Without doubt, however, his attitude toward his work is more that of the scholar than the poet or dramatist. His work is imitation of others who seem to him models, with the main attention on style. He has the inventiveness of the dramatist, but not his instinct for technique or recognition of the possibilities of a story and care in working them out. He never says a thing for himself if he can find it anywhere in a recognized author. In this, however, he shared in the mood of Spenser and his group. Indeed, a little comparison of Lyly with Spenser will show that, though in accomplishment he is far below the poet, he expresses in his comedies the historical influences, the existing intellectual conditions, and the literary aspirations which Spenser phrases in his early work. It is in poetic power, in imaginative sweep, that the two separate widely. Yet Lyly, drawing on what preceded and what surrounded him, did more than express the literary mood and desires of his day. Through him the lyric in the drama came to Dekker, Jonson, and Shakespeare, more dainty and more varied. He broke the way for later men to use prose as the means of expression for comedy. He gave them suggestions for clever dialogue. At a time of loose and hurried dramatic writing he showed that literary finish might well accompany such composition. His pages are the prototypes of the boys and servants in Peele, Chapman, Jonson, and Shakespeare. In a small way he foreshadowed the comedy of manners. For as close a relationship between the drama and politics as we find in his allegories, we must look to the declining days of the Jacobean drama--to Middleton's _Game of Chess_. The romantic spirit found expression in him, not in a drama of blood, but in pastorals and masques which look forward to the masques of Jonson, to _Love's Labour's Lost_, _Midsummer Night's Dream_, and _As You Like It_. His influence on the highly sensitized mind of Shakespeare may be traced in many lines and scenes. His vogue as a dramatist was short. By 1590 the boisterous, romantic drama, the often inchoate chronicle history, both frequently accompanied by scenes of would-be comic horse-play, engrossed public attention. The great period of experimentation with both old and crude forms was beginning. It is not surprising that when Lyly's plays were revived by the Chapel Children in 1597-1600, they could not stand comparison with the work of Jonson, Dekker, Heywood, and other dramatists of the day, but were called "musty fopperies of antiquity." Their work, in bridging from the classic to romantic comedy, as the Drama of Blood bridged from Seneca to real tragedy, was done. Thereafter their main interest must be historical.