About 1630 Nabbes seems to have settled in London, resolved to try his fortunes as a dramatist. He was always a stranger to the best literary society, but found congenial companions in Chamberlain, Jordan, Marmion, and Tatham, and was known to many "gentlemen of the Inns of Court" (cf. Bride, Ded.) About January 1632–1633 his first comedy,
Covent Garden, was acted by the queen's servants, and was published in 1638 with a modest dedication addressed to Sir
John Suckling. In the prologue he defends himself from stealing the title of the piece—in allusion doubtless to Richard Brome's
Covent Garden Weeded, acted in 1632—and describes his "muse" as "solitary". His second comedy,
Totenham Court, was acted at the private house in Salisbury Court in 1633, and was also printed in 1638, with a dedication to William Mills. A third piece,
Hannibal and Scipio, an hystorical Tragedy, in five acts of blank verse, was produced in 1635 by the queen's servants at their private house in Drury Lane. Nabbes obviously modelled his play upon Marston's
Sophonisba. It was published in 1637, with a list of the actors' names. A third comedy,
The Bride, acted at the private house in Drury Lane, again by the queen's servants, in 1638, was published two years later, with a prefatory epistle addressed "to the generalty of his noble friends, gentlemen of the severall honorable houses of the Inns of Court". One of the characters, Mrs. Ferret, the imperious wife, has been compared to
Ben Jonson's Mistress Otter.
Gerard Langbaine, in his
An Account of the English Dramatic Poets (1691), places Nabbes among the poets of the third rate. The author of
Theophilus Cibber's
Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland, to the Time of Dean Swift (1753) declares that in strict justice "he cannot rise above a fifth." This severe verdict is ill justified. He is a passable writer of comedies, inventing his own plots, and lightly censuring the foibles of middle-class London society. Samuel Sheppard in the sixth sestiad ("The Assizes of Apollo") of his ''Times Display'd'' (1646), associates Nabbes's name with the names of
John Davenant,
James Shirley,
Francis Beaumont, and
John Fletcher, and selects his tragedy of
Hannibal and Scipio for special commendation. Nabbes displays a satisfactory command of the niceties of dramatic blank verse, in which all his plays, excluding the two earliest comedies, were mainly written. Although he was far more refined in sentiment than most of his contemporaries, he is capable at times of considerable coarseness. ==Burial==