Becket

Becket or The Honor of God is a 1959 play by the French dramatist Jean Anouilh. It portrays a fictionalized version of the conflict that took place between King Henry II of England and the archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, in the 12th century. The English translation of the play premiered on Broadway in 1960 to great acclaim and was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film in 1964.

The central conflict of Becket, which ended in the archbishop’s assassination in his own cathedral by four of the king’s noblemen, is considered a notable episode in the history of church-state relations. Although he had been Henry’s best friend and advisor, Becket increasingly distanced himself from the king’s policies after his election as archbishop and fought for the rights of the clergy against the crown’s attempts to interfere in ecclesiastical affairs. Anouilh acknowledged that the play is historically inaccurate in some respects: Becket was Norman, not Saxon as depicted. Nevertheless, the themes of friendship versus duty and conflicting loyalties in a divided society are historically valid, connecting Becket with classic stage dramas of the past, like Shakespeare’s.

The play also includes existentialist themes more typical of the 1950s and 1960s. Becket is keenly aware of the absurdity of his situation, in which he is torn between loyalty to the church and the king, and to the Saxon and Norman factions in England.