Set in 1171,
Four Nights in Knaresborough opens in
Canterbury Cathedral where four knights, Brito, Fitz, Morville and Traci, come to arrest Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury. However, rather than arresting him, Becket is killed by Fitz. Of the four knights, Morville is the one most upset by his excommunication and isolation and argues that Becket had to die as he was opposing the progressive reforms of King
Henry II. He even claims that Henry is playing a careful political game but is really on the knights' side. Brito is not an aristocrat like the other knights, but is rather a "new man" who joined the others less out of conviction than of opportunism. As the most active and the youngest of the four knights, his imprisonment is a kind of rite of passage and he grows through the play. Brito is also rampantly heterosexual and, despite a mutual attraction between himself and Traci, he chases Catherine and ultimately martyrs himself for her when she succumbs to a fatal disease circulating the village of Knaresborough. Traci is the most complex character in the play. Guilt-ridden like Morville, he is also in love with Brito. In the past he has had a relationship with the fourth knight, the aristocratic Fitz, but is now very much alone. While the knights wait out their time in the castle, Catherine keeps the villagers at bay by assuring them that her tenants are seeking penance through a constant cycle of fasting and prayer. Ultimately, she is tried as a witch by water. ==History==