Keen observation this, and a dramatist's acquaintance with many kinds of life; the promise of a satiric mastery, and very vivid prose for a lad of twenty-three. The play is not, as a dramatic composition, of any peculiar distinction. Beaumont is still in his pupilage to the classics, and to Ben Jonson's comedy of humours. But the humours, though unoriginal and boyishly forced, are clearly defined; and the instinct for fun is irrepressible. The Woman-Hater, obsessed by the delusion that all women are in pursuit, is admirably victimized by a witty and versatile heroine who has, with maliciously genial pretense, assumed the role of man-hunter. And to the main plot is loosely, but not altogether ineffectually, attached a highly diverting story which Beaumont has taken from the Latin treatise of Paulus Jovius on Roman fishes, or from some intermediate source. Like the Tamisius of the original, his Lazarillo,--whose prayer to the Goddess of Plenty is ever, "fill me this day with some rare delicates,"--scours the city in fruitless quest of an umbrana's head. Finally, he is taken by intelligencers, spies in the service of the state, who construe his passion for the head of a fish as treason aimed at the head of the Duke. The comedy abounds in parody of verses well known at the time, of lines from _Hamlet_ and _All's Well that End Well_, _Othello_[50] and _Eastward Hoe_[50] and bombastic catches from other plays. To me the most ludicrous bit of burlesque is of the moment of last suspense in _Antony and Cleopatra_ (IV, 14 and 15) where Antony, thinking to die "after the high Roman fashion" which Cleopatra forthwith emulates, says "I come my queen,"-- Stay for me! Where souls do couch on flowers, we'll hand in hand, And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze. Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops, And all the haunt [of Elysium] be ours. So Lazarillo, in awful apprehension lest his love, his fish-head, be eaten before he arrive,-- If it be eaten, here he stands that is the most dejected, most unfortunate, miserable, accursed, forsaken slave this province yields! I will not sure outlive it; no, I will die bravely and like a Roman; And after death, amidst the Elysian shades, I'll meet my love again. Shakespeare's play was not entered for publication till May 20, 1608, but this passage shows that Beaumont had seen it at the Globe before May 20, 1607.