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XXVIII - 1 9 6 2 - 5

424 REVUE DES LANGUES VIVANTES

KING AND ARCHBISHOP H E N R Y II A N D B E C K E T F R O M T E N N Y S O X TO F R Y

Introducing the film version of « Murder in the Cathedra! », Mr. T.S. Eliot writes : « In the play, there is no room, beside Thomas Becket, for another dominating character such as Henry II » (^). How easily the King was reintroduced into the film will be obvions, even from a superficial examination of the script (̂ ) ; this seems to support the contention that he is not quite banned from the original play. He is, in fact, one of thèse important characters in the drama of Eliot that do not appear on the stage, but are felt like ominous présences in the " world around the corner i» However, he is presented as « the King » rather than as Henry Plantagenet. Though « Ivlur-der in the Oathedral » emphasizes what occurs on the « plane of the mystery », the personal conflict between the spiritual leader and the temporal ruler lias meaning, and the King can-not be cômpletely obliterated from the action : he has to be there, be it only as a counterpart to the Becket who stands for the Church. « For most people Henry only exists in relation to Becket » : the remark is not only ours, but also Mr. Ohristopher Fry's in an article on his latest play « Curtmantle » — and a total reversai of that attitude seems to have been the startinp point for his work.

« Curtmantle » covers some thirty years — to Eliot's seven-teen days — and introduces Queen Eleanor and the royal princes as well as Philip of France and Becket's successor to the Chancellorship (*). Thomas's own stature is unavoidably reduced in accordance, and if he reniains an important character in act 1 and the first part of act II, it is, however, in the shadow of his royal master. This changed relation is acknow-ledged in the play by Becket himself, saying : « There would be no Becket, without the King » (C, p. 11 ) (^). I t might be worth noticing that, in Fry's play, Thomas never shares the stage with Henry alone ; either Eleanor is introduced as a third party, or the King is accompanied by Courtiers and Becket by Bishops, as in the great scène of act II , where their

(1) « T h e Fi lm of Murder in the Cathedral », p. 9. (2) What may be contended in the case of the play — i.e. that Thomas is

the only character because the real action takes place in his mind, — does not, of course, hold for the film.

(3) The phrase is Eliot's in « T h e Fami ly R e u n i o n » . (4) Thi s character, an illegitimate son of Henry II called Geoffrey, has

been renam(>d Roger to avoid possible confusion with the young prince of that name.

(5) The King himself, however, says (C. p. 47) : « I t looks as if this island. Isu't large enough to contain both of u s » .

KING AND ARCHBISHOP 425

confrontation is duplicated by a kind of pantomime struggle between Men of the Court and Priests. Moreover, it is Beeket this time who is not presented as an individual, but rather as a symbol of the (^hurch, i.e. one of thèse forces whose interplay is Fry's major thème, beside the study of Henry's character. In his discussions with the King, Becîket does not reveal hia intimate feelings, but speaks in very gênerai ternis, as if he was not personally involved. And Eleanor addresses the two ineu as

« Let me say this to the man who niakes the world — And also to the man who makes himself the Churchi».

(C, p. 47).

Becket's murder « in the cathedral », whereby the person is annihilated but the symbol remains untouched, is not enacted in « Curtmantle » ; what the audience is given instead is Henry's reaction to the news of the assassination. Whereas Eliot uses the chorus to voice the universal corruption arising from this single foui deed (« Clean the air ! clean the sky ! wash the wind »... M. p. 76), in Fry's play it is the King himself who expresses the same feeling : « Foui and corrupt ; foui and corrupt ! AU / Contagious. AU due for death... I t is treason now to breathe... » (C. p. 75). Even Becket's death is thus made whoUy significant in relation to Henry ; moreover, it is linked with Henry's owu death in the final scène (C. p. 95). Henry's towering figure is at the centre of the play, as the author wanted it to be (^).

I t was only in a study of the personal relationship of the two men — the liistorical events being deliberately subordinated to that relationship — that Henry and Becket could be intro-duced with equal status. And indeed, in Mr. Jean Anouilh's « Becket, ou l'Honneur de Dieu », they are treated on such a footing of equality that, after a few performances of the English version of the play, the leading actor, Sir Lawrence Oliver, suddenly abandoned the part of Becket to take up that of Henry. Here the King and the Archbishop could be given the same importance, because they are not primarily seen as King and Archbishop. This equality is achieved, a.o., by giving them about the same time of présence on the stage. During the first two acts, they occupy the scène together, and practically without interruption ; in the second part of the play (acts I I I and IV), they meet only once, in the culminating encounter at La Ferté-Bernard, while before and after, scènes with Henry

(6) In his Foreword, Fry writes : « .Tust a s the thirty-five years of his reign contain a concentration of the human condition, so his character covers a vast field of human nature... I t is di f f icult to thiuk of any facet of man which at .some time he didn't demonstrate. e \ cept chastity and sloth ». (C. p. I X ) .

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alone or Becket alone alternate. But the mysterious link that binds thein is once more emphasized in the final scène, where the kneeling Thomas falls under the daggers of the murderers, and the King, in just the same attitude, at the same place, endures the blows of the chastising monks. So that the title is — deliberately, we think — misleading : Becket is not the chief character, and the pangs of unrequited love ('') are as important a motive as the burden of God's honour.

*

One might wonder if there is not, in Anouilh's play, a certain discrepancy between the two parts, — if, in other words, a non-historical first half lias not been combined with a historical second half, the ontside world of events entering, as it were, through the breach that has suddenly opened between the former friends. I t seems to us that this is not the case ; even in acts I I I and IV, the Becket Henry relationship remains in the foreground. Anouilh's play is even less historical than Eliot's (see also below). Even Pry claims — with some good ground — not to have written a chronicle play (^) ; only in the much older work of Tennyson do we find the coloured, confused, romantic picture, and the historical-legendary mate-rial that have long seemed requisites of that type of drama. Tennyson's « Becket » is more than twice as long as « Mur-der in the Cathedral », and much more complicated than the French play, or even « Curtmantle ». The strong central thèmes in the former, the telescopiiig of events in the latter, where Henry II 's life is presented as seen in the mind of a secondary character, endow both works with a cohésion that is lacking in Tennyson's. The Victorian playwright obviously ddights in his complicated plot, introducing among his char-acters Pair Rosamund, the Grand Prior of the Knights Templars and the Pope's Almoner, turning Fitzurse, De Tracy and De Brito into disappointed suitors of fair Rosamund, and Becket into her guardian and protector. He twice saves her life, the second time from the infuriated Queen herself, who has fol-lowed little Geoffrey into Rosamund's « secret bower » and recognizes at her rival's neck the golden cross she had offered

(7) It has been suggested that this love is — mieonscionsly at least — ot an homosexual nature. There are arsuments to be found for this contention in Henry's att itude towards his queen and towards Gwendoline, — also in Anouilh's work taken as a whole. See a.o. Philippe .lolivet's paper in « E t u d e s Germaniques» . X V I , 3. See also p. 1 9 6 : . . . « v o t r e amour déç.i pour cet homme ! . . . Thomas Becket serait une femme qui vous aurait trahi et que vous aimeriez encore, vous n'agiriez pas au trement» .

(8) See below. Eliot writes in « Poetr.v and D r a m a » ( « Selected P r o s e » , Penguin édition, p. 78) : « I did not want to write a chronicle of twelftli-century politics ».

KING AND ARCHBISHOP 427

to her royal hnsband. Henry II décides on Becket's mnrder in the belief that Rosainund is in love with him, and in the final scène, llosamund disguised as a monk kneels by the body of Becket while a niost unexpected storm breaks ont to voice Nature's — and God's — anger against the treacherous knights ('). I t is comraon knowiedge that the success enjoyed by Tennyson's plays depended rather on the « magnetic person-ality » and theatrical talent of Irving than on the dramatic skill of tlieir author. An exaniination of « Becket » suggests that Irving's talent must have been considérable indeed.

*

The opposition Understanding Hero - Bliud Chorus is one of the familiar thèmes of Eliot's work ; it is already apparent in several poems and in the early dramatic attempt « Sweeney Agonistes ». In « Murder in the Cathedral », that basic opposi­tion is maintained, althoiigh the secondary cliaracters gravi-tating around the hero are slightly differentiated. Becket stands alone, the Tenipters might be nothihg more than émanations of his mind (̂ °) ; the other persons iii the play only express gênerai feelings contrasted with bis. The temptation must have been great to tnrn even Thomas himself into a symbol, as the central hero is in some expressionistic plays ; this however the author bas avoided. In fact we are presented a double character, and this doubleness is a stage transposition of ethical views : the personal tragedy reflects a gênerai tragedy, the tcmporary strnggle is the image of an éternel struggle, Thomas is both a character in a drama, i.e. some other person, and a personage of myth, i.e. ourselves. On the one hand he is a symbol ; he stands for Christ, for every martyr past and future ("), for Teter, archbishop of Rome ('^), for the Church, against the World. Yet he is human, i.e. part of the World ; the frailty of bis condition must remain discernible ; this, we think, is one of the reasons for the introduction of the first

(9) The storm is historical. Only Tennyson mentions it. (10) The Fourth Tempter argues with sentences pronouncetl earlier by

Thomas himself. In the filme<l version of the play. the Fourth Temptation is présentée! merely as a voice proceeding from an invisible actor (Eliot 's own voice was used for that purpose).

(11) The Communion of Saints is one of the dogmas Eliot advoeates with partîcular emphasis. Through St. Stephen. the f irst martyr, and ail his suceessors, the redemptory power of the dead Becket is linked with the saving grâce of Christ himself. The connection is stressed in several passages of the play, especially in the Interlude sermon.

(12) Who, it might be remembered, w a s also tempted to resist temporal power by the wrong method of violence. The similitude with l'eter endowa several l ines of the play with new shades of meaning, e.g. « . . . who sha l l / streteh his hand to the fire, and deny his master ? » ( « M u r d e r in the Cathedra l» , p. 12). « T h e rock of God is beneath our feet » (p. 17) . « N o one shall say that I betrayed a king » (p. 34) .

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three Tempters. The audience are not asked to believe that a man who has travelled spiritually as far as Thomas might still be tempted by a life of pleasure ; the function of thèse first three temptations is rather to give illuniinating éléments of judgment and reniind the spectator of Becket's frailty : he erred in the past, serving the World in varions ways, and may choose wrong again. So, if little is left of « Old Tom, gay Tom, Becket of London » (M. p. 23), some features of the mighty chancellor who « ruled like an eagle over doves » (id. p. 34) remain. There is sonie dramatic necessity in this, becanse only pride — the sin of Satan — could niake Becket yield to the arguments of the Fourth Tempter. But even after his victory over himself, after the Christmas sermon has revealed his full understanding and submission, he shows pride, anger and bitterness in his discussion with the Knights. Of course, Eliot lias followed history on this point ; but we may wonder if the contenipt in which Becket holds the Knights is not justified, partly by a sort of righteous anger against the unrighteous, partly by a clear-siglited appréciation of their insignificance (« weak, sad men »... M. p. 84). For Thomas, unlike the Hweeney of the former unfinished play, is actually a superior personality ; he does not stand between the audience and the other characters, but above the audience, because he is reacting to a « vision » ("), and knows things which neither the audience nor the other protagonists understand.

However différent froni Eliot's, Anouilh's théâtre also offers several exaniples of characters whose isolation is the resuit of some mysterious élection, some disturbing vocation — for purity, if not for sainthood. Thèse characters — Thérèse in « La É>auvage », Eurydice, Antigone, Julien in « Colombe » — exhibit at the same tinie the slightly contemptuous detachnient of the child who refuses the conventions and compromises of the adult world, and the stubborn blindness of the fighter in a good cause, who will never capitulate, even with the heaviest odds again.st liim. «L 'enfant» , «le bon petit s o l d a t i » , thèse two aspects are also combined in Anouilh's Becket. His Thomas is not simply the man of superior gifts we are also presented in « Curtmantle » (« Our dear friend of the ten talents », C. p. 12), displaying his extraordinary skill indifferently on the field of battle (« I l y a une chose qu'on ne peut pas dire, c'est qu'il ne se bat pas bien'»', B. p. 69), or in the even more dangerous field of politics (« Il vous damerait le pion à tous », B. p. 21) ; he is not even simply « le seul homme intelligent de mon royaume » (B. p. 143) ; he is marked off from the others, différent and unattainable. « C'est une âme étrange, insaisissa-

(13) ALso Harry Monchensey in « The Fami ly Reunion » and Celia in « Tlie Cocktail Par ty » are distinguished from tlie otliers by Personal, incom­municable visions.

KING AND ARGHBISHOP 429

ble » (B. p. 33). As the King dimly guesses the pretence of liecket's friendship, his Welsh mistress is not mistaken about Becket's love : « Mon Seigneur n'aime rien au monde, n'est-ce pas ?!» (B. p. 61) (") . Even his understanding of and pity for the oppressed Saxons — clearly demonstrated by the incident in the forest — might be another luxury beside his forks and gold plate. Thomas himself exclaims very significantly at the moment of his conversion : « J 'aurais voulu au moins regretter quelque chose ! » (B. p. 110). And yet lie is not the virgin priest, the scheming intellectual we are offered in Fry's play, as well as in Tennyson's or in C F . Meyer's fanious short story « Der Ileilige » (^') ; young Becket enjoys life, « a night spent drinking and -vvhoring M as well as a solitary gallop in tlie cold winter morning ; hence the King's poignant cry : « Becket a été mon ami, plein de force, de générosité et de sang .'i» (B. p. 141 - italics ours). He is a great force that lacks a point of application. Once this point has been found, Thomas will fare to the bitter end : « . . . il ne fallait pas me remettre le fardeau. J'en suis chargé maintenant, j'ai retroussé mes manches, et on ne me fera plus lâcher ». (B. p. 134). I t is however noteworthy that Thomas is sustained in his long, obstinate struggle, by an unexpected and quite modem feeling : the idea of absurdity : « Il faut seulement faire, ahsurdernent (our italics), ce dont on a été chargé — jusqu'au bout » (B. p. 171). So, in Anouilh's work, the Archbishop of England is a distant brother of the frail Antigone, who also placed — jusqu'à l'absurde — the divine law above the law of Man ; and the price to be paid for that cannot be less than one's life.

To that gallery of portraits of Thomas Becket, Fry has added a Personal contribution, endowing the conventional picture with touches of his own. He suggests, e.g., that the dissipation and frivolity of « OUI Tom of London », as well as the subsé­quent luxury and extravagance of the Chancellor, are the calculated démonstrations of a élever manipulator of human hearts and minds — as his later shows of humility might well be in some measure too. Moreover, where Anouilh's hero is certainly not indiffèrent to women, Fry's is « an incorruptible virgin », having « given up women in God's name » (C. p. 13). So that the audience, like King Henry himself, already see in the worldly Becket « the holy apprentice » (C. p. 13) ; the change wrought in him by his élévation to the archbishopric is legs unexpected. I t is without surprise that we hear him plead the cause of the Church with arguments used before by Eliot's

(14) Cf. p. 174 : « T u l'aimais. Gwendoline '! . . . Non, mon prince, en mou Ame et conscience, je ne l'aimais pas ».

'15) Meyer stresses the ph.vsical contrast between the two men ; his Becket is slender, pale, a lways ahsorbed in thought, while Henry is strong. violent, a passionate hunter, an amateur of food and women. See P. Jolivet's paper mentioned in note 7.

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Thomas : « ... one of us thei*e has to be / To whom the single eare is not of this world » (C. p. 32). « This is not under the law, but under grâce » (C. p. 40). « As time is contained in eternity / So is temporal action contained in eternal truth. / And that truth can't be put at the mercy of timei» (C. p. 33) (1 )̂. But the development of the Eliotian hero is towards renunciation, submission, acceptance, instead of violence and struggle ; while Pry présents a man who is suddenly seized in a whirlwind of passion, after having however doubted his own capacities : « I doubt if I should ever be / Sufficient in myself to hold my course / Without any approval » (C. p. 20). God's approval — for that is, after ail, what the élection amounts to — will sweep away thèse doubts and after that, nothing will make him deviate from the chosen course ; lie is instrumental to his own destruction, acting with such inflamed violence as to justify William Marshal's picture of him as « . . . a man / who had gone through life saving up ail passion / To spend at last on his own downfall » (C. p. 70). Despite the poetical beauty of the image, one is irresistibly reminded of the Fourth Knight's « suicide while of unsound mind »-verdict in the final scène of « Murder in the Cathedral ».

*

We shall now turn to Henry II, for whom the différences in présentation in Anouilh's play and in Fry's are still more striking. For obvious reasons, the French writer wants to keep Henry inferior to Becket — and, we might add, every other character, except Lewis of France, inferior to Henry, as it appears from his rather unfair portrait of Queen Eleanor. Oonsequently, the King's splendid gifts, exalted in « Curt-mantle » beside gross faults, are turned in the French play into minor virtues assorted to corresponding weaknesses. - Where Fry mentions a brilliant intelligence that « sometimes suprises the scholars on their own ground » (C. p. 57) ("), Anouilh depicts a cunning, hypocritical and coarse young man (^*), who is not however without some common sensé and practical dispositions, and knows how to turn his transitory « bon

(16) The eonflict of Church and State is not seen as a political pheno-menon ; it refleets the unavoidable discrepanc.v l)etween what is ephemeral and what is eternal. Cf. e.g. « Thi s is no new discord, only one engagement / In an unending war » ( « T h e Fi lm of Murder in the Cathedral» , p. 20) . « To be master or servant within an hour / That is the course of temporal power » (Murder, p. 36-37). « I t is not in time that my death shall be known ; / I t is out of t ime that my décision is taken ». (id., p. 73) .

(17) Thi s is said, in fact, of Roger, who is « like his father » in this respect.

(18) « D i r e qu'avant lui [i.e. Becket ] j'étais comme vous ! U n e bonne grosse machine. . . Qu'est-ce que tu es venu y fourrer, Becket, pour que cela ne tourne plus rond ? » (B., p. 198) .

EING AND ARGHBI8H0P 4 3 1

gai'çonisme » into a policy of government. Where Anouilh's Henry is lectured by Becket on elenientary politics, witli Fry it is the King who has the wider views : « Froni the Arctic circle to the Pyrénées / The King's peace is holding secure » (C. p. 12). The plan of the world is « well drawn for a hundred years of peace» (C. p. 56). And the King who clalnis to « dictate the future » (p. 54) and « put it in working order » (p. 55) finds his field of action toc narrow : « A pity the whole of the earth is not to be / Serene in our keeping » (p. 23). In the final death scène, Marshal sunis up the King's life in comparisons evoking both Atlas and Bisyphus (C. p. 93) :

« You have shouldered up a world towards your mind, Seen it throwu down more than once As though for ever, and righted it, lifted it, Borne it even higher... »

How could a woman resist a force that wants to subjugate the world ? Queen Eleanor speaks of « the day I suffered his invasion » (p. 15), and, comparing hini with her former husband, says : « . . . with Henry / I t is like being married to a jobbing Jupiter » (p. 18). There is a fascination emanating from Henry, that changes huinan niinds and hearts as well as the course of events : « However fast the rebellions corne / Or the miracles flow from the dead Becket / They disappear like snow from the heat of his flesh » (p. 79).

The same force, however, can be turned to evil. Henfy's Savage violence is exemplified in both « Becket » and « Curt-mantle » by some of thèse explosions of anger that history recorded as a family trai t in the Angevin kings C ) . But here again, Henry's wild transports in « Curtmantle » are the anger of a sovereign challenged by a rebellious subject, whereas in « Becket » we witness the suffering and impotent rage of the natural leader who is abandoned, denied, by his elected compa-nion and accepted equal : an « impérial Caesar » turned power-less against the Brutus who betrays him. I t is characteristic that Anouilh does not even mention the cruel treatment of Becket's relatives, — a good example of the King's frenzy which is not forgotten in « Curtmantle », and brings tears to the fair eyes of Tennyson's Rosamund. Quite revelatory too is the différence in the-treatment of the résignation scène («From his Grâce of Canterbury, my Lord... » — C. p. 28 ff. — « Un messager de l'Archevêque-primat, mon seigneur —

(19) E. g. in « Curtmantle » : p. 42 : Henry (with a roar) ; p. 46 : Henry (now in full cry) ; p. 71 : Henry (ras ins) ... etc. AIso in « Becket » : p. 24 : Le Roi -s'est levé, furieux ; p. 44 : Le Roi, hurlant soudain. But his most spectaeular f i t s ot rage occur in thc second part, and are a lways caused by Becket's « treason ». 'There is a deliberate gradation in the stage directions : p. 115 : Le Roi, hors de lui ; p. 117 : . . . se dresse et hurle ; p. 140/142. Le Roi, écumant, . . . rugit ; p. 200 : I>e Roi se lève et rugit.

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B. p. 115 ff.). I t seems to us however that Fry went further than Anouilh, and wanted to convey the idea that violence is the King's hammartia, his tragic flaw. Indeed, that violence is of a strangely contagious nature. Henry's Queen reproaches him for breeding anarchy, « a state which is indivisible, / Stretching from your own body across the face of the world » (C. p. 53). Henry hiniself, commenting on his own case as an observer froni outside, describes how « the natural poisons in him / Creep from everything he sees and touches », so that « he speaks what he doesn't say, and does / What is not his doing » (^). This applies to Becket's murder, but also, it would seem, to everything that follows, for « tlie unattended / Moment sweeps away the whole attempt, / The heart, thoughts, belief, longing / And intention of the man » (0. p. 73). So it is that Henry grows into a truly tragic figure : some higher Power thwarts him in his effort towards order and unity. As Queen Eleanor expresses it, « The true law... may prove to be / Not unity but diversityo) (C. p. 81) ; « God thrives on chance and change » (C. p. 82). Henry will die a broken king ; and never-theless he has laid the foundations of a new order « upon which succeeding générations would build » (^'). This is the irony of his fate ; it illustrâtes the mysterious process by which is achieved, in Fry's own words, « the créative order contained in the apparent anarchy of life » (^). How broadly the author has conceived his major thème, — « the interplay of différent laws : civil, canon, moral, aesthetic, and the laws of God ; and how they belong and do not belong to each othen» (^) — will now be obvions.

Here then are three (̂ *) stage adaptations of the same story, three plots where the same historical events offer almost iden-

(20) « Curtmantlp », p. 73. The whole passage is of interest. (21) Winston Churchill, « T h e History of the English-speaking P e o p l e s » ,

qiioted by Fr y in his Foreword (C. p. V I I ) . (22) The phrase is Fry's, in an interview published in the February 1961

issue of « Twentieth Century » under the title « Talking of Henry » (p. 185) . It would seem that Fry's conception of « the créative order of things » w a s influenced by his méditations upon Teilhard de Chardin's « l'henomenon of Man ». Several passages in the play emphasize the existence of this « o r d e r » . e.g. p. 17, Henry : « A n d not by accident, / Th i s meeting with her. I t was in the great / l 'attern of events » ; p. 22, Becket : « Del ivering us up, in fact. to universal workings / Which neither you nor I wish to comply with / Or even to contemplate » ; p. 48, Eleanor : « But things will be decided : will décide themselves » ; p. 82, Eleanor : « You ean accuse me of nothing, except of following / The free course of events, the new order of things / Which is growing tip round us ».

See also Merlin's speech in « Thor. with Angels », a much earlier play where a first suggestion of the sanie idea can be fonnd.

(23) Introduction, « Curtmantle », p. IX. (24) W e sliall leave Tennyson's « Becket » out of considération here.

KING AND ARGHBI8H0P 4 3 3

tical landmarks in a progression towards the same unavoidable end ; and yet how widely they differ, not only in the conception and présentation of the chief characters, as we hope to have shown conclusively above, but in almost every aspect of tlie final product ! Each author lias claimed to write a modem play, but how unlike are the justifications for that modernity !

In the case of « Murder in the Cathedral », the choice of an historical siibject was partly commanded by circumstances. Eliot, long before he started writing for the théâtre, held the opinion that the playwright should offer his audience a direct picture of the world they live in (^^). And indeed the audience of « Murder in the Cathedral » are involved in the action, not only by Becket's Christmas sermon and by the speech of the Knights (^), but by direct addresses from Thomas and otlier characters in the course of the action. Moreover, the play has been deliberately limited to the part of the story « which is of ail times, as well as of our time : A man cornes home, fore-seeing that he will be killed, and he is killed... » (^). Of the 1.400 Unes of the play, not 150 refer — and almost always obliquely — to the historical situation ; proper names are avoided ; niost sentences have a gênerai as well as au occasional meaning (see e.g. the offers of the Third Tempter). In spite of ail this, « Murder iu the Cathedral » offers several features of a mediaeval play, especially in the First Part, with the central hero successively meeting other, symbolical characters ; the second part is more heterogeneous, but the deliberately slowed-up action enhances the ritualistic aspect, so that even the speech of the Knights, with its platform prose, does not sound truly modem. Moreover, the four-stress line with occasional couplet rhymes used by the characters when they speak individually is, as Eliot himself has acknowledged, the line of « Every-man» (^). Ou the whole, the combination of « modem » content with « mediaeval » form results, by a curious process of neutral-ization, in a play that looks ont of time rather than of our time. In spite of the author's obvions efforts, the average XXth cen-tury audience will not, in our opinion, feel deeply concerned.

In opposition to Eliot, Fry has confessed his wish to « represent as nearly as possible the events as they may really

(25) Before El iot started writ ing full-length plays. younger playwrights as Auden e.g. had already experimented rather eonvincingly with modem matcrial in « poetic » plays.

(26) Eliot at'Iinowledges a possible, thoiigh eertainly slight influence of Shaw's « Saint .loan » (cf. his essay « Poetry and Drama » in Selected Prose, Penguin édition, p. 79) .

(27) Same essay, p. 78. (28) Thi s line in « Murder in the Cathedral » has four beatii ; r'.iyme is

introduced, generally in the form of the couplet ; hpre and there a quatrain is substituted, or even a more elaborate composition including unrhymed lines. A subtle alternance between rhyme and ab.sence of rhynie is main-tained ; when rhyme is absent, all itération is used more lavishiy and répéti­tion becomes more fréquent.

434 REVUE DES LANGUES VIVANTES

have happened » (^). « The déviations from historical aceuracy are on the whole no greater than niight occur in a man's memory... Nothing in the play is entirely invented » (^). Yet there is, on the other hand, « no strong définition of time and place ; events are telescoped, and the action sometimes nioves from place to place within a speech ». The author attempted, lie tells us, « to make the characters immédiate » ; and he adds : « for us to belong to their time, if you like, or them to ours » ... as if the two opérations were strictly équivalent ! If we judge by the final product rather than by the writer's intentions, it would seem that de.spite Fry's rather différent attitude, the process of iieutralization of time we have men-tioned above iu the case of Eliot also opérâtes here : in his attempt to widen the meaning of his play and turn it into a tragedy on a large scale, Fry does not présent life-size char­acters witli whoin we can share a bond of .'^ympathy, but figures that are larger than life and have something of tinieless abstractions. However, the process of depersonalization is less marked in « (\irtmantle » than in « Murder in the Cathedral », especially in the central hero. In fact, whereas Shaw combined the historical play with the play of ideas, here we find it combined with the poetic drama — the reality of life and history being used as an objective corrélative for a more gênerai, « cosmic » reality.

This is not the case in Anouilh's play, which is hardly historical at ail. Not only are there numerous deliberate distortions of well-known facts — e.g. when Henry is shown as lacking intelligence or fearing the priests (^'), or when Eleanor, a mature woman, older than Henry by eleven years and of renowned charm, is presented as « la jeune reine i» wliose « ventre est un désert » (p. 141) — not only are there more anachronisms than simply the mention of forks in the X l i t h century, but countless passages refer to contemporary events, the French King manages to qnote from Racine (and, possibly, from Françoise Sagan) (^), great fun is made of the fact that Henry's barons are considered as «occupation troops» by the Saxons while the French army plays the sanie part in Normandy, etc., etc. The process of caricature, always apparent in Anouilh's plays, is as dexterously applied here as it is in

(29) In the same interview, cf. note 22. In his foreword (p. V I I ) , F r y stresses the playwright's duty to tell his story « without clistortiUK the material he has choseu to use. Otherwise let him Invent his characters, let him go to Rurltania for his history ».

(30) Foreword, p. V I I I . « Eveu the incident of the old woman and her feather-hed is on record» . A few «manipulat ions of f a c t » are mentioned in the same passage.

(31) Henry w a s famous for talking aloud, scribbling notes and looking at picture-books duriug mass ; he never confessed and cursed God in wild frenzies of blasphemy.

(32) « D a n s un mois, dans un a n . . . » , (p. 151) .

KING AND ARGHBISHOP 435

« L'Alouette », that other dramatization of the story of a national saint. «Fa r more than one realize.s, ' L'Alouette ' is luocking the saint, the (,^hurch, French peasants, Preneli royalty, inankind)) (^). Change the last words into «Saxon peasants, Engli.sh roj^alty, mankind », and this judgnient of the English critic Wallace Fowlie will hold for « lîeeket, ou l'Honneur de Dieu ». And yet the central thème is iiulisputahly tragic. On the whole, the work is, in Anouilh's own teriiiinolof,y, a « pièce brillante », where the « brilliancy » ari.ses from this mixture of seriousness at the core and lightness of treatment. The typieal blend of pity and sarcasm also contribute's to the modernity of the play ; we shall certainly not atterapt to del'ine that elusive notion of «modernity», but Anouilh's' « .^ecket » strikes us as belonging more defiuitely to our time than the other two plays. And the considérable différences in thèse three versions of the Becket story illustrate one of the most characteristic aspects of the contemporary théâtre : its rejection of old rules, its wish to be totally free to try in every possible direction, to absorb every possible influence, to mix ail genres —• in short, its protean quality.

(Université Libre de Bruxelles) •!. DIEKICKX

FAULKNER'S « MOSQUITOES » AND JOYCE'S « ULYSSES »

Which of .lames Joyce's works William Faulkner had read and was acquainted with and what possible use, deliberate or unconscious, he could bave niade of his reading and knowledge is an extremely difficult question to answer deflnitively. For one thing, Faulkner claimed that he had not read Ulysses, had not even acquired a copy of it until af ter he had written The Sound and fhe Fury, tliough that novel contains a brilliant handling of the stream-or-consciousness genre, and there appear to be definite parallels between Quentin Compson and Stephen Déda­ins. Faulkner's own cryptic comments on Joyce do not help the literary historian very much : « You should approach Joyce's Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with falth » ('). However, on several occasions

(1) Jean STEIN, « W i l l i a m F a u l k n e r : The Art of F i c t i o n » , The Paris Review, IV, 28-52 (Spring, 1956) . Robert Coughlan reports that Phil Stone,