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 £2,000."
Beaumont's masque, which was to have been performed at Whitehall on Tuesday evening, the 16th, had ill fortune on the first attempt. The gentlemen-masquers, desiring to vary their pomp from that of Lincoln's Inn and the Middle Temple, which had been on horse-back and in chariots, made a progress by water from Winchester-House to Whitehall, seated in the King's royal barge, "attended with a multitude of barges and galleys, with all variety of loud music, and several peals of ordnance; and led by two admirals." The royal family witnessed their approach; and, as Chamberlain in the letter mentioned above says, "they were receved at the privie stayres: and great expectation theyre was that they shold every way exceed theyre competitors that went before them both in devise daintines of apparell and above all in dauncing (wherein they are held excellent) and esteemed far the properer men: but by what yll planet yt fell out I know not, they came home as they went with out doing anything, the reason whereof I cannot yet learne thoroughly, so but only was that the hall was so full that yt was not possible to avoyde yt or make roome for them; besides that most of the Ladies were in the galleries to see them land, and could not get in, but the worst of all was that the king was so wearied and sleepie with sitting up almost two whole nights before that he had no edge to yt. Whereupon Sr Fra: Bacon adventured to interest his maiestie that by this disgrace he wold not as yt were burie them quicke; and I heare the king shold aunswer that then they must burie him quicke for he could last no longer, but with all gave them very goode wordes and appointed them to come again on saterday: but the grace of theyre maske is quite gon when theyre apparell hath ben already shewed and theyre devises vented, so that how yt will fall out, God knows, for they are much discouraged, and out of countenance; and the world sayes yt comes to passe after the old proverb—the properer men the worse lucke."[81]
On that day, accordingly, the masque was presented, "in the new Banketting-House which for a kind of amends was granted to them"; and with marked success. "At the entrance of their Majesties and their Highnesses," writes the Venetian ambassador to the Doge and Senate, May 10, 1613, "one saw the scene, with forests; on a sudden half of it changed to a great mountain with four springs at its feet. The subject of the Masque was that Jove and Juno desiring to honour the wedding and the conjunction of two such noble rivers, the Thames and the Rhine, sent separately Mercury and Iris, who appeared; and Mercury then praised the couple and the Royal house, and wishing to make a ballet suitable to the conjunction of two such streames, he summoned from the four fountains, whence they spring and which are fed by rain, four nymphs who hid among the clouds and the stars that ought to bring rain. They then danced, but Iris said that a dance of one sex only was not a live dance. Then appeared four cupids, while from the Temple of Jove, came five idols and they danced with the stars and the nymphs. Then Iris, after delivering her speech, summoned Flora, caused a light rain to fall, and then came a dance of shepherds. Then in a moment the other half of the scene changed, and one saw a great plateau with two pavilions, and in them one hundred and fifty Knights of Olympus,—then more tents, like a host encamped. On the higher ground was the Temple of Olympian Jove all adorned with statues of gold and silver, and served by a number of priests with music and lights in golden Candelabra. The knights were in long robes of silk and gold, the priests in gold and silver. The knights danced, their robes being looped up with silver, and their dance represented the introduction of the Olympian games into this kingdom. After the ballet was over their Majesties and their Highnesses passed into a great Hall especially built for the purpose, where were long tables laden with comfits and thousands of mottoes. After the King had made the round of the tables everything was in a moment rapaciously swept away."[82]
Beaumont had introduced innovations—two antimasques, or "subtle, capricious dances" accompanied by spectacular or comic dumb-show, instead of one, and new and varied characters in each, instead of the stereotyped Witches, Satyrs, Follies, etc. His Nymphs, Hyades, blind Cupids, and half vivified Statuas from Jove's altar, of the first antimasque occasioned great amusement, so that the King called for them again at the end—"but one of the Statuas by that time was undressed." And the May-dance of the second, with its rural characters—Pedant, Lord and Lady of the May, country clown and wench, host and hostess, he-baboon and she-baboon, he-fool and she-fool—stirred laughter and applause that drowned the music. The main masque was stately, and fitly symbolic of the occasion. And one at least of the songs, that sung by the twelve white-robed priests, each playing upon his lute, before Jupiter's altar, has the rare lyrical quality of Beaumont's best manner,—
Shake off your heavy trance,
And leap into a dance,
Such as no mortals use to tread,
Fit only for Apollo
To play to, for the Moon to lead,
And all the Stars to follow!