Seven Days of the Week, Parts 1 and 2

Historical Records

Performance Records

Playlists in Philip Henslowe's diary

NB. In the tables below, the entries for "Seven Days of the Week" are collated; see Critical Commentary, below, for opinions on which entries pertain to a second part.

Fol. 12^v (Greg I.24):

y^e 3 of June 1595	. . . . . . . ne . .	Res at the vij dayes of the weacke	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iij^ll x^s
y^e 6 of June 1595		Res at the vij dayes of the weack	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxxiiij^s
y^e 10 of June 1595	post 83^ll - 0	Res at the vij dayes of the wecke	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iij^ll vj^s
y^e 14 of June 1595		Res at the vij dayes of the wecke	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iij^ll ix^s
y^e 23 of June 1595		Res at the vij dayes of the wecke	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iij^ll v^s

___________________________________________________________________________________

y^e 27 of aguste 1595	. . . . . . . . .	Res at the weacke	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . liij^s
y^e 3 of septmbƺ 1595		Res at the vij dayes of the weacke	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lij^s
y^e 13 of septmbƺ 1595		Res at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxvij^s

Fol. 12^v (Greg, I. 25)

y^e 22 of septmbƺ 1595	————	Res at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxxiiij^s
y^e 6 of octobƺ 1595	————	Res at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxx^s
y^e 14 of octobƺ 1595		Res at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvij^s
y^e 17 of octobƺ 1595		Res at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxviij^s
y^e 29 of octobƺ 1595		Res at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiij^s

Fol. 14 (Greg, I. 27)

y^e 15 of novmbƺ 1595	. . . . . . . . . .	Res at vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xviij^s
y^e 1 of desembƺ 1595		Res at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiiij^s
y^e 1 Jenewary 1595		Res at the wecke	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxxij^s

Fol. 14^v (Greg, I. 28)

y^e 22 Jenewary 1595	. . . . . . ne . .	Res at the 2 wecke	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iij^ll
y^e 26 Jenewary 1595		Res at the 2 weake	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiiij^s
y^e 25 febreary 1595		Res at wecke	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xx^s

Fol. 25 (Greg, I.49)

y^e 11 of novmbƺ 1596	. . . . . . . . . .	\|Res\| at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxv^s
y^e 15 of novmbƺ 1596		\|Res\| at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xij^s

Fol. 25^v (Greg, I.50)

y^e 26 of novembƺ 1596		Res at weake	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvij^s
y^e 12 of desembƺ 1596		Res at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix^s
y^e 31 of desembƺ 1596	. . . . . . . . . .	Res at vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vj^s

Theatrical Provenance

The Admiral's men performed "Seven Days of the Week" at the Rose playhouse from August 1595 through December 1596, for 19 performances. Several of those shows may (or may not) be for a second part. See Critical Commentary, below for scholarly opinion on whether "Seven Days of the Week" was a two-part play.

Probable Genre(s)

Moral (?) Harbage; "Ages of History" (White)

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

Fleay, BCED, without elaboration of date, occasion, or plausible relevance, references The Christmas Prince (#168, 2.304). Greg II (p. 175 #73) provides the basics of date (1607), venue (Oxford) and genre ("entertainments … burlesque and topical") for The Christmas Prince, then rejects the likely similitude of that play with the two "Seven Days" plays.

The perception that the plays were somehow a fit with the category of "Moral" (as Harbage echoes, skeptically) is perpetuated by Chambers, ES, who also uses The Christmas Prince as referent (4.71).

Wiggins, Catalogue considers whether the playlets, if based on the days of the calendar week, were spread across the two parts of "Seven Days," but he adds that the creation story in La Semaine by Du Bartas was "possibly relevant" as source(#1003).

White, prompted by Lily B. Campbell's suggestion in 1958 of a Du Bartas connection (p. 240, n.5), embraces La Semaine enthusiastically (194-7). Du Bartas also wrote La Seconde Semaine, but it hasn't been invoked as a source also for the two-part "Seven Days of the Week."

See also Critical Commentary for further detail.

References to the Play

Information welcome.

Critical Commentary

Subject Matter

Malone has no influence on the identity of "Seven Days of the Week" except to omit a listing for Henslowe's entry of "the 2 wecke," thus implying that all similarly recorded entries were performances of the play now considered the first part. Collier calls Malone on this, adding a note to "the 2 wecke" that "Malone takes no notice of this piece" (p. 63, n.3).

Fleay, BCED introduces a red herring into the question of subject matter of "Seven Days of the Week" by referring to The Christmas Prince, 1607, which he documents only by a cryptic addition of "Halliwell" (#168, 2.304). Of the second part, he has an entry but no comment (2.305 #179).

Greg II expands on Fleay's mention of The Christmas Prince, only to reject it, saying that the 1607 piece "probably had nothing but the title in common with the Admiral's play" (#73, p. 175). Greg's listing of the second part (#86, p. 178) merely refers readers to the entry for the first part.

Despite Fleay's off-the-cuff suggestion and Greg's dismissal, something about The Christmas Prince apparently influenced opinion on "Seven Days of the Week" in that Chambers, ES indexes the lost play simply with "See Christmas Prince" (4.421); in the entry for The Christmas Prince, however, Chambers makes no mention of the lost play specifically, though he does note that the only text that survives of the entertainments is that of The Seven Days of the Week (4.71). Harbage, deeply reliant on Greg and Chambers, appears to reflect the genre of The Christmas Prince by flagging "1 Seven Days of the Week" as "Moral (?)."

In the contexts of Thomas Nashe's lost "Terminus et Non Terminus," Steggle provides a thumbnail description of the "Seven Days of the Week" in the 1607 Christmas Prince that clarifies what Fleay, Greg, Chambers, and Harbage must have seen in the Oxford entertainment. Steggle calls it "an inset show ... [that] begins with the entry of a personified Monday, who delivers a verse oration praising himself, until he is beaten off stage by Tuesday, who then in turn praises himself until supplanted by Wednesday, and so on" (p. 34).

Wiggins, Catalogue opines that "Seven Days of the Week" "might have been an anthology piece, with one playlet per day" (#1003). Considering the two parts, he suggests a parallel with the two-part "Seven Deadly Sins," which distributes the seven across two parts (apparently). Wiggins adds that another possibility as source is Guilliame du Bartas's La Semaine, thus redirecting the "seven days" from weekdays to the days of creation.

White expands the discussion of La Semaine, as narrative source for the two-part "Seven Days of the Week." Crediting Lily B. Campbell's Divine Poetry and Drama in Sixteenth-Century England (1958, p. 240, n.5) as well as Wiggins (#1003), White argues that"for an Elizabethan audience raised on biblical catechisms, popular homilies, ballads, and even religious puppet plays, the phrase 'the seven days of the week' would have brought to mind the seven days of creation" (p. 194). White links but differentiates the genre of creation stories from a category he calls "Histories out of the Scriptures," the distinguishing feature of which is "a single patriarch or warrior hero from the Hebrew Bible" (p. 203). The "Seven Days of the Week" plays (if sourced by Du Bartas and the Hebrew Bible) fits more comfortably in a category White calls "Ages of History," which includes literary and dramatic works that focus on creation/chaos myths (p. 203).

Assignment of performances to "the 2 wecke"

Collier calls attention to the fact that Henslowe's phrases in "at wecke" does not make clear whether the performance on 25 February 1596 was for the first or second part of the play (65, n.1).

Wiggins, Catalogue repeats this skepticism, adding also the vagueness of Henslowe's entry for the play on 26 November (#1029).

Gurr, differentiating between two-part plays that were "planned as pairs from the outset" and those "that were probably afterthoughts to exploit the success of the first play," puts the two-part "Seven Days of the Week" in the later category (p. 185).

Knutson, commenting on the commercial value of two-part plays, cites the "Seven Days of the Week" pair as an instance in which "the sequel was taken out of production after its second show without harm to the run of the first play, which continued into the fall of 1596-97 for a total of twenty-two performances" (p. 52). Reading the entries thus, she is considering only those instances in which the second part was specified ("the 2 wecke") as performances of the second part. That reading is consistent with another opinion, that the Admiral's men did not schedule the "Week" plays in as tight a "consecutive" pattern as they did the two Tamburlaines and the two parts of "Hercules" (p. 33).

For What It's Worth

Collier provides a note to the entry of "Seven Days of the Week" on 3 June 1595 with which everyone who works with lost plays can sympathize; he said, "A new play, of which, like many more, we hear on no other authority" (p. 53, n.3).

Works Cited

Gurr, Andrew. Shakespeare's Opposites: The Admiral's Company 1594-1625. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Knutson, Roslyn Lander. The Repertory of Shakespeare's Company, 1594-1613. Fayetteville, AR: The University of Arkansas Press. 1991.

Steggle, Matthew. Digital Humanities and the Lost Drama of Early Modern England: Ten Case Studies. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.

White, Paul Whitfield, "'Histories out of the scriptures': Biblical Drama in the Repertory of the Admiral’s Men, 1594–1603," in Loss and the Literary Culture of Shakespeare's Time, eds. Roslyn L. Knutson, David McInnis, and Matthew Steegle. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 191-213.

Site created and maintained by Roslyn L. Knutson, Professor Emerita, University of Arkansas at Little Rock; updated 4 March 2012; updated 28 October 2020.