, of the Middle Temple), it is learnt that the Middle
Templar's acted Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night' at the Readers' feast on
Candlemas Day, 1601-2.[20]

In the following reign, the masques of the lawyers in no degree fell off
with regard to splendor. Seldom had the Thames presented a more
picturesque and exhilarating spectacle than it did on the evening of
February 20, 1612, when the gentlemen masquers of Gray's Inn and the
Temple, entered the king's royal barge at Winchester House, at seven
o'clock, and made the voyage to Whitehall, attended by hundreds of
barges and boats, each vessel being so brilliantly illuminated that the
lights reflected upon the ripples of the river, seemed to be countless.
As though the hum and huzzas of the vast multitude on the water were
insufficient to announce the approach of the dazzling pageant, guns
marked the progress of the revellers, and as they drew near the palace,
all the attendant bands of musicians played the same stirring tune with
uniform time. It is on record that the king received the amateur actors
with an excess of condescension, and was delighted with the masque which
Master Beaumont of the Inner Temple, and his friend, Master Fletcher,
had written and dedicated "to the worthy Sir Francis Bacon, his
Majesty's Solicitor-General, and the grave and learned bench of the
anciently-called houses of Grayes Inn and the Inner Temple, and the
Inner Temple and Grayes Inn." The cost of this entertainment was
defrayed by the members of the two inns--each reader paying L4, each
ancient, L2 10_s._; each barrister, L2, and each student, 20_s._

The Inner Temple and Gray's Inn having thus testified their loyalty and
dramatic taste, in the following year on Shrove-Monday night (Feb. 15,
1613), Lincoln's Inn and the Middle Temple, with no less splendor and
_eclat_, enacted at Whitehall a masque written by George Chapman. For
this entertainment, Inigo Jones designed and perfected the theatrical
decorations in a style worthy of an exhibition that formed part of the
gaieties with which the marriage of the Palsgrave with the Princess
Elizabeth was celebrated. And though the masquers went to Whitehall by
land, their progress was not less pompous than the procession which had
passed up the Thames in the February of the preceding year. Having
mustered in Chancery Lane, at the official residence of the Master of
the Rolls, the actors and their friends delighted the town with a
gallant spectacle. M