T. E. Eliot's "Murder in the Cathedral" left its first Harvard audience agreeably bewildered last night. It will be repeated at 9 o'clock on the evenings of Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday, and, it was recently announced, once again on Wednesday, to accommodate the crowds lured by the name of the author and the originality of the undertaking.

"Murder in the Cathedral", while leaving one a little confused over its general aim and import, at the same time delights through the rich variety of its mingled intellectual, poetic, and dramatic offerings. The theme is that of a proud man. Thomas a Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury, seeking and winning martyrdom. But interlarded with this central stuff are a chorus of sombre monks and another of wailing women who at one point rival 'the witches of "Macbeth' in their catalogue of the disgusting; paeans of religious fervor including an intellectual indictment of atheism; and, most daringly ingenious of all, an apology spoken by the murderers in the present-day language of a prosaic politician. The familiar casuistry of this episode is really much better suited for dramatic purposes than many of the pretentious poetic flights that adorn the work, and really have to be read to be grasped.

There is really only one character in the play: the Archbishop. Mr. Irving Locke, despite an occasional lapse of memory, rendered the role with an excellent proud reserve, the main thing called for.