As to Burre, however, I do not think that he had been informed by Keysar of the exact provenience of the manuscript of _The Knight_, or of the date of first acting. I incline to believe that he had the _Epistle Dedicatorie_ of the newly printed Shelton before him when, in 1613, he wrote his dedication of _The Knight_ to Robert Keysar; for he runs the figure of the book as a "child" and of its "father" and "step-father" through his screed as Shelton had run it in 1612; and he hits upon a similar diction of "bosome" and "oblivion." But, though he may have been gratuitously challenging the wall of Shelton's newly printed _Don Quixote_ in favour of _The Knight_ as in existence by 1610 or 1611, the only interpretation of his "elder above a yeare" that would fit the fact is afforded by the composition of the play, as already demonstrated, in 1607-8, more than a year before Shelton began to circulate his manuscript. In spite of Burre's assertion of the priority of _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, nearly every editor or historian who has touched upon _The Knight_ informs us that it is "undoubtedly derived from _Don Quixote_." If (as I am sure was not the case) the play was written after 1608, Beaumont, or Beaumont and Fletcher, could have derived suggestions for it from Shelton's manuscript, first circulated in 1609. That Beaumont, at any rate, was acquainted with the Spanish hero by 1610, appears from his familiarity with the _Epicoene_ in which as we have observed, Don Quixote is mentioned; for he wrote commendatory verses for the quarto of that play, entered S. R. September 20 of that year. If, on the other hand, _The Knight_, as I hold, was written in 1607 or 1608, the author or authors, provided they read Spanish, could have derived suggestions from Cervantes' original of 1605; or if they did not read Spanish, from hearsay. The latter source of information would be the more likely, for although sixteen of the ignorantly so-called "Beaumont and Fletcher" plays have been traced to plots in Spanish originals, there is not one of those plots which either of the poets might not have derived from English or French translation; and in none of the sixteen plays is there any evidence that either of the dramatists had a reading knowledge of Spanish.[209] As to the possibility of information by hearsay, other dramatists allude to _Don Quixote_ as early as 1607-8;[210] and, indeed, it would be virtually impossible that any literary Londoner could have escaped the oral tradition of so popular and impressive a masterpiece two years after its publication.