And when the Duke asks Lazarillo, thus instructed, "how old are you?" we can imagine with what mirth the graceless Beaumont puts into his mouth: Full eight and twenty several Almanacks Have been compiled all for several years, Since first I drew this breath; four prentiships Have I most truly served in this world; And eight and twenty times hath Phoebus' car Run out his yearly course since--. Duke. I understand you, sir. Lucio. How like an ignorant poet he talks! Is it possible that associating with the literary school of the day, his brother John, Drayton, Chapman, and Ben Jonson, the young satirist, here vents something like spleen? Or is this purely dramatic utterance? Like parodies of phrases in _Hamlet_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, and other Shakespearean plays ripple the stream of Beaumont's humour. They are, however, always good-natured. But if Beaumont laughs when Shakespeare exaggerates, he also pays him in his later plays the tribute of imitation in numerous poetic borrowings of serious lines and telling situations: as where the King in _Philaster_ tries to pray but, like the kneeling Claudius, despairs-- How can I Looke to be heard of gods that must be just, Praying upon the ground I hold by wrong?-- or "in the Hamlet-like situation and character of Philaster" himself; as, for instance, when to the usurping King who has said of him, "Sure hees possest," Philaster retorts: Yes, with my fathers spirit. Its here, O King, A dangerous spirit! Now he tells me, King, I was a Kings heire, bids me be a King, And whispers to me, these are all my subjects. Tis strange he will not let me sleepe, but dives In to my fancy, and there gives me shapes That kneele and doe me service, cry me king: But I'le suppresse him: he's a factious spirit, And will undoe me. The resemblance of the controversy between Melantius and Amintor to that of Brutus with Cassius has already been noticed; and everyone will acknowledge the resemblance of the "quizzical reserve" of his Scornful Lady to Olivia's, of Aspatia's melancholy in the _Maides Tragedy_ to Ophelia's, and of Bellario's situation in _Philaster_ to that of Viola in _Twelfth Night_.[77] This last play, indeed, acted, as we have seen, in the Middle Temple when Beaumont was a freshman in the Inns of Court, affects Beaumont's method and style, more than any other save the _Pericles_ (1607, or January to May 1608), which prepared the way for the more important later romantic dramas of Shakespeare himself as well as for those of Beaumont and Fletcher.