Britannica Sources used in this answer

Why is Murder in the Cathedral T.S. Eliot’s most successful play?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

T.S. Eliot stands at a chalkboard, writing a diagram with letters and Greek symbols representing characters for a play, in his office at the Institute for Advanced Study. — T.S. Eliot T.S. Eliot working on his play *The Cocktail Party* in his office at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, 1948. The letters of the alphabet in his diagram represent characters in the play. The Greek letters represent characters yet to be invented.

Murder in the Cathedral (1935) is widely considered T.S. Eliot’s most successful play, standing out as a notable exception to the general critical view that his dramatic works were inferior to his lyric and meditative poetry.1

The play’s success is largely attributed to its effective use of a chorus in the traditional Greek manner. By employing this device, Eliot made the profound meaning of the protagonist's heroic action—the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket—apprehensible to common humanity.21

Unlike some of his later works, which audiences found baffling or emotionally distant, Murder in the Cathedral successfully functions as a modern miracle play that explores complex themes, such as the sin of pride, within a compelling dramatic structure. Through this work, Eliot effectively brought "poetic drama" back to the popular stage using a unique form of blank verse where the metrical effect is inseparable from the sense.1