The Rock

A pageant play written by T. S. Eliot for performance at Sadler's Wells Theatre 28 May - 9 June 1934, on behalf of the Forty-five Churches Fund of the Diocese of London.

From British Drama, 1890 TO 1950: A Critical History, by Richard Farr Dietrich.


 * ...it was his talent in writing choral verse that was particularly called upon and developed in the commission from Martin Browne to contribute to the pageant play eventually called The Rock. Browne had written a scenario to order, based on a C. B. Cochran revue, and while Eliot apparently made small contributions to the story line (he claimed that only one scene was all his), he made major contributions to what was really the most dominant character—the chorus, half-masked to emphasize its impersonality. Written in aid of a church-building fund, The Rock made the building of a church in London its central action, relating that contemporary event to the long history of the Church’s struggle in England and to current events that threatened it (especially the challenge of the rival but godless creeds of fascism, communism, and capitalism), emphasizing that such building is essentially a spiritual enterprise that encounters constant testing of the faith. "The Rock" itself, first Christ and then Peter, reappears throughout to bolster the faith. The pageant play is a wide-ranging, all-encompassing form, appropriate for the occasion, but in its straying in time and space it sacrifices dramatic unity and intensity, and thus did not answer Eliot's desire to achieve a truly dramatic voice. Concerned to provide links between episodes through choral commentary, for the most part he either provided fairly pedestrian descriptive-explanatory verse or verse that spoke of the evils of the day in the editorial, haranguing voice of the preacher. Despite his success with a more colloquial diction matched to a free verse organized by stresses rather than syllables, Eliot was not satisfied. On the other hand, the experience had introduced him to the practical life of the theater, to its craft, and had made him known as one who could do good choral work.

Excerpt from Chorus I:


 * The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
 * The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
 * O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
 * O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
 * O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
 * The endless cycle of idea and action,
 * Endless invention, endless experiment,
 * Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
 * Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
 * Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
 * All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
 * But nearness to death no nearer to God.
 * Where is the Life we have lost in living?
 * Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
 * Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? (see Information Knowledge Wisdom)
 * The cycles of heaven in twenty centuries
 * Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.