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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2010
*Derek Verschoyle.
"The Theatre."
Spectator 152,
no. 5527 (1 June 1934),
851.
The production of Mr. Eliot's pageant play is organized by the Diocese of London, in aid of the Forty-Five Churches Fund, the president of which is the Lord Bishop of London. Apart, therefore, from its place as a contribution to English dramatic literature, The Rock is to be considered as an official apologia for the campaign of church-building which the fund was started to finance. In both respects it is an extremely interesting work, and in both it is at least partially a failure.
The direct action of the play turns upon the efforts of a group of bricklayers engaged in building a church, and the difficulties (from bad foundations, lack of money, agitators, hostile criticism) against which they have to struggle: their difficulties symbolize as well the general attitude to religion of the secular world. The process of construction is shown in every stage. In the first scene the workmen appear starting on the foundations; later the church is seen half builts; finally, it is shown completed and ready for dedication. The Church's requirements of today are illustrated by a complementary series of pageant scenes, presenting episodes in the history of the Church, for the most part the Church in London: the conversion of King Sabert by Mellitus, Rahere's building of St. Bartholomew's, the dedication of Westminster Abbey, outbursts of Puritan iconoclasm. The episodes are linked together by a chorus, which comments both upon the action of the play and upon the present problems of the Church.
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