AS the following article in Mr. Malone's Supplement, &c. 1780, is omitted in his present Hiftorical Account of the English Stage, it is here reprinted. The defcription of a moft fingular fpecies of dramatick entertainment, cannot well be confidered as an unnatural adjunct to the preceding valuable mafs of theatrical information. STEEVENS. --- "A tranfcript of a very curious paper now in my poffeffion, entitled, The Platt of the Secound Parte of the Seven Deadlie Sinns, ferves in fome measure to mark the various degrees of confequence of several of thefe [our ancient] performers. The piece entitled The Seven Deadly Sins, in two parts, (of one of which the annexed paper contains the outlines,) was written by Tarleton the comedian. From the manner in which it is mentioned 2 See Four Letters and certain Sonnets, [by Gabriel Harvey] 1592, p. 29. 66 -doubtless it will prove fome dainty devife, queintly contrived by way of humble fupplication to the high and mightie Prince of darkneffe; not dunfically botched up, but right formally conveyed, according to the ftile and tenour of Tarleton's prefident, his famous play of the Seaven Deadly Sinnes; which most dealy [f. deadly] but lively playe I might have feen in London, and was verie gently invited thereunto at Oxford by Tarleton himselfe; of whom I merrily demaunding, which of the feaven was his own deadlie finne, he bluntly answered, after this manner; By Gthe finne of other gentlemen, lechery." Tarleton's Repentance and his Farewell to his Frendes in his Sickness, a little before his death," was entered on the Stationers' books in October, 1589; fo that the play of The Seven Deadly Sins must have been produced in or before that year. The Seven Deadly Sins had been very early perfonified, and introduced by Dunbar, a Scottish writer, (who flourished about 1470) in a poem entitled The Daunce. In this piece they are described VOL. II. *K k by Gabriel Harvey, his contemporary, it appears to have been a new and unexampled fpecies of dramatick exhibition. He exprefsly calls it a play. I think it probable, that it was first produced foon after a violent attack had been made against the stage. Several invectives against plays were publifhed in the latter part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It seems to have been the purpose of the author of this exhibition, to concenter in one performance the principal fubjects of the ferious drama, and to exhibit at one view thofe uses to which it might be applied with advantage. That' thefe Seven Deadly Sins, as they are here called, were esteemed the principal fubjects of tragedy, may appear from the following verfes of Heywood, who, in his Apology for Actors, introduces Melpomene thus fpeaking: "Have I not whipt Vice with a fcourge of fteele, "And drown'd the drunkard's gall in juice of grapes? As a very full and fatisfactory account of the exhibition described in this ancient fragment, by as presenting a mask or mummery, with the neweft gambols juft imported from France. In an anonymous poem called The Kalender of Shepherds, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, 1497, are also defcribed the Seven Vifions, or the punishments in hell of The Seven Deadly Sins. See Warton's Hiftory of English Poetry, Vol. II. P. 197, 272. MALONE. Mr. Steevens, will be found in the following pages, it is unneceffary to add any thing upon the fubject. -What dramas were reprefented in the first part of the Seven Deadly Sins, we can now only conjecture, as probably the Plot of that piece is long fince deftroyed. The ill confequences of Rage, Ï fuppofe, were inculcated by the exhibition of Alexander, and the death of Clitus, on which fubject, it appears there was an ancient play. Some fcenes in the drama of Mydas were probably introduced to exhibit the odioufnefs and folly of Avarice. Leffons against Pride and ambition were perhaps furnished, either by the play of Ninus and Semiramis, or by a piece formed on the ftory of Phaeton: And Gluttony, we may fuppofe, was rendered odious in the perfon of Heliogabalus. MALONE. "If we prefent a forcign hiftory, the fubject is fo intended, that in the lives of Romans, Grecians, or others, the vertues of our countrymen are extolled, or their vices reproved. We present Alexander killing his friend in his rage, to reprove rafbnefs; Mydas choked with gold, to tax covetoufnefs; Nero againft tyranny; Sardanapalus against luxury; Ninus against ambition."-Heywood's Apology for Actors, 1610. MALONE. 4 See the foregoing note. MALONE. 5 The Tragedy of Ninus and Semiramis, the first Monarchs of the World, was entered on the Stationers' books, May 10, 1595. See alfo note 3. MALONE. 6 There appears to have been an antient play on this fubject. "Art thou proud? Our Scene prefents thee with the fall of Phaeton; Narciffus pining in the love of his fhadow; ambitious Haman now calling himself a god, and by and by thrust headlong among the devils.' Pride and ambition feem to have been used as fynonymous terms. Apology for Actors. MALONE. I met with this fingular curiofity in the library of Dulwich College, where it had remained unnoticed from the time of Alleyn who founded that fociety, and was himself the chief or only proprietor of the Fortune playhouse. The Platt (for fo it is called) is fairly written out on pafteboard in a large hand, and undoubtedly contained directions appointed to be stuck up near the prompter's ftation. It has an oblong hole in its centre, fufficient to admit a wooden peg; and has been converted into a cover for an anonymous manuscript play entitled The Tell-tale. From this cover' I made the preceding transcript; and the best conjectures I am able to form about its fuppofed purpose and operation, are as follows. It is certainly (according to its title) the groundwork of a motley exhibition, in which the heinoufness of the seven deadly fins was exemplified by aid of scenes and circumftances adapted from different dramas, and connected by chorufes or occasional speakers. As the first part of this extraordinary entertainment is wanting, I cannot promise myself the most complete fuccefs in my attempts to explain the nature of it. The period is not exactly fixed at which moralities gave way to the introduction of regular tra On the outfide of the cover is written, "The Book and Platt," &c. STEEVENS. * Our antient audiences were no ftrangers to the established catalogue of mortal offences. Claudio, in Measure for Measure, declares to Ifabella that of the deadly feven his fin was the leaft. Spenfer, in his Faery Queen, canto IV. has perfonified them all; and the Jefuits, in the time of Shak fpeare, pretended to caft them out in the fhape of those animals that most resembled them. See King Lear, Vol. XIV. p. 162, n. 6. STEEVENS. gedies and comedies. Perhaps indeed this change was not effected on a fudden, but the audiences were to be gradually weaned from their accustomed modes of amusement. The neceffity of half indulging and half repreffing a grofs and vicious taste, might have given rise to such pieces of dramatick patchwork as this. Even the most rigid puritans might have been content to behold exhibitions in which Pagan hiftories were rendered fubfervient to Chriftian purposes. The dulnefs of the intervening homilift would have half abfolved the deadly fin of the poet. A fainted audience would have been tempted to think the reprefentation of Othello laudable, provided the piece were at once heightened and moralized' by choruses spoken in the characters of Ireton and Cromwell.Let it be remembered, however, that to perform feveral fhort and distinct plays in the courfe of the fame evening, was a practice continued much below the imagined date of this theatrical directory. Shakspeare's Yorkshire Tragedy was one out of four pieces acted together; and Beaumont and Fletcher's works fupply a further proof of the existence of the fame cuftom. This "Platt of the fecond part of the feven deadly fins" feems to be formed out of three plays only, 9 moralized-] In Randolph's Mufe's Looking-Glass, where two Puritans are made spectators of a play, a player, to reconcile them in fome degree to a theatre, promifes to moralize the plot: and one of them answers, 66 that moralizing "I do approve: it may be for instruction.” Again, Mrs. Flowerdew, one of the characters, fays, "Pray, Sir, continue the moralizing." The old regifters of the Stationers afford numerous inftances of this cuftom, which was encouraged by the encrease of puritanifm. STEEVENS. |