first acted after the Children reopened at the new Blackfriars in 1615-1616. The probabilities are that it was written after May or June, 1614, perhaps, as late as April 1615, when public attention had been startlingly awakened to Don Diego's personal and ambitious activity in furthering the Spanish alliance by a royal marriage; and that Beaumont's absence from London, probably at his wife's place in Kent, or the failing condition of his health, accounts for his subordinate share in the authorship, as well as for the incomplete revision of the text--a task evidently assumed by him in the preparation of the other plays planned and produced in partnership with Fletcher. [Illustration: By permission of Methuen & Co., Ltd. DON DIEGO SARMIENTO, COUNT GONDOMAR From the portrait by G. P. Harding] The commendatory verses of Stanley and Waller in the 1647 folio give the play to Fletcher; and the greater part of it is Fletcher's. Beaumont has contributed the vivid exposition of Act I, 1; Act I, 2, with its legal phraseology and racy realism; and the jovial posset-scene of Act II, 1, where Sir Roger's kindly pedantry is developed and the minor love-affair of Welford and Martha is introduced.[250] Act II, 1, has been given by most critics to Fletcher because of the feminine endings of its occasional verse; but Beaumont could use feminine endings for humorous effect, and the diction and metal habit are distinctly his. He contributed also Act V, 2,[251] where the hero finally tricks his scornful mistress into submission. The _ye_ test, which I have said does not yield results in the case of other plays written by the two dramatists in collaboration, is of positive value here as confirming Beaumont's authorship of Act I, 1 and 2 and Act II, 1, and V, 2, for but a single _ye_ (II, 1, l. 10) is to be found in those scenes. The results are negative in Act II, 2 and 3--no _ye's_--but the diction and verse are Fletcher's. It is not unlikely that Beaumont revised the play up to the end of Act II. With Act III, the _ye's_ are in evidence and continue to the end of the play, except in Beaumont's V, 2. In Act III, 1, there are but four; but two of them are in the objective case, a mark of Fletcher, not of Beaumont. On the other hand though the diction and verse somewhat resemble Fletcher's, the infrequency of the _ye's_ heightens the suspicion that unless the scene is Fletcher's, revised imperfectly by Beaumont, it is the work of some third author--perhaps, as R. W. Bond,[252] has suggested, Massinger. Act III, 2, on the other hand, not only has several _ye's_ in the objective, but in proportion to the _you's_ twenty-five per cent of _ye's_ and _y'are's_, which approaches the distinctive habit of Fletcher; and the verse, rhetorical triplets, and afterthoughts are his. In all scenes of Acts IV and V, except the second of the latter, Fletcher's _ye's_ occur, not in great number, but often enough in the objective case to corroborate the other,