structural:reformatting, information:filtering
II. A Game of Chess

This section centres around women and seduction, with the title a reference to the Jacobean play Women Beware Women in which the character Bianca is seduced while her mother-in-law is distracted by a game of chess. Its first scene describes an elaborately decorated room recalling Classical lovers such as Mark Antony and Cleopatra or Dido and Aeneas. The narrative moves to more disturbing references, such as to Philomela who was raped and turned into a nightingale, and the poem depicts her as still suffering at the hands of an uncaring world. This moves to a conversation between an anxious woman and the thoughts of her husband, who does not reply — his thoughts are preoccupied with loss and death. The second part of the section is set in an East End pub and features a conversation between working-class Cockney women. They discuss childbearing, infidelity and abortion in a matter-of-fact manner, and appear to be trapped in loveless superficial relationships. The end of the section sees Eliot interleave the words of the barman calling last orders ("Hurry up please its time") and the last words of Ophelia in Hamlet before her suicide by drowning, signifying the inevitability of ageing and death.