y, that, "if the
play was as late as 1608, there is a possibility of Beaumont and
Fletcher's influence just as in the romances."

"Pericles" contains a sentimental love story, the plot is like that of
the "romances," the variety of the emotional effects is similar, and
there is a contrast of tragic and idyllic elements. The play is founded
upon a "romantic story." All this is admitted, but Professor Thorndike
thinks the love story is not sufficiently prominent, the idyllic
elements are not treated as in the romances, and Marina is therefore not
like any of the heroines of Beaumont and Fletcher, but, while "something
like Portia, more like Isabella." And so "Pericles" is distinguished
from the romances because the "treatment" is "different," and finally,
because Professor Thorndike is committed to the theory that Beaumont and
Fletcher "created" a new type of drama, he asserts that "'Pericles' is
doubtless earlier than Shakspere's romances, but there is no probability
that it preceded all of Beaumont and Fletcher's." Dryden in his Prologue
to Davenant's "Circe" says: "Shakspere's own muse his Pericles first
bore," and the great weight of opinion is that it was a very early
production. The "Story of Marina" is as romantic as "Cymbeline," and is
of the same "type" as "Philaster," and therefore, if Dryden is right,
there is a strong probability that "Pericles" preceded all of Beaumont
and Fletcher's romances, and that in "Cymbeline" Shakspere did not
imitate them.

We come at last to the end of the argument. Professor Thorndike,
premising that the historical portion of "Cymbeline" and the exile of
Posthumous have no parallels in "Philaster," institutes a detailed
comparison between the plots, characters, and composition of the two
plays, and shows that they are so strikingly similar as to justify the
positive conclusion that "Shakspere influenced Beaumont and Fletcher or
that they influenced him." We may admit more than this: If "Cymbeline"
followed "Philaster," he was not only influenced by them, he not only
imitated them, he was a plagiarist; and no apologetic words that, upon
the assumption stated, "Cymbeline" did not owe a very large share of its
total effect to "Philaster," can make less the gravity of the charge,
and if the assumption is groundless or even probably groundless, no
excuse remains to the critic who makes it.

Let us see: After all his learned review of dramatic chronology, after
all his statements conv