SOURCE: "History and Politics," in Anouilh, Oliver and Boyd, 1968, pp. 46-65.

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

Perhaps even more than in L'Alouette, Anouilh's aim in Becket is to entertain rather than disturb. Indeed, the ease with which a highly successful commercial film was based upon the play is an indication both of its excellent construction and of its lack of controversial matter. The only surprising feature about the success of Becket is that it should have had to wait for a year before a theatre could be found to accommodate it in Paris. It was, in fact, completed by October 1958, but not produced until a year later, when, like L'Alouette, it enjoyed an extremely enthusiastic reception from the critics and a long run. This success was repeated both in England and America, and it was indeed only in Italy that there was...