Why is “Murder in the Cathedral” called a poetic play?
robertwilliam eNotes Editor Because it’s written in verse. You might hear it called a poetic play, or indeed, a “verse drama”: all that means is that the dialogue is patterned into a verse form. If you looked at a script of – say – General Hospital, you’d find that you couldn’t put the dialogue into a rhythm most of the time. The lines would be as long – or short – or contain as many syllables – as they liked, as fitted the moment. Verse drama means that the lines all fit onto a metrical grid: all follow a verse pattern. Shakespeare’s plays, for example, are partly written in iambic pentameter (de DUM de DUM de DUM de DUM de DUM) – and a proportion of the lines fit to that rhythmic grid. Eliot’s verse line is more unusual, a longer, less regular line – but the plays are still written in verse. Hence why they are “poetic drama”. Eliot had hoped to revive verse drama (largely unpopular in theatre since the Elizabethan age) – but it didn’t catch on. Plays these days really aren’t written
