Question

discuss murder in the cathedral as a poetic drama in 800 words​

Answer 1

Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, is called a poetic play because it is written in the style of verse drama. In the tradition of Greek Tragedies and Shakespeare, this type of play was popular until the beginning of the twentieth century when prose came more into fashion and commercial success. Any play that has been written in poetry and not prose is considered a verse drama. Eliot uses many well-known tropes of the verse drama in Murder at the Cathedral, such as a Greek chorus-style narration, tragic hero and rhyming couplets. The rhyming nature of many verse dramas as a practical element to the actor's ability to memorize lines. Because the play was written in an uncommon style of the time but evoking a length literary tradition in doing so, Murder in the Cathedral, is able to believably be timeless in describing either the political scene in the 1170s to similar scenes such as the fascism of the 1930s.

Eliot expressed his desire that his dramas follow the poetic fashion as verse drama in his treatise The Music of Poetry, where he expressed the meter of poetry was the only way to evoke music in speech and music was crucial to convey emotions. Aside from the poetic rhythm that separates verse drama from the overall umbrella of drama, even if it is in free verse like Murder in the Cathedral, is that it relies on language cues rather than favoring acting to convey serious tragedy.