10.--Of the dates of _A King and No King_ there is no doubt. It was licensed in 1611, acted at Court December 26 of the same year, and first published in quarto in 1619 as by Beaumont and Fletcher. In the commendatory verses of 1647, Henry Howard gives Arbaces to Fletcher; Jasper Mayne gives him Bessus; Herrick goes further: "that high design Of _King and No King_, and the rare plot thine." Earle, on the other hand, gives Bessus to Beaumont; and Lisle gives him Mardonius. Of the attributions to Fletcher, Herrick's alone has plausibility, since, like _Philaster_ and _The Maides Tragedy_, the play is derived from no known source.[244] Still he was probably wrong. It is not impossible that one of the dramatists contrived the plot; but, considering that three-quarters of the play was written by Beaumont, and that Fletcher's quarter contains but one scene at once of high design and vital to the story, it is not very likely that the contriving was by Fletcher unaided. Modern critics display singular unanimity in their discrimination of the respective shares of the composers. With only one or two dissenting voices they attribute to Beaumont the first three acts, the fourth scene of the fourth, and scenes two and four of the fifth. To Fletcher they assign the first three scenes of the fourth act, and scenes one and three of the fifth. The tests which I have already described lead me to the same conclusion. Beaumont's contribution is distinguished by a largeness of utterance and a poetic inevitability, a diversity and mastery of characterization, a philosophical reach, a realism both humorous and terrible, and a power of dramatic creativity and tension, equal to, if not surpassing, any parallel elements or qualities to be found in the joint-plays. Arbaces, in apparent design, is of a Marlowan temper, moody, vainglorious, blinded by self-love, and brooking no rebuke; but he is not merely a braggart and a tyrant, he is brave in fact, and in heart deluded by the assumption that he is also modest. The combination is Beaumontesque. That dramatist rarely creates fixed or transparent character. Arbaces assumes that he is single of nature and aim: an irresistible, passionless, and patient soldier; but his failure to fathom himself as his friend Mardonius fathoms him, is part of his complexity. His headlong love for the woman whom he believes to be his sister and the resulting horror of apprehension and conflict of desire reveal him in many-sided dilatation and in swift-succeeding revolutions of personality. "What are thou," he asks of this devilish unexpected lust-- What are thou, that dost creep into my breast; And dar'st not see my face? When he will decree that Panthea be regarded as no more his sister, and she remonstrates,--he thunders "I will hear no more"; but to himself:-- Why should there be such music in a voice, And sin for me to hear it?