He is alluding to his not yet finished comedy, _A Woman is a Weather-cocke_. The youth must have been close to Beaumont as well as to Fletcher; he soon afterwards, 1609-10, played the leading part in their _Coxcombe_,--which, I think, was the earliest work planned and written by them in collaboration; and when, a little later, his own first comedy was acted by the Queen's Revels' Children no auditor of literary ear could have failed to detect, amid the manifest echoes of Chapman, Jonson, and Shakespeare, the flattering resemblance in diction, rhythm, and poetic fancy to the most characteristic features of Beaumont's style. This is very interesting, because in another dramatic composition _Foure Playes in One_, written in part by Fletcher, certain portions have so close a likeness to Beaumont's work, that until lately they have been mistakenly attributed to that poet and assigned to this early period of his career. The portions of _The Foure Playes_ not written by Fletcher were written by no other than Nat. Field. And since in Field's _Address to the Reader_ of the _Weather-cocke_, licensed for publication November 23, 1611, he still speaks as if the _Weather-cocke_ were his only venture in play-writing, we may conclude that _The Foure Playes in One_ was not put together before the end of 1611, or the beginning of 1612. That series need not, therefore, be considered in the present place; all the more so, since Beaumont had in all probability nothing directly to do with its composition.[57]