Word: tempters
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Walter Huston plays the Devil with demoniacal glee. Disguised as Mr. Scratch, a quizzical Yankee trader with a duck hunter's cap, bristly sideburns and stubble beard, he is a puckish tempter. Whether he is getting Daniel plastered, playing the bass drum in the village band, or spryly nibbling a carrot, he seems to be hugely enjoying his part. He is the kind of Devil most people would like to know...
...Greek word agape: non-possessive rather than possessive love. This was and is, he believes, perhaps as actual a force as electricity. Fear is the root of all state-religions, it suffuses and gives shape to society, and is described by the prophets as Satan or the Tempter. Craving, a low state of creative energy, is the root of rebellion, and rebellion likewise is a state of sin or death. The technique by which the hostile power of the world is "bound" is broadly similar to Tolstoy's or Gandhi's nonresistance of evil...
Immediately a first tempter offers him case and luxury; a second, temporal power by resumption of the chancellorship; a third, temporal power by aiding the rebellious barons against the King; and a fourth, celestial glory through martydom. Thomas resists the first three, but his reaction to the fourth is not so clear, nor the application of the above solution so easy, for it is debatable whether he merely submits to death or seeks it, at the hands of the drunken knights sent by the King...
Robert Speaight is superb as Becket, because his behaviour and appearance indicate besides the man of God, the onetime parvenu, good liver, and states man. E. Martin Browne in addition to having directed the play, fills with great understanding the roles of the last tempter and the last speakers for the murderers. The nine women who comprise the chorus, the "type of the common man," lend much added power, through their lowly dignity, their hypnotic speeches of vague forboding, and their intuitive understanding of situations that baffle the priests. Poetry and drama are masterfully blended by author and actors
...very unsatanic friend, who nevertheless resembled Job's tempter in that he had done much going to and fro upon the earth, once described to me an extraordinary scene witnessed while he was sojourning in a distant wilderness. A hungry native, coming by chance upon a bowl of plantains or beetle larvae or some such delicacy, had thanked his tutelar deity for the good fortune and had dined with gusto. But his gastronomic joy was short-lived. A few hours later, a horror stricken fellow tribesman informed him that he had violated tabu, that he had eaten of the dish...