[78] Wallace, _New Shakespeare Discoveries_ (_Harper's Maga._, March, 1910). [79] See the _Greenstreet Papers_, in Fleay, _Hist. Stage_, 239, 250. [80] _An Essay of Dramatick Poesie._ CHAPTER IX THE "MASQUE OF THE INNER TEMPLE": THE PASTORALISTS, AND OTHER CONTEMPORARIES AT THE INNS OF COURT Of royal patronage we have had evidence in the fact that during the festivities of October 16, 1612 to March 1, 1613, no fewer than five of the Beaumont-Fletcher plays were presented at Court, by the King's Servants and the Queen's Revels' Children,--some of them two and even three times. Our poets are accordingly regarded by the great as dramatists of like distinction with Shakespeare, Jonson, and Chapman, the authors of most of the other plays then performed. Of the esteem in which Beaumont individually was held, not only at Court but by his fellows of the Inner Temple, evidence is afforded by the fact that when they were called upon, in company with the gentlemen of Gray's Inn, to celebrate the marriage, February 14, 1613, of the Princess Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine, with a masque, they did not, like the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn, go out of their own group of poets for a dramatist, but chose him. The selection was but natural: he had already contributed to _The Maides Tragedy_ a masque of the very essence of dreams, executed with singular grace and melody. The subject decided upon for the present gorgeous spectacle was the "marrying of the Thames to the Rhine." The structure and stage machinery were invented by Inigo Jones, who was, also, stage architect for Chapman's rival masque of _Plutus_, presented on February 15, by the gentlemen of the Middle Temple and Lincoln's Inn. To the success of Beaumont's production, that patron of masques, Sir Francis Bacon, then his majesty's Solicitor-General, contributed in large measure: "You, Sir Francis Bacon, especially," says the author in his Dedication of the published copy, "as you did then by your countenance and loving affection advance it, so let your good word grace it and defend it, which is able to add value to the greatest and least matters." In a contemporary letter of John Chamberlain to Mistris Carleton, Bacon is called "the chief contriver" of the spectacle; an attribution which leads us to infer that he "advanced" it not solely by "loving affection" but by funds for the tremendous expense. For, as we have already observed, in other cases, as of the Masque of Flowers, presented for a noble marriage in 1614 by Gray's Inn, Bacon is not only patron but purse, permitting no one to share expenses with him: "Sir Francis Bacon," writes Chamberlain, "prepares a masque to honour this marriage, which will stand him in above L2,000."