THE INNER-TEMPLE MASQUE.
The Inner-Temple Masque. Or Masque of Heroes. Presented (as an Entertainement for many worthy Ladies:) By Gentlemen of the same Ancient and Noble House. Tho. Middleton. London Printed for John Browne, and are to be sold at his Shop in S. Dunstanes Church-yard in Fleetstreete. 1619. 4to.
It was licensed—“1619 10 July The Temple Maske.—An 1618:” see Chalmers’s Suppl. Apol. p. 202.
Langbaine (Acc. of Engl. Dram. Poets, p. 372) having said, in his notice of this Masque, that Mrs. Behn “has taken part of it into the City Heiress,” we are told in the Biographia Dramatica, that “Mrs. Behn has introduced into the City Heiress a GREAT part of The Inner-Temple Masque;” and Warton “believes” that the Masque “is the foundation” of Mrs. Behn’s play, Hist. of English Poetry, vol. ii. p. 399 (note). Now the fact is, that Mrs. Behn has not borrowed a single line of the City Heiress from The Inner-Temple Masque! Langbaine, who in his list of Middleton’s dramas omits A Mad World, my Masters, applies, by mistake, to The Inner-Temple Masque a remark which he had prepared for his notice of that play, and which he repeats when he mentions the comedy in his Appendix. He also states that the Masque was first printed in 1640—which is the date of the second edition (the earliest he had seen) of A Mad World, my Masters—and hence the Biogr. Dram. gives a second edition of the Masque in 1640!