John Day (dramatist)
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John Day (1574–1638?) was an English dramatist of the
Life
He was born at
However his almost incessant activity does not seem to have paid, to judge by the small loans, of five shillings and even two shillings, that he obtained from Henslowe. Little is known of his life beyond these small details, and disparaging references by Ben Jonson in 1618/19, describing him, (with Dekker and Edward Sharpham) as a "rogue" and (with Thomas Middleton and Gervase Markham) as a "base fellow". It may be indicative of his abilities that of all the writers who did a substantial amount of work for Henslowe's companies Day is one of only two not mentioned and praised by Francis Meres in his lists of "the best" writers in 1598. In Peregrinatio Scholastica, or Learning's Pilgrimage, a collection of 22 morall Tractes written towards the end of his life, but not published until 1881, he laments that "notwithstanding . . . Industry . . . he was forct to take a napp at Beggars Bushe", and elsewhere he refers to "being becalmde in a fogg of necessity" having been passed over by "Credit" and "Opinion". It seems likely that he was the "John Daye, yeoman" who killed fellow dramatist Henry Porter in Southwark 1599. If so it does not seem have to interrupted his career; he continued to collaborate with writers such as Henry Chettle, who had written with Porter.
Works
The first play in which Day appears as part-author is The Conquest of Brute, with the finding of the Bath (1598), which, with most of his early work, is lost. Day's earliest extant work, written in collaboration with Chettle, is The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (acted 1600, printed 1659), a drama dealing with the early years of the reign of
The Parliament of Bees is the work on which Day's reputation chiefly rests. The piece contains much for which parallel passages are found in Thomas Dekker's Wonder of a Kingdom (1636) and The Noble Spanish Soldier (printed 1634). The passages which echo The Noble Spanish Soldier include references to speaking Spanish which are only meaningful in the context of Dekker's play; this suggests that the Dekker play is the original, a possibility reinforced by the consideration that there is no known edition of The Parliament of Bees earlier than 1641.
The six dramas by Day which we possess show a delicate fancy and dainty inventiveness all his own. He preserved, in a great measure, the dramatic tradition of
Publication
His works, edited by Bullen, were printed at the Chiswick Press in 1881. The same editor included The Maid's Metamorphosis in Vol. 1 of his Collection of Old Plays. The Parliament of Bees and Humour out of Breath were printed in Nero and other Plays (Mermaid Series, 1888), with an introduction by Arthur Symons. An appreciation by Algernon Charles Swinburne appeared in The Nineteenth Century (October 1897).
Notes
- ^ "Day, John (DY592J)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
References
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Day, John". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 875. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
- Hotson, Leslie M., "The Adventure of a Single Rapier", Atlantic Monthly, July 1931