The historic
and psychological problem of Thomas Becket is his startling
transformation from an easy-going, luxurious, worldly statesman into a
gaunt ecclesiastic, fanatically fighting for the rights of his see, of
his order, and of Rome. In any drama which professes to deal (as this
does) with his whole career, the intellectual interest cannot but centre
in an analysis of the forces that brought about this seeming new-birth
of his soul. It would have been open to the poet, no doubt, to take up
his history at a later point, when he was already the full-fledged
clerical and ultramontane. But this Tennyson does not do. He is at pains
to present to us the magnificent Chancellor, the bosom friend of the
King, and mild reprover of his vices; and then, without the smallest
transition, hey presto! he is the intransigent priest, bitterly
combating the Constitutions of Clarendon. It is true that in the
Prologue the poet places one or two finger-posts--small, conventional
foreshadowings of coming trouble.
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