Later Eliot: ‘The Family Reunion’, ‘The Cocktail Party’ and the Other Modern Plays

Abstract

Eliot’s mission to increase the level of poetic awareness of audiences led to his seeking to conquer the fashionable West End theatrical establishment from within. There were to be no special allowances made for a worthy message or cultural snobbery — poetic drama should be able to compete with the commercial comedy or problem play at every level and win on its merits. He wanted to ‘bring poetry into the world in which the audience lives and to which it returns when it leaves the theatre’ (SP 79). So his next four plays were set in contemporary middle-class England. The language also differed from that of Murder in the Cathedral, moving more in the direction of ‘ordinary colloquial speech’. All this meant that his modern plays were less radical and innovatory than Murder, and though he had called for a ‘revolution in principles’ for the theatre, his own work got progressively less revolutionary. In practice, the boldness of ‘only by going too far can we find out how far we can go’ (SP 64) is not really bold, because the underlying assumption is that the danger must lie in going too far — rather than, as one regretfully feels sometimes with Eliot, in not going far enough.