HONORLESSNESS:

In the early scenes, Becket's motives seem shady; does he really enjoy serving the king like a valet, as he claims, or is he only looking toward self-advancement? If the latter, then Becket gets his wish in short order, but it is not exactly what he bargained for. The king, wanting a loyal party man in the high ranks of the church, names him archbishop of Canterbury to replace the one who has just died. This announcement shocks Becket, who up to now has not led a life conspicuous for sanctity and who has not even yet been ordained a priest.

In an earlier scene, Becket and the king had been hunting and Becket had seen wild boar about to be killed. He had reflected that putting one's life on the line gives one "a moment of delicious personal contact when one feels, at last, responsible for oneself." It is in losing one's life that one finds it.

This line turns out to be prophetic for Becket as, now installed as archbishop, he increasingly defies the king's policies toward the church. The king's noblemen have had priests and monks murdered, abducted, or tried in secular courts; Becket accordingly excommunicates the noblemen in a move to protect his flock. In a later scene with the king, Becket says that his duty is not so much to do things as simply "to say no" to the king. The king is consequently torn with a mixture of love and hate toward Becket, seeing his opposition as a betrayal of their friendship. This violent passion eventually leads him to have Becket murdered.

The supreme irony is that the king caused his own crisis by elevating Becket, not foreseeing that Becket's character would be influenced and molded by his new office. It is here perhaps that the existential dimension of Becket is most evident: in its vision of how the roles we play in life and the moral choices we make shape who we are.

Upon becoming archbishop, Becket undergoes a shift of character so abrupt as to make the audience wonder if it missed a scene or two. He embraces his new office with the zeal of a monk, giving away his possessions to the poor and--in an unmistakable allusion to the Gospel parable--throwing open the doors of his residence for the poor to come and dine.

Becket gives voice to his conversion in two great prayer-soliloquies. In the first, he tells God of the liberating joy he feels in giving away his riches; the whole thing feels "far too easy" and he worries that God is somehow tempting him. In the second, he concludes "I don't believe you are a sad God" and that everything that is happening to him is part of the divine plan. Becket's change of identity is enacted in a neat coup de théâtre: At first dressed in fancy courtier's attire, he goes behind a screen in his bedroom and emerges a moment later wearing a simple woolen monk's robe. The moment symbolizes graphically how Becket has "put on Christ" and abandoned a life of power and privilege for one of humble service.

The suddenness of Becket's conversion conveys the idea of how having a great role thrust upon us can effect an immediate change. Anouilh is concerned with showing, in existential fashion, how our moral choices shape who we are as individuals. In standing against the king at great risk to himself Becket is defending the honor of God, but at the same time he is asserting his own identity and rights as a priest. The play asserts that our identities come from God and consist in the fact that we are his children and must obey his laws. As Becket says, "I was a man without honor. And suddenly I found it--one I never imagined would ever become mine--the honor of God." Because human beings are inherently moral agents, doing what is right leads us to our true fulfillment, peace and happiness. 

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