Kings and queens occasionally awarded life pensions to people who had performed a service that particularly pleased them. Flute is bemoaning the fact that Bottom has lost out on an opportunity for just such a reward. (Sixpence a day, the typical wage of a craftsman, would have been a nice pension indeed.) By featuring these theatrical buffoons salivating over a royal pension, it’s possible that Shakespeare was making fun of one of his principal rivals, Edmund Spenser, who had just been awarded a pension by Queen Elizabeth for a work (titled The Faerie Queene), which was an obvious attempt to suck up to her.