Their masterpieces, despite their limitations, must be given high rank in the English drama. Outside of Shakespeare it would be difficult to find in our language another tragedy that as an artistic achievement can be counted the superior of "The Maid's Tragedy." But the main contribution of their collaboration took the form of a type, limited in themes and characterization, brilliant often both in dramatic discovery and in execution, but tending toward artificiality and convention. Their most important innovations, the products of serious artistic effort as well as of cleverness and ingenuity, mark the acquirement by the drama of new habits of doubtful value. Their sacrifice of character to situation, their devotion to theatrical effectiveness, their lack of moral purpose, their dalliance with the artificial and abnormal aspects of passion, and their disregard for the limits of blank verse, all these characteristics furnished examples eagerly followed by the dramatists of the next generation, examples that did not promote in tragedy a true or comprehensive or noble reflection of life. Immediately after Beaumont's retirement Fletcher probably collaborated with Shakespeare on "Henry VIII" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen," and possibly on a lost play, "Cardenio." The partnership resulted in no distinct departures from the methods of either dramatist, but it seems to have been full of incentive for the younger man, whose poetic gift nowhere displays itself more splendidly. From this time on he wrote constantly for the theatre, composing three or four plays a year, collaborating on many of these with Massinger, and maintaining his position as the most popular dramatist of the time until his death in 1625.