Some publisher will further justice do And print their _six_ plays in one volume too. FOOTNOTES: [254] Thorndike, _Influence of B. and F._, p. 123. [255] _The Fellows and Followers of Shakespeare_, Part Two, in _Representative English Comedies_, Vol. III, now in press. CHAPTER XXVIII DID THE BEAUMONT 'ROMANCE' INFLUENCE SHAKESPEARE? Richard Flecknoe, in his _Discourse of the English Stage_, 1664, thinking rather of the romantic and ornamented quality of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, "full of fine flowers," than of any anticipation in them of the love and honour of plays of the Restoration, says that they were the first to write "in the Heroick way." Symonds calls them the "inventors of the heroical romance." And lately Professor Thorndike[256] and others have conjectured that the Shakespeare of _Cymbeline_, _Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_ was following the lead of the two younger dramatists in what is attributed to them as a new style of 'dramatic romance' in his dramas. The argument is that _Philaster_ (acted before October 8, 1610) preceded _Cymbeline_ (acted between April 20, 1610 and May 15, 1611), and suggested to Shakespeare a radical change of dramatic method, first manifest in _Cymbeline_. And that five other "romances by Beaumont and Fletcher," _Foure Playes in One_, _Thierry and Theodoret_, _The Maides Tragedy_, _Cupid's Revenge_ and _A King and No King_, constituting with _Philaster_ a distinctly new type of drama, were in all probability acted before the close of 1611, and similarly influenced the method of _The Winter's Tale_ and _The Tempest_, also of 1611.