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Two of the events of the year were verse plays good enough to become reading hits as well as stage successes. T. S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party was a sophisticated, impeccably literate lesson in the need for understanding and faith in human relationships. Its sale of more than 50,000 copies put it in the bestseller class. And another Briton, Christopher Fry, showed in The Lady's Not for Burning that the English language can still sing and shine and that poetry can speak the common tongue with humor as well as compassion.