I got a new job recently, and this one has a lot more downtime than my last one. Which is great. My last job was miserable. I like this one a lot more. I have to be creative about my downtime, though - I can't use my phone or browse the web. I discovered a week or two ago that I had a copy of T. S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral in my bag that my partner Grahame got me for Christmas last year.

Murder in the Cathedral and I have a history. I had to do a presentation on it for a "literature fair" competition thing when I was in high school. My feelings about it were complicated and I had trouble articulating them. This was compounded by the fact that I had an asthma attack right before and my inhaler makes me jittery. I lost to my then-archnemesis, a cheerleader who didn't really get Toni Morrison but delivered her presentation more confidently than my autistic ass. It's true, I'm a parody of myself.

Since then, I've reread Murder several times. I love it, but I only recommend it if you 1.) Really like Eliot and 2.) Enjoy getting all always-sunny-conspiracy-wall.gif about literature. It's one of those works where I find something new to have brainworms about every time I read it. This time, it's the patterns of four (or, rather, 3 + 1):

• four priests: three unnamed plus Becket
• four tempters: three "earthly" tempters anticipated and easily dismissed by Becket plus one who actually gets to him
• four knights: three with major speaking roles plus one who says nearly nothing until after the deed is done

The threes also correlate with the estates of the ancien régime in their aims, which align with those of the nobility, the church, and the people respectively. The fourth of each is more detached and arguably more esoteric than the others, in alignment with Becket as a figure in opposition to all of the above in the name of God. I want to look more into whether there's also a four-horsemen motif, but this means I'm going to have to read Revelation, and I don't own a Bible.

Until then, I'll just have to settle for the other two Becket plays - Tennyson and Anouilh. The former is. Well. It's Tennyson, and it reads like Tennyson. The latter is absolutely batshit insane in the best way and I highly recommend it if you like Psychosexually Normal Historical Figures. I still need to see the movie.