Four Plays in One

Historical Records

Henslowe's Diary

Res at iiij playes in one the 6 of marche 1591

……….

xxxj^s vj^d

Theatrical Provenance

Four Plays in One makes its only recorded appearance at the Rose playhouse on 6 March 1592 in the repertory of Lord Strange's players. The absence of Henslowe's enigmatic "ne" with the entry implies that the play was not new.

Probable Genre(s)

Unknown. Harbage was so persuaded that Four Plays in One was a revival of Three Plays in One and therefore also of The Second Part of the Seven Deadly Sins that he omits Four Plays in One from the annals of 1592. His guess at the genre of the play ("Moral") is therefore undermined, unless (of course) he is right.

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

None known, though F. G. Fleay and W. W. Greg posited a line of narrative and dramatic descent for Four Plays in One by way of Richard Tarlton's lost play, The Seven Deadly Sins. See Critical Commentary, below, for a digest of the scholarly argument.

References to the Play

None known outside the network of argument that connects Four Plays in One to Tarlton and The Seven Deadly Sins.

Critical Commentary

Fleay connected The Seven Deadly Sins to two lost plays called Five Plays in One and Three Plays in One, which were performed by the Queen's players at court in January and February 1585. With the Plot of The Second Part of the Seven Deadly Sins in mind, Fleay counted the Induction of that Plot as a fourth playlet, which gave him reason to consider Four Plays in One an alternate title for The Second Part of the Seven Deadly Sins, which he already believed was a play now owned by Strange's players due to the players' names given in the Plot. He declared Four Plays in One to be "the only play in the Lord Strange's list in Henslowe which" could be identified with the play behind the Plot of The Second Part of the Seven Deadly Sins (83).

Greg' initially agreed (II, Item 13, p. 153). But, after considering the argument made by E. K. Chambers in "The Elizabethan Stage" (II.307), he changed his mind. He now agreed with Chambers that the argument

Greg, (II, Item 13, p. 153)

For What It's Worth

Documentation for a lost play called The Seven Deadly Sins by Richard Tarlton comes from an insult-slinging match between Gabriel Harvey and Thomas Nashe in 1592. Harvey, in the third of Four Letters, mocks Nashe for having given a "botched-vp" treatment of "Sins" subject matter in Pierce Penniless inferior to Tarlton's "famous play of the seaven Deadly sinnes" (EEBO, 29). Nashe retaliated with a tirade claiming that he had not "so vtterly abolished with Tarltons play of the seuen deadly sins, that ther could be nothing said supra of that argument" (McKerrow, I, 304-5). For a fuller treatment of the Harvey-Nashe exchange, see entries for Five Plays in One, Three Plays in One, or The Seven Deadly Sins.

Works Cited

Site created and maintained by Roslyn L. Knutson, Professor Emerita; updated 26 March 2012.