_Becket_ has been highly praised by Sir Henry Irving himself, for its “moments of passion and pathos, . . . which, when they exist, atone to an audience for the endurance of long acts.” But why should the audience have such long acts to endure? The reader, one fears, is apt to use his privilege of skipping. The long speeches of Walter Map and the immense period of Margery tempt the student to exercise his agility. A “chronicle play” has the privilege of wandering, but _Becket_ wanders too far and too long. The political details of the quarrel between Church and State, with its domestic and international complexities, are apt to fatigue the attention. Inevitable and insoluble as the situation was, neither protagonist is entirely sympathetic, whether in the play or in history. The struggle in Becket between his love of the king and his duty to the Church (or what he takes to be his duty) is nobly presented, and is truly dramatic, while there is grotesque and terrible relief in the banquet of the Beggars. In the scene of the assassination the poet “never stoops his wing,” and there are passages of tender pathos between Henry and Rosamund, while Becket’s keen memories of his early days, just before his death, are moving. “_Becket_. I once was out with Henry in the days When Henry loved me, and we came upon A wild-fowl sitting on her nest, so still I reach’d my hand and touch’d; she did not stir; The snow had frozen round her, and she sat Stone-dead upon a heap of ice-cold eggs. Look! how this love, this mother, runs thro’ all The world God made—even the beast—the bird! _John of Salisbury_. Ay, still a lover of the beast and bird? But these arm’d men—will you not hide yourself? Perchance the fierce De Brocs from Saltwood Castle, To assail our Holy Mother lest she brood Too long o’er this hard egg, the world, and send Her whole heart’s heat into it, till it break Into young angels. Pray you, hide yourself. _Becket_. There was a little fair-hair’d Norman maid Lived in my mother’s house: if Rosamund is The world’s rose, as her name imports her—she Was the world’s lily. _John of Salisbury_. Ay, and what of her? _Becket_. She died of leprosy.”