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The Cocktail Party
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Cocktail Party is a play by T. S. Eliot. It was first performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1949. In 1950 it had successful runs in New York and London theaters.
The play focuses on a troubled married couple and their associates. Through the intervention of a rather mysterious individual, the couple settles their problems and move on apparently successfully with their lives. The Christian martyrdom of the male protagonist's lover, is seen as a sacrifice that permits the predominantly secular life of the community to continue. The author himself sums up the play thus :"Whatever you find in it, depends on what you bring to it".
In 1951, in the first Theodore Spencer Memorial Lecture at Harvard University Eliot criticized his own plays in the second half of the lecture, explicitly the plays Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party. The lecture was published as Poetry and Drama and later included in Eliot's 1957 collection On Poetry and Poets.