Though the young poets did not begin to write for the King's Men before 1609, it is impossible that they should not have met Shakespeare, face to face, earlier in the century, whether at the Mermaid in Bread-street, Cheapside, where perhaps befel those "wit-combates betwixt him and Ben Jonson," or about the Globe in Southwark or the theatre in Blackfriars,--which, though leased to the Revels' Children, belonged to Shakespeare's friend Richard Burbadge,--or at the lodgings with Mountjoy the tiremaker, on the corner of Silver and Monkwell Streets, where the master had lived from 1598 to 1604, and where, for anything we know to the contrary, he continued to live for several years more.[76] They would pass the house on their way from the Bankside north to St. Giles, Cripplegate, when they wished to observe what Juby and the rest of the Prince's Players were putting on at the Fortune, or on their way back to take ale with Jonson at his house in Blackfriars, or to follow Nat. Field or Carey, acting in one of their own or Jonson's plays at the private theatre close by. That the young poets, even during their discipleship to Jonson were familiar with the poetry and dramatic methods of Shakespeare the most cursory reader will observe. Their plays from the first, whether jointly or singly written, abound in reminiscences of his work. But more particularly is he echoed by Beaumont. The echo is sometimes of playful parody, as in the "huffing part" which the grocer's prentice of the _Knight of the Burning Pestle_ steals from Hotspur:-- By heaven, methinks it were an easie leap To pluck bright honour from the pale-fac'd Moon, Or dive into the bottom of the Sea, Where never fathome line toucht any ground, And pluck up drowned honour from the lake of Hell; or as in _The Woman-Hater_, where it looks very much as if this stylist of twenty-two was poking fun at the circumlocutions of Shakespeare's Helena in _All's Well that Ends Well_. Labouring to say "two days" in accents suitable to a monarch's ear, she had evolved: Ere twice the horses of the sun shall bring Their fiery torches his diurnal ring, Ere twice in murk and accidental damp Moist Hesperus hath quenched his sleepy lamp; Or four and twenty times the pilot's glass Hath told the thievish minutes how they pass, What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly. In terms strikingly reminiscent of this, Beaumont's courtier Valore instructs the gourmand of _The Woman-Hater_, how to address royalty: You must not talk to him [the Duke] As you doe to an ordinary man, Honest plain sence, but you must wind about him. For example: if he should aske you what o'clock it is, You must not say, "If it please your grace, 'tis nine"; But thus, "Thrice three aclock, so please my Sovereign"; Or thus, "Look how many Muses there doth dwell Upon the sweet banks of the learned Well, And just so many stroaks the clock hath struck."