this news varies: The First Priest comments on Thomas’s pride, which makes him “fear for the Archbishop” and “fear for the Church”; the Second Priest looks towards his superior’s return in the hope that “He will tell us what we are to do, he will give us our orders, instruct us”; the Third Priest dismisses the very act of predicting what will happen, for, as he says, “who knows the end of good or evil?” Instead, he thinks they must simply “let the wheel turn.”
The Chorus expresses its terror at the thought of Thomas’s return: although they have endured previous hardships, they are unprepared “To stand to the doom of the house, the doom on the Archbishop, the doom on the world.” They are merely “small folk drawn into the pattern of fate” and beg the still-absent Thomas to “leave us, leave us, leave sullen Dover and set sail for France.”
After the Chorus is scolded by the Second Priest for their “croaking like frogs,” Thomas enters, calling for “Peace” and telling the Priests that the Women of Canterbury “speak better than they know, and beyond your understanding.” He explains how he managed to arrive safely in Canterbury and remarks that “the hungry hawk” may still strike at any moment. However, he explains that “End will be simple, sudden, God-given” and that “All things prepare the event.” His faith in the divine will is thus asserted.
Thomas is then visited by four Tempters, symbolic characters who approach and attempt to lure Thomas away from his devotion to the Church. The First Tempter offers Thomas the glory of his past friendship with the King. The Second Tempter offers political power in the form of Thomas’s former position at Court: the Chancellorship. The Third Tempter tells him to “fight for liberty” and end “the tyrannous jurisdiction / Of king’s court over bishop’s court, / Of king’s court over baron’s court.” All three Tempters are easily dismissed by Thomas, who asks, “Shall I, who keep the keys / Of heaven and hell, supreme alone in England, / Who bind and loose, with power from the Pope, / Descend to desire a punier power?” Proclaiming that he “has good cause to trust none but God alone,” Thomas refutes all of their enticements with assertions of his faith in God’s will.
The Fourth Tempter, however, approaches Thomas from a different angle. Advising Thomas to “Fare forward to the end” and “think of glory after death,” this Tempter argues that “Saint and Martyr rule from the tomb” and that Thomas should “Think of pilgrims, standing in line / Before the glittering jeweled shrine.” Allowing himself to be martyred will, the Tempter promises, eventually see his enemies “in timeless torment.” Without martyrdom, Thomas will be only a footnote to future scholars who “Will only try to find the historical fact.” Unlike the first three Tempters, whose offerings are easily mocked and spurned by Thomas, this Tempter causes the Archbishop to experience a crisis of conscience: he asks, “Who are you, tempting me with my own desires?” and asserts that the Tempter offers only “Dreams to damnation” since the very act of courting one’s fame through martyrdom is an act of “sinful pride.”
After a short passage in which the three Priests and Chorus express their paranoia, fear of “a new terror” and the thought of being abandoned by God, Thomas announces his decision to remain in Canterbury. “Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain,” he begins, explaining that “The last temptation is the greatest treason: / To do the right thing for the wrong reason.” In other words, allowing himself to be martyred is the “right thing” to do — as long as he does not do so for “the wrong reason” — a desire for fame and retribution. Acknowledging to the Priests and Chorus that “What yet remains to show you of my history / Will seem to most of you at best futility, / Senseless self-slaughter of a lunatic, / Arrogant passion of a fanatic,” Thomas concludes, “I shall no longer act or suffer, to the sword’s end” and invokes his “good angel” to “hover over the swords’ points.” The Archbishop will allow himself to be martyred only if it is the will of God, for he will not act in order to hasten his own murder. His own pride must not seduce him into presuming that he can know the mind of God.
Interlude
This short scene depicts Thomas preaching in the cathedral on Christmas morning, 1170. In his sermon, Thomas explores the meaning of a number of paradoxes inherent in the celebration of Christmas, the first being that, since Christ died to redeem the sins of the world, “we celebrate at once the Birth of Our Lord and His Passion and Death upon the Cross.” A similar paradox is then explored in the meaning of the word “peace” as Christ used it when he said to his followers, “My peace I leave with you”; after describing the afflicted lives of the disciples (who suffered “torture, imprisonment, disappointment” and “martyrdom”) Thomas concludes that Christ’s peace is “not as the world gives” — in the form of, for example, an end to war — but as spiritual solace.
His final paradox lies in the nature of martyrdom: “we both rejoice and mourn at the death of martyrs,” he explains, for the “sins of the world” have killed an innocent person who will, nonetheless, be “numbered among the Saints in Heaven.” Thomas expands upon this idea by asking his listeners to remember that martyrdom “is never the design of man,” for “the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, and who no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of being a martyr.” Obviously considering his own possible martyrdom, Thomas’s definition both instructs his listeners and allows him to once again consider his possible fate. “I do not think I will ever preach to you again,” Thomas remarks in closing, noting that “in a short time you may have another martyr.”
Part Two
Four days have passed since Thomas’s sermon in the cathedral, but the Chorus is still fearful and awaiting a sign from God in the form of a cleansing Spring. As Part One saw the entrance of the four Tempters, this Part features four Knights, who enter the Archbishop’s Hall, telling the three Priests that they have “urgent business” from the King that they must share with Thomas. Impatient and anxious, the Knights bully the Priests until Thomas appears, remarking, “However certain our expectation, / The moment foreseen may be unexpected / When it arrives.” The Knights charge Thomas with being “in revolt against the King” since he “sowed strife abroad” and “reviled / The King to the King of France, to the Pope, / Raising up against him false opinions.”
After they level other charges and demand that he absolve those bishops that he had previously excommunicated, Thomas refuses, explaining, “It is not Becket who pronounces doom, / But the Law of Christ’s Church.” He exits and the Knights follow, leaving the Chorus to describe the odd harbingers of evil that they have recently witnessed in the natural world. Thomas reenters to comfort the Chorus, telling them that “These things had to come and you had to accept them.” The Priests, however, refuse such advice and drag Thomas into the cathedral while he protests, “all things / Proceed to a joyful consummation.”
The scene then shifts inside the cathedral, where the Priests are barring the doors while Thomas insists,’ I will not have the Church of Christ, / This sanctuary, turned into a fortress.” “The Church will protect her own,” he states, but the Priests argue that the Knights are “maddened beasts.” Thomas persists, however, and commands the Priests to open the door. The Knights enter (“slightly tipsy” as Eliot notes in the stage direction), searching for “Becket the faithless priest.” After refusing to recant any of his former convictions or renounce any of his former actions, Thomas prays: “Now to Almighty God . . . I commend my cause and that of the Church.” The Knights then begin to kill him, during which the Chorus laments the curse being placed on their land and their lives. After their cry of “Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind!” Thomas is finally dead.
It is at this moment that Eliot surprises everyone in the audience by having the four Knights directly address them: “We know that you may be disposed to judge unfavorably of our action,” the first Knight explains, adding, “Nevertheless, I appeal to your sense of honor. You are Englishmen, and therefore will not judge anybody without hearing both sides of the case.” The other three Knights then take turns justifying their actions, stressing the fact that they acted in a “perfectly disinterested” manner and that Thomas was not the “under dog” as he was presented in the play. Ultimately, they ask the audience to “render a verdict of Suicide while of Unsound Mind.” When they exit, the Priests discuss the murder’s meaning and eventually leave the Chorus to proclaim to God that “the blood of Thy martyrs and saints / Shall enrich the earth, shall create the holy places.” Finally, they beg forgiveness of God for doubting his “blessing” and petition their new Heavenly patron: “Blessed Thomas, pray for us.”
Characters
Thomas Becket
Thomas Becket is the Archbishop of Canterbury and hero of the play. When the play opens, the viewer learns that he has not been in England for the last seven years because of a power struggle with King Henry II, who wants the church to serve the state. His return from France provokes a variety of reactions from the Chorus, the Priests, and the four Knights who serve the King; as the play progresses, Thomas responds to a number of these reactions with the calm, measured voice of one who believes “there is higher than I or the King.”
Although he is repeatedly tempted away from his desire to lead his people and threatened with death by the four Knights, Thomas becomes convinced that only “The fool, fixed in his folly, may think / He can turn the wheel on which he turns” and places the question of whether or not he will be martyred into the hands of God. He accepts his martyrdom as part of a larger pattern that he, with his human limitations, cannot fully understand.
Richard Brito (Fourth Knight)
See The Four Knights
Chorus
Similar to those found in ancient Greek drama, the Chorus in Murder in the Cathedral serves as a mediator between the play and the audience. Composed of women of Canterbury, this group originally fears the unknown act that their “eyes are compelled to witness” and begs Thomas to return to France; they have accepted their common and often miserable lives (where “King rules or barons rule”) and do not wish to “stand on the doom” of their church. At the play’s conclusion, however, they have been enlightened to the fact that there is a higher power at work in the world other than that found in politics and they sing praises to the wisdom of God: “We thank thee for Thy mercies of blood, for Thy redemption by blood,” they proclaim, for “the blood of Thy martyrs and saints shall enrich the earth, shall create holy places.”
Sir Hugh de Morville (Second Knight)
See The Four Knights
Baron William de Traci (Third Knight)
See The Four Knights
The Four Knights
Sent by King Henry to kill Thomas, the Four Knights parallel the Four Tempters of Part One. While the Tempters offer intellectual and spiritual trickery, the Knights threaten Thomas with physical violence, ultimately following through on their threat when they kill him near the end of the play. When they arrive at the cathedral and demand that Thomas acquiesce to the King’s demands, he refuses. They murder him and then “present their case” to the audience in the form of a mock inquest in which they assert their blamelessness in the entire affair. Although their names are mentioned during their speeches to the audience, the Knights are not as different from each other as are the Three Priests.
The Four Tempters
During Part One, Thomas is visited by four Tempters who promise him a number of rewards in return for recanting his former judgments against the King and his minions. The First Tempter tells him that “Friendship is more than biting Time can sever” and asks Thomas to befriend the King (as he did once before) so that there will be “Fluting in the meadow” and “Singing at nightfall.” The Second Tempter suggests that Thomas should reclaim the Chancellorship (from which he resigned after his feud with King Henry); doing so would, the Tempter assures him, let Thomas “set down the great” and “protect the poor.” The Third Tempter, dubbing himself “A country-keeping Lord who minds his own business,” attempts to seduce Thomas into representing the barons at court in order to “fight a good stroke / At once, for England and for Rome, / Ending the tyrannous jurisdiction” of Henry’s reign.
All three Tempters are easily deflated by Thomas, who is unaffected by their empty promises: “Shall I,” he asks, “who ruled like an eagle over doves, / Now take the shape of a wolf among wolves?” The Fourth Tempter, however, is more difficult for Thomas to dismiss, since he tempts him with his “own desires” of becoming a saint and martyred leader of his people. Eventually, the Fourth Tempter teaches Thomas about the degree to which his own pride stands between him and the will of God.
The Messenger
The Messenger arrives in Part One to announce to the Priests that Thomas is returning to Canterbury. He peppers his news with his own thoughts on Thomas, remarking that “He is at one with the Pope” and that his new “peace” with the King is, at best, a “patched-up affair.”
The Three Priests
As a unit, the three Priests provide a context for Thomas’s religious speculations and offer the audience different opinions of him before he enters the play. Throughout Murder in the Cathedral, the Priests express their desire to help Thomas guide his people and remain safely in Canterbury. Although they may seem interchangeable by virtue of their names (“First Priest,” “Second Priest,” and “Third Priest”), they are distinguished at times by Eliot according to the way in which they approach the danger of Thomas’s return. The First Priest, for example, is uneasy and remarks, “I fear for the Archbishop, I fear for the Church,” before concluding that Thomas’s troubles began when he wished for “subjection to God alone.”
The Second Priest, less world-weary than the First, voices the hope that Thomas will dispel “dismay and doubt,” for “He will tell us what we are to do, he will give us our orders, instruct us.” The Third Priest expresses neither the doubts of the First nor the optimism of the Second; his only certainty is that fate will unwind as it must: “For good or ill, let the wheel turn,” he remarks, “For who knows the end of good or evil?” These differences, however, fade in Part Two, when the Priests act as a group in order to convince Thomas to flee the cathedral.
Reginald Fitz Urse (First Knight)
See The Four Knights
Themes
Flesh Vs. Spirit
Throughout Murder in the Cathedral, Thomas is warned about the danger of his remaining in Canterbury and the threat of danger from his enemies, who seek to please King Henry by murdering him. Before he enters, the Chorus begs, “O Thomas return, Archbishop; return, return to France,” for he comes “bringing death into Canterbury”; when he does arrive, Thomas tells them and the three Priests that none should fear his possible death, for “the hungry hawk / Will only soar and hover” until there is an “End” that will be “simple, sudden, God-given.” The very fact of his return suggests Thomas’s refusal to fear death and belief that God will decide whether he will live or die: as he tells the Priests, “All things prepare the event.”
Thomas’s disregard for earthly pleasures and power is heightened during his conversations with the first three Tempters. When the First Tempter offers him “wit and wine and wisdom” if he will only “Be easy” in his condemnation of King Henry, Thomas calls his temptations a mere “springtime fancy” belonging to “seasons of the past.” When the next Tempter urges him to take up again the Chancellorship and “guide the state again,” Thomas argues that “what was once exaltation / Would now only mean descent” to a “punier power,” since, as an Archbishop, he is able to “keep the keys / Of heaven and hell.” “To condemn kings, not serve among their servants,” he explains, is his “open office.”
Clearly, Thomas is not interested in any form of temporal power. The Third Tempter attempts to appeal to Thomas’s political and religious faith, stating that Thomas could help the barons fight for the “liberty” of England and Rome; still dismissive of man’s law, however, Thomas asserts that if he “break” the tyranny of the King, he must not do so for promises of power but must “break myself alone.” The fact that Thomas is able to so easily refuse these Tempters reflects his desire to serve divine — rather than human — law; this also accounts for his turmoil when facing the Fourth Tempter, who questions Thomas’s desire to become a martyr for purely spiritual (as opposed to temporal) reasons. Once Thomas considers his own heart and concludes that he must not be tricked by his own pride into coveting his martyrdom, he is assured that even if he is killed, his “good Angel, whom God appoints” will “hover over the swords’ points.”
Thomas’s unshaken devotion to his spiritual life is seen throughout the Interlude and Part Two. When preaching to his congregation on Christmas Day, he tells them that martyrdom is “never the design of man,” for “the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God” and “who no longer desires anything for himself.” He then bluntly acknowledges his acceptance of his possible fate by saying, “I do not think I shall ever preach to you again” and “it is possible that in a short time you may have another martyr.”
In Part Two, when faced with the menace of the four Knights, Thomas refuses to flee (as the Priests beg him to do), since he is “not in danger: only nearer to death.” Believing that “all things / Proceed to a joyful consummation,” Thomas orders a Priest who has bolted the Cathedral door to open it. He then proclaims, “I give my life / To the Law of God above the Law of Man.” As the Knights kill him, Thomas does not beg for any mercy or postponement; instead, he begins a prayer in which he “commends [his] cause and that of the Church” to “Almighty God.” Although tempted with physical pleasures and threatened with physical violence, Thomas remains true to what he sees as the “pattern” of God’s will in his life.
Obedience
Closely allied with the theme of flesh vs. spirit is that of obedience, an issue of the play that is seen in Thomas’s unflagging devotion to God. The very nature of the argument between Thomas and King Henry, occurring before the play begins, is centered on this issue: Henry wants Thomas to obey his (and thus the state’s) commands, but Thomas is a man described by the First Priest as one “Loathing power given by temporal devolution, / Wishing subjection to God alone.” Convinced that God is his only judge and ruler with any authority, Thomas mocks those who view themselves as sources of power in a worldly sense: “Only / The fool, fixed in his folly, may think / He can turn the wheel on which he turns.” Another example of Thomas’s belief in the power of divine law is found in his rebuttal of the Second Tempter, who offers him his previous power as Chancellor:
Temporal power, to build a good world, To keep order, as the world knows order. Those who put their faith in worldly order Not controlled by the Order of God, In confident ignorance, but arrest disorder, Make it fast, breed fatal disease, Degrade what they exalt.
Here, Thomas asserts that the only order is that found in the will of God and that any attempt to stray from one’s obedience to it can only result in the “fatal disease” of chaos. Only God can provide any sort of harmony between one’s temporal and spiritual lives and Thomas chooses to remain in the “confident ignorance” of one who does not know — but who nevertheless trusts — the force of Providence.
While Thomas’s refusal to flee the cathedral certainly proves his obedience to God, it is in an earlier conversation that Eliot dramatizes the conflicting forces within Thomas that solicit his obedience. After speaking to the Fourth Tempter, who asks, “What can compare with the glory of Saints / Swelling forever in presence of God?” Thomas must examine his own conscience to determine whether or not his pride is encouraging him to (as the Tempter commands), “Seek the way of martyrdom.” Thomas’s problem lies not in dying, but in determining if he is doing so out of an obedience to his pride or his God. Eventually, he reaches the enlightenment for which he searches:
Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain: Temptation shall not come in this kind again. The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
Thomas has learned that the “right deed” (martyrdom) must not be performed for the “wrong reason”: his self-interest. To allow his desire for glory to interfere with the will of God — which is, ultimately, what will determine his fate — would be like “treason” in its attempt to subvert the authority of an all-powerful ruler. Only by remaining obedient to God can he ever hope to “do the right deed” and become a martyr for his church and his people. He will remain God’s obedient servant, living in “confident ignorance” of God’s eternal plan.
Criticism
Daniel Moran
Moron is an educator specializing in literature and drama. In this essay, he examines the ways in which Eliot’s play explores the processes an individual must undergo if he is to give his life for his faith and how such a gift affects the martyr’s world.
In Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1917) he presents a man on the verge of an emotional crisis who finds that his fear of humiliation and of committing a social faux pas prevent him from revealing to a woman the depth of his love for her. “There will be time,” he remarks, “For a hundred indecisions, / And for a hundred visions and revisions,” since he knows that he will change his mind a hundred times before doing anything so brave. He asks, “Do I dare / Disturb the universe” with his desire to be frank; since he is “no prophet — and here’s no great matter,” since he is “not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be,” he sees himself as insignificant, “an attendant lord, one that will do / To swell a progress, start a scene or two.” Terrified of acting, yet dissatisfied with the results of inaction, fearful of revealing himself, yet dying to “say just what I mean,” Prufrock stands in sharp contrast to a later Eliot hero, Thomas Becket, as seen in Murder in the Cathedral (1935).
Becket is a man who does “dare / Disturb the universe” with his arrival in Canterbury and refusal to concede to King Henry’s demands; he needs no time for a “hundred indecisions” since he sees that the path chosen for him by God is clear. He is “like a prophet” and Prince Hamlet in that he serves the aims of a supreme, supernatural figure and sees himself as one faced with a task that can only culminate in his own death; unlike Hamlet, however, this knowledge causes him no great suffering of mind. While Prufrock’s fear of rejection inhibits him from taking action, Thomas’s determination to serve God prevents him from seeking asylum in a world governed by human law. Throughout the play, Eliot explores the ways in which Thomas’s lack of “Prufrockian” fear allows him to answer his calling from God and how one who accepts such a call must do so at the expense of any and all temporal comforts. Rejecting this world in favor of the next may seem to Henry’s Knights like the ultimate faux pas, but in doing so, Thomas renews his own spiritual life as well as the spiritual lives of the common people and the very world that martyrs him.
Eliot’s original title for the play was Fear in the Way, and it is evident from the opening Choral ode that fear is a constant in the world of the play. The “poor women” huddle near the cathedral not for spiritual comfort but because “Some presage of an act / Which our eyes are compelled to witness, has forced our feet / Toward the cathedral. We are forced to bear witness.” Already God is at work, “compelling” the women (and the audience) to attend to the drama at hand. Unlike the audience, who by virtue of its position is intrigued, the women are terrified of any change in their lives: although they have “suffered various oppression” such as “various scandals,” “taxes,” and “private terrors,” they have “Succeeded in avoiding notice, I Living and partly living.”
While a viewer might think that the intrusion of God into their lives would be welcomed as a form of deliverance from the “poverty and license” they describe, the women wish to maintain the status quo, which may be rife with “minor injustice” but which is also predictable and, more importantly, understandable. To be called by God to do anything — even to “witness” — is too terrifying a task, especially when they learn that their Archbishop is returning:
O Thomas our Lord, leave us and leave us be, in our humble and tarnished frame of existence, leave us; do not ask us To stand to the doom on the house, the doom on the Archbishop, the doom on the world. Archbishop, secure and assured of your fate, unaffrayed among the shades, do you realise what you ask, do you realize what it means To the small folk drawn into the pattern of fate, the small folk who live among small things, The strain on the brain of the small folk who stand to the doom of the house, the doom of their lord, the doom of the world?
The Chorus has accepted the world’s indifference to them and all of its concomitant troubles and wishes to “live among small things” rather than answer the call of God, who will obviously make greater demands. Only through Thomas’s death (which is his own answer to his calling) will they come to understand the greatness and glory of God.
As if God were presenting the Chorus with an example of one who rejects the very fears they vocalize, Thomas enters the play as one who knows he may die but who accepts this as part of a larger scheme. He tells the Chorus and the Three Priests that there is an “eternal action, an eternal patience / To which all must consent” and that the “End will be simple, sudden, God-given.” Already he is prepared to die for his return — but if he already knows this, why would Eliot write the play? In his The Third Voice: Modern British and American Drama, Denis Donoghue argues that an audience’s knowledge of Thomas’s death eliminates the dramatic force that his death may have. However, he seems to be missing the point that Eliot can use an
“BECKET IS A MAN WHO DOES ‘DARE / DISTURB THE UNIVERSE’ WITH HIS ARRIVAL IN CANTERBURY AND REFUSAL TO CONCEDE TO KING HENRY’S DEMANDS; HE NEEDS NO TIME FOR A ‘HUNDRED INDECISIONS’ SINCE HE SEES THAT THE PATH CHOSEN FOR HIM BY GOD IS CLEAR.”
audience’s knowledge of Thomas’s impending death as a way to refocus its attention. The viewer then becomes more attuned to the issue of how Thomas will meet his death instead of whether or not this death will occur — and how Thomas struggles with the weight of martyrdom is Eliot’s subject here.
Because a viewer knows Thomas will die, his thoughts on death and martyrdom take on an added significance, like when Henry Fonda’s character in John Ford’s film Young Mr. Lincoln walks into the sunset with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” playing on the soundtrack. As Thomas explains to the Priests, “Heavier the interval than the consummation.” The mental and spiritual processes leading to an acceptance of martyrdom and the means by which an individual gives himself completely to his faith are Eliot’s concern here, and by having the audience know the end of the play before it begins (a function of its title), he is able to prod the viewer into becoming interested in the same things as himself.
Thomas’s interaction with the Four Tempters allows Eliot to dramatize these very processes of denial and self-examination that a martyr must undergo if he is to remain true to his calling. The First, Second, and Third Tempters are easily spurned by Thomas, who knows that their promises of temporal power and comfort are “puny” when compared to those offered by God: “Shall I,” he asks, “who ruled like an eagle over doves, / Now take the shape of a wolf among wolves?” Rejecting their insinuations that he can set right the world and its temporal problems, Thomas remarks, “Only I The fool, fixed in his folly, may think / He can turn the wheel on which he turns.” Like Hamlet, Thomas believes “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends” and will (again like Hamlet) “Let be,” making the rejection of the Three Tempters a matter of course.
The Fourth Tempter, however, challenges Thomas on a much different — and more difficult — level. The strict meter of his verse attests to his potential bewitching of the future martyr:
As you do not know me, I do not need a name, And, as you know me, that is why I come. You know me, but have never seen my face. To meet before was never time or place.
These figures have never met before because the “time or place” were not ripe with such a spiritual crisis, and it is the crisis of self-examination that this Tempter forces on Thomas. The Tempter asks, “But what is pleasure, Kingly rule” compared to “general grasp of spiritual power” and tells him that “Saint and Martyr rule from the tomb”; Thomas should “think of pilgrims, standing in line / Before the glittering jeweled shrine” and “Seek the way of martyrdom.” If he refuses, he will become a footnote and “men shall declare that there was no mystery / About this man who played a certain part in history.” As Thomas admits, the Fourth Tempter has exposed his “own desires”; like Prufrock, who imagines himself “pinned and wriggling on the wall” with a “magic lantern” throwing his “nerves in patterns on a screen,” Thomas must now discern his own motives in seeking martyrdom:
Is there no way, in my soul’s sickness, Does not lead to damnation in pride? I well know that these temptations Mean present vanity and future torment. Can sinful pride be driven out Only by more sinful? Can I neither act nor suffer Without perdition?
The Tempter’s answer to this question is an almost word-for-word recitation of Thomas’s opening speech to the Chorus:
You know and do not know, what it is to act or suffer. You know and do not know, that action is suffering, And the suffering action. Neither does the agent suffer Nor the patient act. But both are fixed In an eternal action, an eternal patience To which all must consent that it may be willed And which all must suffer that they may will it, That the pattern may subsist, that the wheel may turn and still Be forever still.
For what reason does the Fourth Tempter answer Thomas with his own words? The answer becomes more clear if the audience considers this Tempter — like his three counterparts — as not an external figure but a part of Thomas himself. Finding no allure in physical pleasure and certainly no use (after his split with the King) for temporal government, Thomas can reject these ideas quite easily. This part of himself, however — the part of his soul that does, to some ambiguous degree, covet fame and glory — is more difficult to resist. If he is to be martyred, he must look deep within himself, listening to his own voice, in order to be sure that he is not the slave of vanity. Seen in this light, the Fourth Tempter is unlike Satan, who tempted Christ, but like a mirror into which Thomas must gaze if he is to know himself. The Forth Tempter is a counselor more than an enemy.
Because of the Fourth Tempter’s “friendly advice,” Thomas is able to determine that “The last temptation is the greatest treason: / To do the right deed for the wrong reason.” But what has Thomas decided? To let himself be killed? This is decided by him before the play even begins. To reject martyrdom? This is never an issue or possibility; Thomas wants to know if he seeks the “right thing” for the “wrong reason” of his own pride, not whether or not martyrdom itself is “right” or “wrong.” What Thomas learns here from his own words being thrown back at him is that “action is suffering.”
It is worthwhile to pause here and consider the implications of these words. For Thomas, who earlier in the play says that the women “know and do not know, what it is to act or suffer,” to “act” would entail inaction, i.e., not protesting his death by sword when it finds him. To “suffer” would entail physical suffering (in his time of dying) but the word also carries the more important sense of “to allow” or “to be the object of some action.” This is the key to Thomas’s decision: he will “act” (through inaction) not because of his own pride, but by allowing himself to “suffer” the presence and workings of God. Only by seeking a martyrdom grounded in spiritual obedience (rather than temporal fame) will Thomas remain undefiled and avoid the “damnation in pride” that he fears. He now “knows” that “action is suffering” but “does not know” the actual experience of it yet. When this time does come, however, he will “no longer act or suffer, to the sword’s end,” obeying temporal commands and threats, but will instead “act and suffer” to obey the will of God.
Thomas’s newfound enlightenment is offered to his congregation when he preaches to them on Christmas Day. Besides providing a dramatic fulcrum to the two halves of his play, the sermon allows Eliot to demonstrate the depth of Thomas’s understanding of the nature of martyrdom. Christmas is, of course, the birthday of the ultimate martyr and Thomas uses this fact as a way to present the paradoxes inherent in martyrdom. For example, he speaks of the fact that they rejoice in the birth of one who died for their sins, explaining that “only in our Christian mysteries” can they “rejoice and mourn at once for the same reason.” He also addresses the meaning of the word “peace” in Christ’s statement to His apostles, “My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you,” concluding that Christ “gave to His disciples peace, but not peace as the world gives.”
A viewer can see the extent to which Thomas’s sermon here is self-reflexive, since he too will soon find spiritual — rather than physical — peace. A final example of how the sermon reveals the working-through of the mysteries in Thomas’s mind is found in his discussion of God’s “first martyr, the blessed Stephen.” Thomas states that “by no means” is it an “accident” that “the day of the first martyr follows immediately the day of the birth of Christ,” so urging the congregation to ponder the “pattern” of God’s will as he has done. He concludes by indirectly asserting his own triumph over the thoughts presented to him by the Fourth Tempter, saying, “Still less is a Christian martyrdom the effect of a man’s will to become a Saint, as a man by willing and contriving may become a ruler of men.”
The true martyr has “lost his will in the will of God” and does not even desire “the glory of being a martyr.” Knowing that he is balanced on the knife’s edge of divinity, Thomas pleads with the people to adopt his course of allowing God’s will to work in their lives and to “suffer” His presence in Canterbury.
Part Two of the play presents the martyrdom that Thomas awaits. As Part One examines the processes involved in the individual’s acceptance of martyrdom, Part Two examines the ways in which others may view and consider the same. The nervous First and Second Priests speak of the possibility of God acting through Thomas “To-day,” but the Third Priest knows that such anticipation is pointless:
What is the day that we know that we hope for or fear for? Every day is the day we should fear from or hope from. One moment Weighs like another. Only in retrospection, selection, We say, that was the day. The critical moment That is always now, and here. Even now, in sordid particulars The eternal design may appear.
Time is the mother of meaning (an issue raised in Eliot’s poem “Journey of the Magi”) and the Third Priest is now certain, like Thomas, that the “critical moment” may arise even in “sordid particulars.” As if to respond to this statement, the Four Knights enter the play, much like Thomas’s perfectly timed entrance in Part One. God’s will is now hard at work, a fact acknowledged by Thomas when he enters and states, “However certain our expectation / The moment foreseen may be unexpected / When it arrives.” The Four Knights, however, have no interest in any discussion of “the pattern” or “the wheel” and demand that Thomas recant his former judgments to appease “The King’s Justice” and “the King’s majesty.” Thomas’s refusal to do so reveals the extent to which he has (as he stated in his sermon), “lost his will in the will of God”: it is not “Becket who pronounces doom,” he explains, “But the Law of Christ’s Church.” Theory has been converted into practice and no threat can weaken Thomas’s resolve: he is “not in danger” but “only nearer to death.”
The Chorus’s reaction to Thomas’s fearlessness marks their gradual understanding of what they were “compelled to witness” in the opening of the play. Stating that they have seen “subtle forebodings” of the “death-bringers” in such natural signs as “The horn of the beetle, the scale of the viper” and the smell of “incense in the latrine,” the women beg Thomas for forgiveness for voicing their original fears. Thomas’s cult of personality is growing stronger with each moment he remains alive. Naturally, Thomas forgives them with the command “Peace” and explains, “Human kind cannot bear very much reality,” an insight that is proven by the actions of the Four Knights and the previous lamentations of the Chorus: to Thomas, the only “reality” is that of God’s will — all else is the vanity of temporal power and “toiling in the household.”
The Priests, however, are still fearful and plead with Thomas to hide in the cloister. Thomas refuses, stating, “I have therefore only to make perfect my will.” It is at this point that Eliot again highlights the mental process of martyrdom by making Thomas’s actions here slightly ambiguous and hinting — but only hinting — at his previously rejected desire for fame. Thomas commands the Priests to “Unbar the doors! Throw open the doors!” because he “will not have the house of prayer” turned “into a fortress”: “The Church shall protect her own, in her own way, not / As oak and stone.” This train of thought is in perfect keeping with Thomas’s earlier rejection of human law in favor of God’s. When the Priests still insist on his hiding, however, Thomas flies into a rage less easily explained by a desire to remain solely an “instrument” of God:
I give my life To the Law of God above the Law of Man. Unbar the door! unbar the door! We are not to triumph by fighting, by stratagem, or by resistance, Not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast And have conquered. We have only to conquer Now, by suffering. This is the easier victory. Now is the triumph of the Cross, now Open the door! I command it. OPEN THE DOOR!
Thomas’s logic here posits that only by self-sacrifice (“I give my life”) and allowing God to work his will through the Knights (“suffering”) will God’s will be made complete. But why must God work today? At this moment? (Recall the Third Priest’s explanation of how only “retrospection” yields meaning.) Thomas never considers this point and Eliot never addresses it, making this rallying of the Priests’ faith one of the most ambiguous moments in the play. A viewer could easily understand this speech to imply that Thomas fears his not being martyred and that there are still some remnants of worldly pride clinging to his vestments.
While this may be a more cynical way to read the play, the point nonetheless seems valid — but only if that same viewer forgets a simple fact about Thomas: for all his wisdom and strength, he is still a man and still subject to the same apprehensions and doubts as everybody else. It is not surprising, then, that the very human Thomas fears the Knights will be prohibited from entering, for he has already completed a grueling process by which he has prepared himself for martyrdom. “For my Lord I am ready to die,” he states, “That His Church may have peace and liberty.” His resolve is stronger than any audience’s doubts.
Thomas is killed onstage, so that the audience — like the Chorus — will be appalled by the event which God and Eliot have forced them to “witness.” The women long for a time when the land was free from the “filth” they “cannot clean,” found in the murdering Knights:
A rain of blood has blinded my eyes. Where is England? Where is Kent? Where is Canterbury? O far far far far in the past; and I wander in a land of barren boughs: if I break them, they bleed; I wander in a land of dry stones: if I touch them, they bleed. How can I ever return, to the soft quiet seasons?
Although they are terrified by the murder of their Archbishop, the women still do not understand that God’s will is at work here: “We did not wish anything to happen,” they cry, since their usual hardships “marked a limit to our suffering.” Only later will they “know what it is to act and suffer.”
As they finish their ode and Becket dies, Eliot engages the viewer in the greatest surprise of the play: the Four Knights’ direct address to the audience. In On Poetry and Poets, Eliot describes this device as “a kind of trick” added to “shock the audience out of their complacency,” and the mock-inquest performed by the Knights serves several purposes in the total design of the play. First, the viewer sees the trivial nature of temporal power in The Second, Third, and Fourth Knights’ sycophantic praise of the First Knight: “I am not anything like such an experienced speaker as my old friend Reginald Fitz Urse,” states the Third Knight, while the Second Knight praises Fitz Urse for making his point “very well” and the Fourth Knight remarks that their “leader, Reginald Fitz Urse,” has “spoken very much to the point.”
The hollow rhetoric of the Knights, with their appeals to the “hard-hearted, sensible” people in the audience, heighten the sincerity and honesty that Thomas has displayed throughout the play. More importantly, the Knights’ defense “shocks” the audience into understanding the degree to which the issues of the play are still relevant to modern life, as when the Second Knight explains,
No one regrets the necessity for violence more than we do. Unhappily, there are times when violence is the only way in which social justicc may be secured. At another time, you would condemn an Archbishop by vote of Parliament and execute him formally as a traitor, and no one would have to bear the burden of being called murderer. And at a later time still, even such temperate measures as these would become unnecessary. But, if you have now arrived at a just subordination of the pretensions of the Church to the welfare of the State, remember that it is we who took the first step. We have been instrumental in bringing about the state of affairs that you approve. We have served your interests; we merit your applause; and if there is any guilt whatever in the matter, you must share it with us.
The Second Knight looks forward to a future in which the Church’s “pretensions” are subordinate to the State — a world very much like that of contemporary Western societies. But this is not a “message” play and Eliot is too clever to allow all the previous action to congeal into a tidy set of remarks. Instead, the Second Knight raises the question of how much the Church — or spirituality in general — affects the political lives of a nation’s citizenry and the extent to which those who put their faith in temporal power (like Henry and his Knights) will go to ensure that the State is always in charge.
In The Plays of T .S. Eliot (1960), David E. Jones calls the Knights’ apology “the temptation of the audience,” and the Second Knight’s remarks may seem tempting to one who wishes for no spiritual stake in the life of a nation. But who could be tempted by these “slightly tipsy” assassins with their fawning over earthly leaders and vocabulary of psychobabble (“render a verdict of Suicide while of Unsound Mind”) that they use to cloud the issues? At most, they are like the first three Tempters in Part One: easily dismissable. Eliot has included their prose defense in order to show the gulf between men of politics and men of God — a contest in which Eliot never avoids revealing the side for whom he is rooting.
As a final way to illustrate the Knights’ lack of understanding and as a way to illustrate the effect that Thomas’s martyrdom has had on his world, Eliot closes the play with a Choral ode in which the women “Praise Thee, O God, for Thy glory” and describe their new understanding of the “pattern” and the “wheel”:
For all things exist only as seen by Thee, only as known by Thee, all things exist Only in Thy light, and Thy glory is declared even in that which denies Thee; the darkness declares the glory of light. Those who deny Thee could not deny, if Thou didst not exist; and their denial is never complete, for if it were so, they would not exist.
The Knights’ sophistry or twentieth century cynicism are no match for devotion of this depth. The Chorus has moved millions of spiritual miles since the beginning of the play: where they formerly asked God to let them “perish in quiet,” they now beg Him to forgive them for their former blindness. They describe their former selves as “the men and women who shut the door” and sat “by the fire” — seeking physical comfort — instead of as those who “fear the blessing of God.” Any previous arguments raised about the depth of Thomas’s devotion and spurning of pride are put to rest here, for the Chorus has been served by its Archbishop, regardless of the motives he may have had:
We now acknowledge our trespass, our weakness, our fault; we acknowledge That the sin of the world is upon our heads; that the blood of the martyrs and the agony of the saints Is upon our heads. Lord, have mercy on us. Christ, have mercy on us. Lord, have mercy on us. Blessed Thomas, pray for us.
The women now fully “know that action is suffering” and will allow God’s will to work through them. They have moved from Prufrockian doubts to Beckettian certainty and find solace in the presence of a Being that many moderns may be missing. Whether the modern age will produce more Beckets to assuage the doubts of the Prufrocks remains to be seen, but, as Hamlet says and Becket enacts, “The readiness is all.”
Source: Daniel Moran, for Drama for Students, Gale, 1998.
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