Seven Days of the Week, Parts 1 and 2

Anon. (1595)Property "Documentary Source" (as page type) with input value "{{{documentarySources}}}" contains invalid characters or is incomplete and therefore can cause unexpected results during a query or annotation process.Property "Paratext" (as page type) with input value "{{{paratexts}}}" contains invalid characters or is incomplete and therefore can cause unexpected results during a query or annotation process.Property "Contributor" (as page type) with input value "{{{contributors}}}" contains invalid characters or is incomplete and therefore can cause unexpected results during a query or annotation process.Property "Partnering Institution" (as page type) with input value "{{{partneringInstitutions}}}" contains invalid characters or is incomplete and therefore can cause unexpected results during a query or annotation process.

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 arguments identifying which entries pertain to a second part.

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

ye 3 of June 1595	. . . . . . . ne . .	Res at the vij dayes of the weacke	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iijll xs
ye 6 of June 1595		Res at the vij dayes of the weack	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxxiiijs
ye 10 of June 1595	post 83ll - 0	Res at the vij dayes of the wecke	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iijll vjs
ye 14 of June 1595		Res at the vij dayes of the wecke	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iijll ixs
ye 23 of June 1595		Res at the vij dayes of the wecke	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iijll vs

___________________________________________________________________________________

ye 27 of aguste 1595	. . . . . . . . .	Res at the weacke	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . liijs
ye 3 of septmbƺ 1595		Res at the vij dayes of the weacke	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lijs
ye 13 of septmbƺ 1595		Res at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxvijs

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

ye 22 of septmbƺ 1595	————	Res at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxxiiijs
ye 6 of octobƺ 1595	————	Res at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxxs
ye 14 of octobƺ 1595		Res at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvijs
ye 17 of octobƺ 1595		Res at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxviijs
ye 29 of octobƺ 1595		Res at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiijs

Fol. 14 (Greg, I. 27)

ye 15 of novmbƺ 1595	. . . . . . . . . .	Res at vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xviijs
ye 1 of desembƺ 1595		Res at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiiijs
ye 1 Jenewary 1595		Res at the wecke	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxxijs

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

ye 22 Jenewary 1595	. . . . . . ne . .	Res at the 2 wecke	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iijll
ye 26 Jenewary 1595		Res at the 2 weake	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiiijs
ye 25 febreary 1595		Res at wecke	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxs

Fol. 25 (Greg, I.49)

ye 11 of novmbƺ 1596	. . . . . . . . . .	|R''es''| at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxvs
ye 15 of novmbƺ 1596		|R''es''| at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xijs

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

ye 26 of novembƺ 1596		Res at weake	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvijs
ye 12 of desembƺ 1596		Res at the vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ixs
ye 31 of desembƺ 1596	. . . . . . . . . .	Res at vij dayes	. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vjs

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; "Histories out of Scriptures," White

Critical Commentary

Subject Matter

Malone had 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 inferring that similarly recorded entries indicated more performances of the play now considered the first part. Collier called Malone on this, adding a note to "the 2 wecke" that "Malone takes no notice of this piece" (p. 63, n.3).

Fleay, BCED introduced a red herring into the question of subject matter of "Seven Days of the Week" by referring to The Christmas Prince, 1607, which he documented only by a cryptic addition of "Halliwell" (#168, 2.304). Of the second part, he had an entry but no comment (#179, 2.305). Greg II expanded 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 referred 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 indexed the lost play simply with "See Christmas Prince" (4.421); in the entry for The Christmas Prince, however, Chambers made no mention of the lost play specifically, though he did 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," Matthew 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" (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 distributed the seven across to 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

Assignment of performances to "the 2 wecke"

Collier called 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).

For What It's Worth

Collier provided 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).