Five Plays in One (Admiral's)

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Historical Records

Performance Records (Henslowe's Diary)


F. 26 (Greg I, p. 51)

April 1597
7 tt at v playes in one. . . . . . . . . . 02|01|00 — 18 — 01


F. 26v (Greg I, p. 52)

April 1597
15 tt at v playes in one. . . . . . . . . . 01|08|02 — 00 — 00
20 tt at v playes in one. . . . . . . . . . 00|19|00 — 07 — 01
25 tt at v playes in one. . . . . . . . . . 01|13|01 — 00 — 00
May 1597
6 tt at v playes in one. . . . . . . . . . 00|16|00 — 03 — 00
14 tt at v playes in one. . . . . . . . . . 00|07|00 — 00 — 00
23 tt at v playes in one. . . . . . . . . . 01|00|03 — 00 — 01

F. 27 (Greg I, p. 53)

June 1597
10 tt at v playes in one. . . . . . . . . . 00|11|03 — 01 — 00
28 tt at v playes in one. . . . . . . . . . 01|00|00 — 13 — 11




Theatrical Provenance

The Admiral's men introduced "Five Plays in One" at the Rose playhouse as a new ("ne") play, and there is no evidence to suggest that it had a stage life after its maiden run ended.


Probable Genre(s)

Unknown (Harbage); Anthology (Wiggins #1063)

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

Collier considered this play as well as Three Plays in One and Four Plays in One to be a grouping of playlets offered for "variety" and not necessarily "connected in subject" (22, n5). He considered the "Five Plays in One" put on (with Three Plays in One by the Queen's men in 1584-5) to belong to this group, but he did not lump the Admiral's 1597 play with the Queen's 1584-5 one despite the identical title, nor did he suggest the narratives possibly dramatized in any of these plays.

Fleay, therefore, appears to have begun both the lumping of "Five Plays in One" with Richard Tarlton and the plot of "2 The Seven Deadly Sins" (Chronicle History, 83) and with the Ages plays by Thomas Heywood (BCED, 1.286). (Note: Tarlton has traditionally been considered the author of the plays represented by the surviving plot called "2 The Seven Deadly Sins" because he was said to have written a play on the sins, entered in this database as "The Seven Deadly Sins" and dated 1585; the LPD splits the Tarlton play from the anonymous two-parter now dated 1597-8.)

Greg gave considerable credence to Fleay's connecting "Five Plays in One" with Heywood's work, though he discredits Fleay's guesswork on the stories dramatized in most of the playlets. He was more positive about Fleay's identification of an item in Henslowe's inventory lists with Five Plays in One," namely the head of Argus:

Under the heading “The Enventary tacken of all the properties for my Lord Admeralles men, the 10 of Marche 1598”:

Item, ... Argosse heade ... (Greg, Papers [Appx. I, art. 1, p. 117. l. 67])

Perhaps teased by the appeal of assigning properties in Henslowe's inventory that were not specifically assigned to plays, Greg offered another conjecture, asking why the "Cupedes bowe, & quiver" (Greg, Papers, p. 117, l. 70) might not have as logically belonged to "Five Plays in One"—if one of its playlets were "Cupid and Psyche"—as to "Dido and Aeneas."

The effect of the Fleay-Greg commentary has been to identify the narrative and dramatic sources and analogues of "Five Plays in One" with classical mythology even though there is no corroborating evidence for that association.

References to the Play

Information welcome.




Critical Commentary

Foakes repeats the assignment of "Argosse head" in Henslowe's inventory to "Five Plays in One", though with a qualifying question mark and reminder of Greg's role in the assignment (p. 319, n17); likewise he repeats Greg's conjectural reassignment of Cupid's bow and quiver from "Dido and Aeneas" to "Five Plays in One" (p. 320, n4).


Gurr, too, is influenced by the Fleay-Greg conjectures. He notes that "Five Plays in One" is "possibly" by Heywood and includes the properties (Argus's head, Cupid's bow and quiver) in the Appendix item for the play (p. 228, #66). In a note, he documents the assignment of the properties by citing the Diary editors as source (p. 228, n.65).


Wiggins strips away all previous conjecture on the association of "Five Plays in One" with similarly named earlier plays-in-one as well as the assignment (however tentatively) of any properties in Henslowe's inventory with this particular play (#1063).




For What It's Worth

Information welcome.


Works Cited

Gurr, Andrew. Shakespeare's Opposites: The Admiral's Company 1594-1625. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
McMillin, Scott. "Building Stories: Greg, Fleay, and the Plot of 2 Seven Deadly Sins." Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 4 (1989): 53-62.



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