[5] Shakespeare's other plays are based either on actual chronicles and histories; or on legends, as in "King Lear" and "Cymbeline"; or on tales, mainly Italian, founded as a rule on old traditional stories, and sometimes done by others into English novels. Earlier plays, of similar origin, are also employed. Such, too, were the usual sources of Molière, and almost all Greek tragedy rests on Achæan or Ionian myths, current in older epic poems. [6] Saintsbury. [7] Mr. Tyler, in his edition of the Sonnets (1890), Dr. Brandes, in his "William Shakespeare," and Mr. Harris, in "The Man Shakespeare," support the Pembroke theory. Sir Sidney Lee's "Life of William Shakespeare" contains the arguments in favour of Southampton. [8] Ben Jonson was something of a visionary. [9] Jusserand, "Literary History of the English People," Vol. III, p. 233. [10] Lee, pp. 147-150. [11] Shakespeare could read parts of Homer in Chapman's translation of Books I, II, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, published in 1598. But certain touches indicate his acquaintance with Book XXII, 320, 321, 391-393. The drama begins with the situation in Book VII. CHAPTER XX. OTHER DRAMATISTS. Beaumont and Fletcher. John Fletcher was born at Rye in December, 1579; being the son of that Dean of Peterborough who troubled the last moments of Mary, Queen of Scots, and later was bishop, successively, of Bristol, Worcester, and London. Very early, aged about 12, the son entered Benet College, Cambridge, but before he was 17 the death of his father, in poverty, caused him to leave the University. We hear no more of him, on sound authority, till he began to write plays with Francis Beaumont, born in 1584, the third son of Sir Francis Beaumont of Grace-Dieu, a judge. In 1597 Beaumont entered Pembroke College, Oxford, then known as Broadgates Hall; three years later he entered the Inner Temple. In 1605 Beaumont wrote some prefatory verses to Jonson's play "The Fox (Volpone)" as also did Fletcher. "Philaster" (1610?) is believed to have been the first play composed in their prolific partnership, but it was also attributed to Beaumont alone. Beaumont died in March, 1616, the death-year of Shakespeare; Fletcher in 1625. One need not be a Charles Lamb to discover that "after all, Beaumont and Fletcher were but an inferior sort of Sidneys and Shakespeares". But perhaps only a reader who is himself a poet can discover, with Mr. Swinburne's certainty, in Beaumont "the gifts of tragic pathos and passion, of tender power and broad strong humour"; in Fletcher "a more fiery and fruitful force of invention, a more aerial ease and swiftness of action, a more various readiness and fullness of bright original speech".