The verse criterion is, however, not of itself a reagent sufficient to precipitate fully the Beaumont of the joint-plays. For there still exists the certainty that in plotting plays together, each of the collaborators was influenced by the opinion of the other; and the probability that, though one may have undertaken sundry scenes or divers characters in a play, the other would, in the course of general correction, insert lines in the parts written by his collaborator, and would convey to his own scenes the distinguishing rhythm, "humour," or diction of a definite character, created, or elaborated, by his colleague. It, therefore, follows that the assignment of a whole scene to either author on the basis alone of some recurring metrical peculiarity is not convincing. In the same section, even in the same speech, we may encounter insertions which bear the stamp of the revising colleague. For instance, the opening of _Philaster_ is generally assigned to Beaumont: it has the characteristics of his prose. But with the entry of the King (line 89) we are launched upon a subscene in verse which, on the one hand, has a higher percentage of double endings (_viz._ 38) than Beaumont ever used, but does not fully come up to Fletcher's usage; while on the other hand, it has a higher percentage of run-on lines[157] (_viz._ 44) than Fletcher ever used. The other verse tests leave us similarly in doubt. To any one, however, familiar with the diction and characterization of the two authors the suspicion occurs that the scene was written by Beaumont in the first instance; and then worked over and considerably enlarged by his associate. In the first hundred lines of Act II, Scene 4, similar insertions by Fletcher occur, and in Act III, 2.[158] Such being the case we may expect that an inquiry into the rhetorical peculiarities and mental habit, first of Fletcher, then of Beaumont, will furnish tests corrective of the criterion based upon versification. 1. Fletcher's Diction in _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_. Though rather poetic than dramatic, and composed only partly in blank verse, _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ affords the best approach to a study of Fletcher's rhetoric; for, written about 1608 and by Fletcher alone, it illustrates his youthful style in the period probably shortly before he collaborated with Beaumont in the composition of _Philaster_. The soliloquy of Clorin, with which _The Faithfull Shepheardesse_ opens, runs as follows: