Introduction & Overview of The Cocktail Party by T. S. Eliot

The Cocktail Party Introduction

T. S. Eliot was at Princeton in 1948, working on the play One-Eye Riley, which would eventually develop into The Cocktail Party, when he rece1ved word that he had garnered that year's Nobel Prize for literature. His literary reputation was built mainly on his profic1ency as a poet and a critical theorist, but in the later years of his life most of Eliot' s work was concentrated on writing drama that would display his Christian sensibilities.

The Cocktail Party concerns a married couple, Edward and Lavinia Chamberlayne, who are separated after five years of marriage. The first and last acts of the play feature cocktail parties held at their home where their marital problems are aggravated by the pressure of having to keep up social appearances. Part same of the traditional British drawing room comedy and part philosophical discourse on the nature of human relations, the play, like many...
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