Eliot, T(homas) S(tearns)

Eliot, T[homas] S[tearns] (1888–1965), playwright and poet. The expatriate American, who spent most of his creative career in England as a British subject, is remembered by American playgoers largely for three plays: Murder in the Cathedral (1936), The Cocktail Party (1950), and The Confidential Clerk (1954). None of the three was received in America with unequivocal acclaim. The merits of the poet's unique dramatic blank verse were open to serious question, the writing seen as verbose and elusive, and the plotting perceived as frequently too shaky. Nevertheless, all three works found reasonably large audiences and have been revived occasionally. Indirectly, Eliot may have been far more important to modern theatre in several ways. In his position as an arbiter of taste he was instrumental in promoting a reconsideration of long‐neglected Jacobean playwrights. His Sweeney Agonistes: Fragments of an Aristophanic Melodrama is recognized as a precursor of the now popular style and approach of such later writers as Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Sam Shepard. Lastly, his tremendous prestige made him a leading voice in the rebellion, however unsuccessful, against the reigning school of Ibsenite realism. His Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats provided some of the lyrics for the 1982 musical Cats.