and fortie poundes: and all such some and fomes of money as they or anie of them shall as aforesaid lend or deliver betwene the razeing of the faid frame and finishing thereof, and of all the rest of the faid works, shall be reputed, accepted, taken and accoumpted in parte of the laste payment aforefaid of the same some of fower hundred and fortie poundes; anie thinge above said to the contrary notwithstandinge. In witness whereof the parties abovesaid to theis present indentures interchangeably have sett their handes and seales. Yeoven the daie and yeare first above-written."

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 description of a most singular species of dramatick entertainment, cannot well be confidered as an unnatural adjunct to the preceding mafs of theatrical information. STEEVENS.

"A transcript of a very curious paper now in my possession, entitled, The Platt of the Secound Parte of the Seven Deadlie Sinns, serves in some measure to mark the various degrees of consequence of feveral of these (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.

"-doubtless it will prove some dainty devise, queintly contrived by way of humble supplication to the high and mightie Prince of darknesse; not dunfically botched up, but right formally conveyed, according to the stile 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 seen in London, and was verie gently invited thereunto at Oxford by Tarleton himselfe; of whom I merrily demaunding, which of the seaven 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; so 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 personified, and introduced by Dunbar, a Scottish writer, (who flourished about 1470) in a poem entitled The Daunce. In this piece they are defcribed VOL. II.

by Gabriel Harvey, his contemporary, it appears to have been a new and unexampled species 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 published 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 subjects of the serious drama, and to exhibit at one view those uses to which it might be applied with advantage. That these Seven Deadly Sins, as they are here called, were esteemed the principal fubjects of tragedy, may appear from the following verses of Heywood, who, in his Apology for Actors, introduces Melpomene thus speaking:

"Have I not whipt Vice with a scourge of steele,
"Unmaskt sterne Murther, sham'd lascivious Luft,
"Pluckt off the vifar from grimme treason's face,
" And made the funne point at their ugly finnes?
"Hath not this powerful hand tam'd fiery Rage,
"Kill'd poysonous Envy with her own keene darts,
"Choak'd up the covetous mouth with moulten gold,
" Burft the vast wombe of eating Gluttony,
"And drown'd the drunkard's gall in juice of grapes?
" I have shewd Pride his picture on a stage,
"Layde ope the ugly shapes his steel-glasse hid,
" And made him passe thence meekely-."

As a very full and fatisfactory account of the exhibition defcribed in this ancient fragment, by

as presenting a mask or mummery, with the newest gambols just imported from France. In an anonymous poem called The Kalender of Shepherds, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, 1497, are alfo defcribed the Seven Visions, or the punishments in hell of The Seven Deadly Sins. See Warton's History of English Poetry, Vol. II. Φ. 197, 272. MALONE.

Mr. Steevens, will be found in the following pages, it is unnecessary to add any thing upon the fubject. -What dramas were represented in the first part of the Seven Deadly Sins, we can now only conjecture, as probably the Plot of that piece is long fince destroyed. The ill consequences of Rage, I suppose, were inculcated by the exhibition of Alexander, and the death of Glitus, on which subject, it appears there was an ancient play. Some scenes in the drama of Mydas were probably introduced to exhibit the odiousness and folly of Avarice. Lessons against Pride and ambition were perhaps furnished, either by the play of Ninus and Semiramis, or by a piece formed on the story of Phaeton: And Gluttony, we may suppose, was rendered odious in the perfon of Heliogabalus.

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I met with this fingular curiosity in the library of Dulwich College, where it had remained unnoticed from the time of Alleyn who founded that society, and was himself the chief or only proprietor of the Fortune playhoufe.

The Platt (for so it is called) is fairly written out on pasteboard in a large hand, and undoubtedly contained directions appointed to be stuck up near the prompter's station. 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 beft 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 heinoufnefs of the seven deadly fins was exemplified by aid of scenes and circumstances adapted from different dramas, and connected by choruses or occafional speakers. As the first part of this extraordinary entertainment is wanting, I cannot promise myself the most complete success 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