In the following essay, Gatlin investigates the role of honor in Becket.

In the following essay, Gatlin traces the evolving meaning of the concept of honor in Becket.

In the folowing essay, Stroupe argues that a recurring pattern of references to fathers, sons, and brothers in Becket constitutes "one of the central methods by which Anouilh links the many aspects of the quarrel between church and state, between Becket and Henry."

In the excerpt below, Thody offers a thematic overview of Becket.

In the following review, Clurman derides the acting in the 1961 New York production of Becket and asserts that the play is “intellectually (as well as historically) skimpy; of true religious sentiment there is barely a trace, and its morality is without real commitment.”

There is now general critical agreement about Anouilh's Becket. Formerly docile to the random quality of life, willing to play whatever role is offered him, without an honor of his own to value, agnostic if not atheistic, Becket determines finally to consummate his life in the role of Archbishop of Canterbury. His heightened sense of aesthetics tells him that the role he embraces to give meaning to his existence must finally protect the honor of God at all costs…. [His] is not a death which dr...