T. S. ELIOT’S QUEST FOR A THEME
IN HIS PLAYS
RAM SEVAK SINGH
Lecturer in English,
T.
S. Eliot (1888-1965) was a dramatist even before he wrote any play. Though he
had started his career as a poet he was preoccupied with the need for poetic
drama in the post-war world. He set himself to analyse the plays of the
Elizabethans and the Jacobeans in the early twenties and thus to understand why
the plays of Webster, Marston, Dekker etc., lacked the charm and appeal of
Shakespeare. Compared with these masters the dramatists of the later period
looked pigmies. While studying them he was trying to feel the pulse of the
drama and was, as a matter of fact, preparing himself mentally to launch upon
the career of a cautious and conscientious playwright. It seemed to him that
what he thought he was unable to express in poetry, he could present through a
dramatic situation. He knew ‘The tendency of prose drama is to emphasize the
ephemeral and superficial; if we want to get at the permanent and universal we
tend to express ourselves in verse (‘Dialogue on Dramatic poetry’, Selected
Essays, p-46). And this was enough to instill confidence in him.
After
a decade-long preparation Eliot wrote Sweeney Agonistes (1928) which he
could not complete. Sweeney is a typical ordinary man seeking sensuous
pleasures and comforts. As he lives on the surface he has not fathomed the
agonies of the modern man. Not that he lacked spiritual insights, but now he
does not realise them. Now he is hollow and forsaken. The plants of his
spiritual experiences have dried up on the waste land of this age. Like
Nothing
at all but three things
Birth
and copulation, and death.
That’s
all the facts when you come to brass tacks:
Birth
and copulation, and death.
I’ve
been born, and once is enough.
You
don’t remember, but I remember,
Once
is enough.
–Collected Poems: 1909-1935. p.
127
It’s enough that he
was born once; even if there is something like rebirth, he would not like to be
born again to undergo the same tragic experiences. This he had learnt from an
incident: a friend of his who used to come to his place for drinks raped a girl
and she died of pain. Sweeney reflected for a moment and concluded:
Any
man might do a girl in
Any
man has to, needs to, wants to
Once
in a life-time, do a girl in.
–Ibid,
p. 130
He could never know
whether the girl was dead and that man was alive, or he was dead and she was
alive, or both were dead, or both were alive. If he was dead, the rent
collector and the milk man were alive, and if they were alive, then definitely
he was dead. As the world depends much for its safety on the elimination of
Sweeney-like people, it was inevitable that in his death exulted the people who
accept the ideals and notions that please them, and not those which show them
the reality behind the reality. Whatever the significance of his experiences,
Sweeney was unable to express them effectively. He failed to convince the audience
of his convictions.
Called
upon by E. Martin, Eliot wrote his next pageant play, The Rock (1934)
for a specific purpose, i. e., to raise money for the erection of a Church. It
is somewhat puzzling to think how devoted the playwright was in this kind of
work. Though a Catholic he took this work on himself more on philosophical
grounds than on religious. In a modern city like
Darkness
now, then
Light.
Light.
–The Rock, p. 48
With the word ‘light’
ends the First Act and the whole theatre is flooded with light.
In the Second Part is reviewed the history of man. In
pre-historic age the face of earth was covered with darkness; but on the birth
of Lord Jesus the sheet of darkness disappeared and the dawn of happiness could
be seen descending on the earth. It was so not till long back. Only in the
recent past the change has occurred:
Men
have left god not for other gods, they say, but for
no
god; and this has never happened before
That
men both deny Eods and worship gods, professing first Reason,
And
then Money, and Power, and what they call Life, or Race, or Dialectic.
The
Church disowned, the tower overthrown, the bells upturned, what we have to do
But
stand with empty hands and palms turned upwards
In
an age which advances progressively backwards?
–Ibid,
p. 51
But luckily, the
playwright concludes, Church is still alive to the spiritual needs of man. It
will continue to show man the path of truth and knowledge. Not that there were
no difficulties in the past, rather the contrary, ‘the
And
if blood of Martyrs is to flow on the steps
We
must first build the steps.
–The Rock, p. 42
In
spite of the fact that The Rock fetched money and satisfied
the church-goers, it lacks the smoothness, the balance and the universal appeal
of a play. The joints are clearly visible, and the chorus has not risen above
the voice of the playwright himself. There is no harmony between the thought
and the action of the play. The next play Murder in the Cathedral (1935)
was also written on commission for those people who had gone in all seriousness
to the Canterbury Cathedral to observe the martyr’s day of St. Thomas Becket.
Eliot knew, they could ‘put up with poetry’ if he gave them, as they were the
elite and the enlightened few, who would be the last persons to raise
objections to the homage may be in poetry, paid to the revered martyr. The
playwright took advantage of this situation and made use of poetry to the
fullest extent. It is with this play that the true poetic play dates its
revival.
In
this play again the playwright takes the same issue for discussion: the place
of the priest in the world. As a matter of fact this is the central problem
with which Eliot seems to be pre-occupied in all his plays (despite the
difference in setting and circumstances). St. Thomas Becket had renounced
political power for the Archbishop’s job for he knew that separation from God
and faith in any other power would mean degradation and death. The whole
atmosphere was charged with danger. On one hand when efforts were being made to
drag him into the quagmire of politics, on the other hand, some lackeys were
out to declare him a rebel. In such circumstances how far was it desirable and
practicable to stick to his standpoint? He had four big temptations–his
glorious past, when he had spent many a carefree evening doing boating; his
days of power, when people readily followed his policies (he could enjoy that
distinction just for his asking); his patriotism; he could prove his salt by
joining hands with his government against King Henry; lastly, the strongest and
the most charming argument was his renown after death. If he could die for the
Church and for his principles he could be an immortal martyr in the annals of
the world. It is the saints and the martyrs that rule the world from their
tombs. It is to them that people in thousands and lakhs go to pay homage, and
not the King. He was unable to take a decision soon. It was only after he had
given the sermon (in which he gave expression to his own conflict that he felt
relieved of the obsession. Now he was ready neither to court nor to escape
death.
Death
will come only when I am worthy,
And
I am worthy, there is no danger.
I
have therefore only to make perfect my will.
–Murder in the Cathedral. p. 75
This clears the cloud
of doubt and he proceeds with full confidence to face the four Knights who had
come to charge him with treason, and subsequently, to kill him. On his death,
the Knights establish that they were innocent as it was the Archbishop himself
who had planned to court death; it was a case of suicide and not murder, and
Becket himself was responsible for his death.
In
this play poetry dominates, and the conflict is more mental than physical.
Probably, by concentrating on the mental conflicts of Backet the playwright has
tried to suggest that Lord Jesus also had the same conflicts before renouncing
pelf and power to spread the message of God. On this score only is the fourth
temptation more significant than the others. But at the end of the play the
Knights come to justify the murder of Becket and occupy the stage for quite a
long time. It may have served to present the opinion of the aristocrats, but it
fails to fit in the structure of the play. By stressing the secular and
diplomatic need of the day it, perhaps, showed the contrast between the
nobility of Becket’s soul and the grossness of the Knights; but the fact remains
that it was dramatically unnecessary. It was a repetition of what was already
spoken by them while arguing with Becket. These Knights symbolise the political
and secular power which has always been trying to stifle the divine messages of
the martyrgs, but has not succeeded in extirpating the institution of the
Church.
Though
Murder in the Cathedral was successfully acted and it appealed to the
contemporary opinion, it failed to satisfy the dramatist. Eliot confessed that
with this play he had entered into a blind alley. He had made use of the chorus
in these plays, but now he felt that the use of the chorus was desirable only
in cases where the story was mythological or legendary. It would look
ridiculous to put in a play of modern setting a chorus to chant poetry and
philosophise upon the events and incidents. He, therefore, decided to use
certain new techniques in his next play The Family Reunion (1939).
Though he could not do away with the chorus even in this play he was successful
in giving the language a contemporary tinge and peel off the rhetorical
vesture. It was necessary, though, that he diluted poetry and brought speech
nearer to the common man; he could do so only at the cost of the poetry. This
process continued so long that in the last play The Elder Statesman (1958)
poetry is hardly visible. He has always wanted to give expression to the
conflict of modern life, and at the altar of this aim he has sacrificed the
best asset of his plays, that is, even the poetry which was mainly responsible
for the appeal of Murder in the Cathedral.
As
in ‘Eumenides’ (the third part of Aeschylus’s Oresteia) Orestes had to
face the Furies, here in The Family Reunion Harry Monchensy felt
obsessed with the thought of murder. Orestes had murdered his mother who, in
league with her lover, had plotted the murder of her loving husband Agamemnon.
How far was he justified in his action? None could decide, and consequently, in
the meeting convened by Goddess Athene votes were cast by the mortals as well
as the immortals, and at the end it was found that the consensus of opinion was
in favour of Orestes (though the votes cast were approximately equal on both
sides). In Eliot’s play, Harry’s wife had fallen into the sea and died a
natural death, but ever since, he had smarted under the illusion that he was
the cause of her death. If he had not thrown her into the sea, he had not done
also, anything to save her. Was it so because he had wished her death?
Guilt-ridden he felt so nervous that he could not stand the comforts, of
Wishwood where his mother had planned everything to suit his taste, temperament
and the needs. She had brought up Mary, his cousin only for him, and in her
marriage she was going to see the consummation of her desires. This was to be
the true ‘family reunion’ she had contemplated. During the winter season,
everything was cold and dull, and her son’s arrival after eight long years was
to be a very warm experience for her. But, alas, when he came he
came guilt-ridden and forlorn. His mother and his aunt knew that his destiny
lay in the search for spiritual peace. He also knew that his illness was worse
than he had imagined. It was neither his conscience nor his mind that was
diseased, rather, it was the world in which he was born to live. Even Mary’s love,
the only solace to his broken heart, could not take him out of the limbo of
moroseness in which he had thrown himself. It was only after his aunt had told
him, how his father also had suffered the same pangs of agony, and had
experienced the same guilt, that he regained his vitality. In love with his
aunt his father had wished the death of his pregnant mother. He realised, to
his consolation, that it was the inherited guilt of his father, not his own,
that had tortured him so long. What his aunt had said was perhaps correct:
You are the consciousness of your unhappy family
Its
bird sent flying through the purgatorial flame.
–The Family Reunion. p. 105
He
was now convinced that his aunt had understood not only the event he had come
across, but also what had happened to him inside his soul. Now he knew
that
all my life has been a flight
And
phantoms fed upon me while I fled.
–Ibid.
p. 113
and, therefore, he
decided
That
my business is not to run away, but to pursue,
Not
to avoid being found, but to seek.
Ibid.
p. 113
To
expiate the sin, whether his or somebody else’s, he left home for a secluded
place where he could do what God had ordained. Consequently his mother died and
the expected family reunion never came to pass.
Such
moments of decision come in all the plays of Eliot. Between the alternatives
given, the hero chooses the one that proves fatal to the smug world, but
elevating to those who care for ideals. In Murder in the Cathedral Becket
decided to submit to the will of the Knights, in The Family Reunion Harry
chose to go in search of spiritual peace at the cost of his mother. In the same
way in The Cocktail Party (1949) every character chooses his own
destiny. When Celia goes to the unknown island to fulfil her destiny as a missionary,
Edward and Lavinia decide upon continuing their conjugal life howsoever dreary
it might be. Stripping them of their last pretences Reilly made Edward and
Lavinia realise that they had in common
The
same isolation.
A
man who finds himself incapable of loving
And
a woman who finds that no man can love her.
–The
Cocktail Party. p. 110
The
play had begun with a cocktail party. After Reilly had made elaborate analysis
of their motives and interests, they came to accept that their happiness lay in
their living together. He should give compliments to Lavinia and she should
care for his health. It is through these cocktail parties which symbolise the
routine life, that conjugal happiness is sought and sustained.
It
may be added here that this play is patterned on Euripides’s Alcestis. Like
Heracles who brought the husband of Alcestis back from the grave, Reilly
successfully planned to give Lavinia a psychological insight into her
limitations and thus to retrieve her from the clutches of frustrations and give
her back to her husband. If Alcestis had chosen to die for the happiness of her
husband Lavinia had decided to leave her husband alone to allow him time to
think whether he could live without her. In both cases it was found that the
union of the husband and wife was necessary for their happiness. The
distinctive feature of Eliot’s drama is that it gives an elaborate analysis of
the motives of the couple and ultimately proves that freedom from the sense of
loneliness is possible only through understanding and living together. The
fourth play The Confidential Clerk (1953) is based on Euripides’s Ion.
Colby had inherited love for music from his father who had died an immature
death, and was at no cost prepared to sacrifice his instinct for music for Sir
Claude. Claude had rejected the profession of his choice to take to the
financier’s job. He had earned name and money but in the eyes of Colby he had
not done the right thing. One should follow the call of instinct and not the
path of success. Colby would be satisfied as a second rate musician but would
resign definitely, howsoever lucrative, the job of the confidential clerk. When
alone he was content to be in the garden of his heart hearing the compositions
of his masters, but Lucasta the daughter of Sir Claude had never felt secure in
her father’s rich house and was feeling on illusions.
She could not decieve the shrewd eyes or Colby, and she confessed.
I
don’t like myself.
I
don’t like the person I’ve forced myself to be.
–The Confidential Clerk. p. 59
She had done so
because she was obsessed with a sense of terrible loneliness which
Just
when you think you’re on the point of release
…..(loneliness)
swoops down upon you;
When
you think you’re getting out, you’re getting further in,
And
you know at last that there’s no escape.
–Ibid.
p. 60
Though
the play is based on impossible events it suggests the same as is suggested in The
Family Reunion, viz., the ineritance of father’s qualities by the son. The
curse of the family in O’Niell’s play Mourning Becomes Electra is passed
on from one generation to the other and the Oran family could not escape the
consequences of the original sin. In Eliot’s The Elder Statesman (1958)
the difference in the attitudes of the same man is suggested through the change
of the character’s name, and the feelings of guilt through two blackmailers.
The elder statesman who is now convalescing in a hospital after a long hectic
and successful life of a politician, is even now not able to forget the two
crimes he had committed: one, when he ran his car over a man and did not care
to stop to see whether the man was dead, and two, when he loved an actress but
did not marry her. After having lived a whole life he was unable to erase the
memory of these two events. He knew that he had tried to run away from the
world instead of facing it. But now, as was done by Harry of The Family
Reunion, he would look into the blackmailers’ eyes and thus, would escape
them for ever. He meets them and comes to realise
If
a man has one person, just one in his life,
To
whom he is willing to confess every thing–
And
that includes, mind you, not only things criminal,
Not
only turpitude, meanness and cowardice,
But
also situations which are simply ridiculous,
When
he has played the fool (as who has not?)–
Then
he loves that person, and his love will save him.
I
am afraid that I’ve never loved anyone, really,
–The
Elder Statesman. p. 102
He
had never understood his wife, his son and his daughter even, let alone his
friends and aquaintances. People had worshipped the parts he had played; but
none had seen the true man in him. When his son Michael rejected him he
felt happy, because
For
the me he rejected, I reject also.
Love
has been freed from the self that pretends to be someone
And
in becoming no one, I begin to live.
It
is worthwhile dying, to find out what life is.
-The Elder Statesman. p. 129
So ‘in becoming no one
he had become himself’, and immediately after this realisation he found that
not only his children but even the blackmailers were happy. He established
himself at the end of the play as a man of feelings. The life of the statesman
he had lived was a mask he had put on for worldly success; but it was done only
after he had taken a decision to bury his true self. It is with the force of
love, he realised, that the life runs and in the absence of which we are bound
to be ‘alone together’.
Although
this play is not, like Murder in the Cathedral, a Christian play,
it is built on Christian values–sense of guilt, purification of soul and
respect for love. And these are the pillars on which the whole edifice stands.
Eliot has been mainly concerned, in his plays, with religion, especially the
importance of sin and expiation. He took up the central problem of society for analysis
and found that man can never feel secure till he has accepted the destiny.
All–Becket, Harry, Edward, Colby, and Claverton–all these characters find peace
and solace only after they accept what is ordained for them by God. The plays
of Eliot, therefore, should not be studied in isolation: each one stresses an
aspect and all together reflect upon his approach to the spiritual crisis man
is facing today. Our burden is heavy; whether the sin is ours or our
grandfather’s, we all are suffering from guilt. Our modern sciences are not
enough to cure us of this malaise:
It
would need someone greater than the greatest doctor
To
cure This illness.
–The Cocktail Party. p. 54