limit almost as distinct as the limit of the sonnet. It is easy to
calculate how long a play for the stage ought to be, and we might
think that a poet would find the natural limit serviceable to his
art, for it inculcates selection, conciseness, and concentration.
But despite these advantages of the natural form of the drama, modern
poets, at least, constantly overflow their banks. The author ruit
profusus, and the manager has to reduce the piece to feasible
proportions, such as it ought to have assumed from the first.

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.