has been mangled by a reviser it is impossible to draw conclusions as to the date of composition from the evidence of his literary style. But the characteristics of Beaumont in the minor plot are those of the period in which the _Letter to Ben Jonson_ and _Philaster_ were written. The play as first performed was condemned for its length by "the ignorant multitude."[218] I believe that it was one of the two or three unsuccessful comedies which preceded _Philaster_; and, as I have said above, that it is the play referred to in the _Letter to Ben Jonson_, toward the end of 1609.[219] If the date of acting was before January 4, 1610, the theatre was Blackfriars; if after, Whitefriars. The Prologue in the first folio speaks of a revision. But though the hand of one, and perhaps of another, reviser is unmistakably present, the play is properly included among Beaumont and Fletcher's works. In the commendatory verses of 1647, Hills and Gardiner speak of the play as Fletcher's, but all tests show that Beaumont wrote a significant division of it,--the natural, vigorous, tender, and poetic subplot of Ricardo's desertion of Viola and his ultimate reclamation,--with the exception of three scenes and parts of two or three more. The exceptions are the first thirty-five lines of Act I, which have been supplied by some reviser; I, 3, in which also the reviser appears; I, 5, the drinking-bout in the tavern, where some of the words (_e. g._ "claw'd") indicate Fletcher,--and the gratuitous obscenity, Fletcher or his reviser; and Act II, 2, where Viola is bound by the tinkers and rescued by Valerio.[220] Perhaps, also, the last thirty-six lines of Act III, 3, where Fletcher is discernible in the afterthoughts "a likely wench, and a good wench," "a very good woman, and a gentlewoman," and the hand of a reviser in the mutilation of the verse; and certainly Act IV, 3, where Fletcher appears at his best in this play. The romantic little comedy of _Ricardo and Viola_ is so loosely joined with the foul portrayal of the Coxcomb who succeeds in prostituting his wife to his friend, that it might be published separately and profitably as the work of Beaumont.[221] It is well constructed; and it conveys a noble tribute to the purity and constancy of woman, her grace of forgiveness, and her influence over erring man. When Viola speaks she is a living person, instinct with recklessness, sweetness, and pathos. Few heroines of Elizabethan comedy have compressed so much reality and poetry into so narrow a compass. "Might not," she whispers when stealing forth at night to meet Ricardo:--[222] Might not God have made A time for envious prying folk to sleep Whilst lovers met, and yet the sun have shone? And then: Alas, how valiant and how fraid at once Love makes a Virgin! When she comes upon her lover staggering outside the tavern with his sodden comrades,[223] with what simplicity she shudders: