SOURCE: Bullen, A. H. “Introduction.” In The Works of John Day, edited by A. H. Bullen, pp. 639-67. London: Holland Press, 1963.

[The following essay is taken from a reprint of Bullen's 1881 edition of Day's works. In this introduction, Bullen focuses on the dating of Day's works and appraising his level of talent. He offers praise for the author's delicacy and sweetness, singling out Parliament of Bees and Humour out of Breath as works reflecting Day's poetic strengths.]

In this age of reprinting, when so much pious care is being spent in preserving fresh and sweet the memories of our good old English writers, it is somewhat curious that the author of the Parliament of Bees should have been left unnoticed. But, perhaps, the causes of this neglect are not far to seek. Day's merits are unobtrusive: his brightest work is of the thinnest texture. It is only in moments of most abandoned idleness that we can sit down to enjoy to the full the dainty repartees of his Court-ladies or the pretty pertness of the pages. At such times we think of Day, as of one of his own Bees, flitting in careless gaiety from flower to flower; now sipping the honeyed sweetness of Shakespeare's early comedies, then lighting on the fragrant exotics of Lyly, and, again, revelling in the “blossomed bravery” of the Arcadia. He seems as one born to live a life of idleness, a lounger in the Castle of Indolence, released from all “the heavy trouble, the bewildering care” that beset our work-a-day existence. In his best plays there is a striking absence of the robustness which characterizes the work of his fellow-dramatists. And yet an inspection of Henslowe's Diary shows that few among the knot of busy workers laboured more incessantly than Day. Between the years 1599 and 1602 he was engaged in the part-authorship of a score of plays,—of which only one (The Blind Beggar of Bednal Green), sixty years afterwards, found its way into print. His usual coadjutor was William Haughton, a writer whose gifts bore little resemblance to his own, if we may judge from the bustling intrigue and noisy sprightliness of Haughton's sole extant producttion, Englishmen for my Money. Stress of circumstances obliged poor Day to abandon his vein of natural delicacy, and address himself intelligibly to the ears of the groundlings. For, according to the showing of Henslowe's doleful record, he seems to have been in a perpetual state of pecuniary embarrassment. No facts of his life have come down to us, but it may be assumed that he followed no profession, depending for his subsistence solely on the stage and the capricious bounty of patrons. We find him continually getting advances from Henslowe of the paltriest sums; for instance:—

Lent unto John Daye the 4 of Jenewary 1599, in Redy money, the some of          vs.,          witness Edward Alleyn

(where the words “in Redy money” seem somewhat unnecessary, and the transaction hardly of such importance as to require the presence of a witness); or, to take a still more trivial entry:—

18 July 1601 Lent John Daye iis.

But it is pleasant to find that the success of one of our author's plays was so great as to procure for him a bonus of ten shillings over and above the stipulated price:—

Pd. unto John Daye, at the apoyntment of the company, 1601, after the playinge of the 2 pte. of Strowde, the some of          xs.

Such red-letter days came seldom. Let us hope that in his hour of triumph Day was not unmindful of his colleague Haughton. We follow them gleefully in fancy to the Dog or Triple Tun, and watch them pledging each other's fortunes in copious cups of burnt sack.

At what date Day began to write for the stage cannot be ascertained. There is no record to show when he left Cambridge; nor were the laborious compilers of the invaluable Athenæ Cantabrigienses able to discover whether he graduated or not. A play called the Maiden's Holyday was entered on the Stationers' Books in April, 1654, as the joint production of Christopher Marlowe and John Daye. It was one of those destroyed by Warburton's cook, and is described in Warburton's list as by Marlowe alone. I should be glad to claim for Day the high honour of having written in conjunction with Marlowe; but it is more reasonable to suppose that Day merely supplied some additions on the revival of Marlowe's play. If credit could be paid to the entry in the Stationers' Registers we should have our author writing for the stage as early as 1593, for in that year the greatest of Shakespeare's predecessors went, with such deplorable suddenness, to his grave. But, setting aside this doubtful piece of evidence, we know nothing of Day's career before 1599, when he appears in Henslowe's Diary as a dramatist in full swing.

The following are the names of the plays in which he was concerned between 1599 and 1602, set down in the order of the entries in the Diary:—

1. The tragedie of Merie, written in conjunction with Haughton. Mr. Collier suggests that this play is identical with the Two Tragedies in One, published in 1601; but how are we to overlook the fact that the name of Thomas Yarrington appears at full length on the title-page of the Two Tragedies? It would be most interesting to get some particulars about this unknown writer. His play is extremely rare and extremely curious. No allusion to him is to be found among his contemporaries, and we have no evidence to show that he wrote anything else: he is a mere nominis umbra, “lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing.” In the Two Tragedies two separate plots are oddly pieced together; one relating to the murder of a London merchant by a man named Merry, and the other founded on a variation of the story of the Babes in the Wood. The writer seems to have studied closely the Arden of Feversham, and not altogether without effect; for though the general treatment is bald, there are to be found passages of striking power.

2. The tragedie of Cox of Collumpton, 1599: Haughton again assisted our author. We need not be much distressed at the loss of these two domestic tragedies, as neither Day nor Haughton were fitted to deal successfully with such subjects.

3. The conquest of Brute with the first fyndeinge of the Bathe, 1599. Chettle received most of the money for this play, and we may therefore assume that his share in its composition was the greater.

4. The Etalyan tragedie of. …, 1599. A blank was left in the Diary for the full title.

5. The Spaneshe Mores Tragedie, 1599. On this occasion Day was joined by Dekker and Haughton. Mr. Collier supposes that this was the play published under the title of Lust's Dominion, as the work of Marlowe, in 1657. But Spanish Moors were favourite characters with the old dramatists; and I certainly can find no trace of Day's hand in Lust's Dominion. In the absence of external evidence, we might not unreasonably place it in company with that ill-starred play of Chettle's, shorn of half its glory by the cruelty of the printer, Hoffman's Tragedy. There is the same tragic luridness—an iron gloom lit intermittently by angry flashes.

6. The Orphans Tragedy, 1599. Haughton and Chettle assisted.

7. The Seven Wise Masters, 1599, written in conjunction with Dekker, Haughton, and Chettle.

8. The Golden Ass and Cupid and Psyche, 1600. Dekker and Chettle were our author's coadjutors.

9. The Blind Beggar of Bednal Green, 1600. This play, for which Chettle is partly responsible, is the least characteristic of our author's productions. One scene follows another with “damnable iteration.” There is a deplorable diffuseness and lack of animation. During the progress of the serious part of the action, we sigh for the presence of Tom Strowd and Swash, but soon the uncouth antics of the clumsy pair become intolerable; nor is there much attraction to be found in the humours of the gang of cutpurses who hold so prominent a place. If Momford and his daughter had been made the central figures, the rough fun of the Norfolkshire yeoman's son would have served as a set-off to the pathetic situations. In Middleton's admirable comedy, A Fair Quarrel, a Cornish yeoman and his serving-man are most successfully introduced: they prevent the action of the piece from assuming too sombre a form, without staying long enough to bore us. But in the Blind Beggar the stage is occupied almost entirely by Tom Strowd and Swash, the trio of pickpurses, and the detestably vulgar villains who accomplish Momford's fall. Then there is an underplot (which leads to nothing) stuffed with the intrigues of Gloucester and the Cardinal to win the hand of Lady Ellanor. Momford and his daughter are treated in the most summary fashion: they are scarcely introduced to us before they are hurried away. Chettle, it will be remembered, contributed to the “pleasant comodie of Patient Grissil,” 1603,—one of the sweetest and tenderest of old plays; and on that account we might be disposed to give him the credit of having written the scenes between Momford and his daughter. Nevertheless, I venture to think that they should be ascribed to Day. The lightness of touch, the lack of intensity, and the easy fluency of the rhymed lines are characteristic of Day rather than of his robust associate. In such a passage as the following, Day's hand may plainly be recognized:—

Shed but one tear for him, and I for thee
Will weep till from the Moyster of mine eyes
A little found of Christall tears shall rise
To bathe thine eyelids in; yet do not weep:
Lay all thy griefs on me, for I am young
And I have tears enough to weep much wrong.

The scene in which these lines occur is marked by grace and delicacy of treatment. There is an absence of strong lines: our feelings are merely ruffled, not stirred from their depths. Chettle, I think, would have been more ambitious. To Chettle's invention I would ascribe the elaboration of the scheme of villainy between young Playnsey and Sir Robert Westford; as also the bickerings of the Cardinal and Gloucester. The opening lines of the play no doubt belong to Day. Comparing them with the address of Octavio at the beginning of Humour out of Breath, the dullest ear cannot fail to be struck by the resemblance in the structure of the blank verse. In each case there is a want of crispness, of variety. Aware of his inability to write musical blank verse, Day wisely adopted, for the most part, rhyme and rhythmical prose. It is not so easy to determine the authorship of the comic portions of the play. Certainly the coarseness of the texture is very unlike what we find in Day's other plays; but as he received the honorarium of ten shillings for the Second Part of Strowd, it is only reasonable to suppose that he had “either an entire hand, or at the least a main finger” in describing Strowd's adventures in the Blind Beggar.

10. The 2 pte. of Strowde, 1600. Chettle's assistance was exchanged for Haughton's in the composition of this play.

11. The Conquest of the West Indies, 1601, written in conjunction with Wentworth Smith and Haughton.

12. The 3 pte. of Thome Strowd, 1601. The full entry in the Diary respecting the second part, “the second pte of the blind beager of bednowle grene, with the end of Strowde,” would have led us to hope that we had heard the last of Tom Strowd. But just as we are congratulating ourselves “nunc placida compostus pace quiescit,” behold—evoked by the applause of the groundlings—he is before us again. Devouring time, for the credit of Day and the comfort of his editor, has spared only the first part of this tiresome trilogy. Haughton's services were again enlisted.

13. The vi yemon of the Weaste, 1601.

14. Fryer Rush and the prowde Woman of Antwerpe, 1601, written in conjunction with Haughton.

15. The Second Part of Tom Dough, 1601. No mention is made of the first part. Haughton, as usual, assisted.

16. The Bristol Tragedy, 1602. “This,” says Mr. Collier, “was probably the play printed anonymously in 1608 under the title of the Fair Maid of Bristol.” It should, however, be remembered that the Fair Maid is a comedy. Very little, it is true, is required to turn it into a tragedy; in fact, it would seem that the author or authors started with the intention of composing a tragedy, and, at the last moment, when the catastrophe was at hand, determined to give a “smooth and comical” issue to a tragical tale. Possibly the play was intended, by varying the fifth act, to do duty for a comedy or tragedy, as in the case of Suckling's Aglaura. Be this as it may, there is little to remind us of Day in the “very tragical mirth” of the Fair Maid.

17. Merry as may be, 1602. Haughton's name does not occur again in the Diary. Richard Hathway and Wentworth Smith assisted our author on this occasion.

18. The Boast of Billingsgate, 1602. Hathway was one of the contributors, but the names of the others are lost; the Diary records an advance to “Day and his felow poetes.”

19. The Black Dog of Newgate, 1602. Written in conjunction with “Mr Smythe, Mr hathwaye and the other poyet.”

20. The Unfortunate General, 1603. Hathway, Smith, and “the other poyet” again contributed. Whether “the other poyet” was led by natural modesty to conceal his name, or whether the spelling of the name taxed the illiterate old manager's intellect too severely, I leave the reader to decide for himself.

21. The Second Part of the Black Dog, 1603. The authors were the same as before.

All these plays (and probably others) were written between 1599 and the early part of 1603, when the Diary breaks off. A barren catalogue of forgotten names, albeit a melancholy object, is not without its uses. At first, in our exasperation, we cry out against the malice of fate; but as our eye rests longer on the page we grow resigned; after listening to the “sullen Lethe rolling doom” we learn to prize more dearly what the ravages of time have spared.

Whether Day continued to produce at the same rapid rate we have no means of ascertaining. All his published plays, with the (doubtful) exception of the Parliament of Bees, were written before 1608. In 1602 a play called Jane Shore, by Day and Chettle, was altered for Lord Worcester's company; but, with this exception, the few other plays of Day's about which we have any information belong to a later date. There was entered on the Stationers' Registers in August, 1610, “A Booke called the Madde Prancks of Merry Mall of the Bankside, with her Walks in Man's Apparel and to what Purpose.” Nine years later another entry chronicles “A Play called the Life and Death of Guy of Warwicke, written by John Day and Thomas Dekkers.” Mr. Halliwell-Phillips (vid. Dictionary of Old Plays) thinks that this may be the “Guy Earl of Warwick, by B. J.,” published in 1661; but I doubt whether either of the authors, if they had tried, could have written so execrably. Dekker was again associated with Day in the composition of a play called the Bellman of Paris, mentioned in Sir Henry Herbert's Diary, July 30, 1623:—“For the Prince's players a French tragedy of the Bellman of Paris written by Thomas Dekkers and John Day for the Company of the Red Bull.” In September of the same year the Diary has another entry relating to our author:—“For a company of strangers a new comedy Come See a Wonder written by John Daye.” I have not been able to discover the names of any other plays in which Day was concerned; probably the plays given in our list formed but a small part of the wealth of his dramatic treasure-house. In the intervals of writing for the stage he found time, too, for other work. There is extant an undated letter, in which he prays a patron's acceptance of a poem on the Miracles of Christ. Surely never was a patron's bounty more delicately solicited!—

S^r It hath bene an antient custome in (this great Isle of Man) the world, for men, in any fashion acquainted, at the birthe of the new yeare to new date the band of their loves, and, by some present or gifte, new seale and more strongly condition them: which custom to continew, and to pay som part of the duty in which I stand obliged to your worshipp I am bold to present you with this small Poeme contayning the Miracles of our Blest Saviour. And hopeing you will receyve it as gratefully as I tender it willingly, I cease your trouble,

Desirous to be all yours

John Day.¹

Another curious relic of our author is to be found in some “Acrostic Verses upon the name of his worthie friende Maister Thomas Dowton.” In this instance the request is made with somewhat more plainness. Dowton was a successful actor, who had also written for the stage. As for the Acrostic it is no better or worse than such things usually are:—

T          he wealthy treasure of America
H          id in the vaines and artiers of the earthe,
O          r the rich pearle begotten in the sea,
M          ade rounde and oriente in his naturall birthe,
A          re not all valewde, in the eye of Arte,
S          oe much (by much) as a compassionate harte.
D          etermine, then, to keepe that wealthie mine,
O          f all exchequers in the world the beste:
W          isdom the quoine, the stamp upon't devine,
T          he man that owes it beares this motto, ‘Bleste.’
O          f all my friends ('twere shame to wrong desarte)
N          ot one of all beares a more passionate harte.”

These two fragments should be read in connection with a passage of the dedication to the Peregrinatio Scholastica:—

“And as Jewells, so the stones be orient, artfully cutt and orderlie sett, use not to be underualewde for the obscureness of the workman but are rather a meanes to make him better knowne in the eye of Reguard; so I presume that my indeavours, the subject being right and the workmanshipp anything artfull, may not finde the lesse wellcome in regard I boast not that gaudie spring of Credit & youthfull flourish of Opinion as some other filde in the same rancke with me. The day may come when nos quoque floruimus may be there motto as well as myne: in the meane time, being becalmde in a fogg of necessity, I am content to ly at anckor before the Ilands Meliora Speramus.”

If the Peregrinatio Scholastica had come down to us without the dedication we should assuredly have concluded that it was the fanciful employment of a man in the enjoyment of uninterrupted leisure; but the foregoing extract would plainly seem to show that it was written late in life, at a time when the author had fallen behind in the race for popularity. Even at this distance of time, as we read the dedication we feel our heart warm towards the old poet who, when he had outlived his own reputation, could yet speak without bitterness of his more fortunate rivals and with graceful modesty of himself. Possibly the “fog of necessity” may point to his actual incarceration; when he inveighs against the tyranny of gaolers in the second tractate it is likely enough that he is writing from actual experience. Day seems to have possessed in no ordinary degree the rare art of disengaging the mind from painful associations, and bathing it in a stream of pleasurable feelings. In the winter of his age, battered and broken by neglect, Ben Jonson put forth the sweetest flower of his invention. Something of the graceful fluency and arch fancy that inform the Sad Shepherd may be found here and there in Day's tract. The description of “Ponerias enchanted grove” in the fourth tractate is daintily written, abounding in happy touches. We are amused by the playful extravagance as by the prattle of a child. It is delightful to watch the evident relish with which the writer elaborates his conceits.

I have mentioned Ben Jonson's name in connection with Day's; in their lifetime they were, if not enemies, at least partially estranged. Notwithstanding the elaborate excuses made in his defence, many students must find it difficult to acquit William Drummond of ill-feeling for chronicling so faithfully the hasty expressions of spleen that Ben Jonson let drop, too profusely, on the occasion of his memorable visit to Hawthornden. In the course of those conversations Day's name was mentioned twice, and on each occasion in no very flattering terms. First we are told that “Sharpham, Day, Dicker were all rogues; and that Minshew was one;”² and, again, that “Markham (who added his English Arcadia) was not of the number of the Faithfull, i.e. Poets, and but a base fellow. That such were Day & Middleton.”³ It was in January, 1619, that Ben Jonson paid his visit to Drummond: twenty-one years later, in John Tatham's Fancies Theater, 1640, was published a wretched elegy “On his loving friend M. John Day.” The name Day is an apt one for the purposes of a punster;⁴ and no doubt Tatham thought that his ingenuity was being shown at its brightest when he was berhyming his dead friend in the following outrageous manner:—

Dan Phœbus now hath lost his Light
And left his Rule unto the Night;
And Cynthia she hath overcome
The day and dark[e]ned the Sun:
Whereby we now have lost our hope
Of gaining Day in's Horoscope, & c.(5)

Ohe jam satis! It is somewhat hard that Ben Jonson's sneers and Tatham's absurd elegy should be the only allusions to Day to be found among his contemporaries. Tatham belonged to a younger generation; his elegy cannot have been written much earlier than the date of its publication, 1640. As Day was writing certainly in 1598—and probably for some years earlier—he must have been full of years, if not of honour, when he passed to the Muses' Elysium. Perhaps it is well that we are not able to follow him to the curtain's drop. If any records concerning him had come down to us, it would not improbably be found that he lived a life of hardship and died in sorrow. When we think of the neglect and wretchedness that clouded the closing days of our old dramatists, we are reminded of those most pathetic lines of Nashe's:—

Short days, sharp days, long nights come on apace,
Ah, who shall hide us from the winter's face?
Cold doth increase, the sickness doth not cease,
And here we lie, God knows, with little ease.

Doubtless long before his end came Day's name had passed into obscurity. Even in his early days he seems to have lived in the shade. His Addresses to the Reader display a curious indifference, which, despite the appearance of affectation, is probably a faithful mirror of the poet's mind. Neither Meirs in his exhaustive Wits Treasury, nor Heywood in his Hierarchie of Angels have any mention of him. In our own day the same neglect has attended his memory. Charles Lamb, it is true, in his invaluable Extracts from the Garrick Plays, selected some passages from the Parliament of Bees, adding a few golden words of praise—words that confer an immortality; and recently Mr. E. W. Gosse, a critic remarkable no less for delicate insight than for profound knowledge, has repeatedly called attention to our author's merits.

It would be absurd to claim for Day a place in the front rank of Shakespeare's followers; but he certainly deserves a little niche in the Temple of Fame. He is no mocking-bird. His plays, as Mr. Gosse has remarked, “testify to a talent somewhat out of sympathy with the main poetic current of the day.” The influence of Lyly is plainly distinguishable; but luckily the early comedies of Shakespeare were at hand to oppose the sometimes graceful but oftener tiresome euphuist. It is difficult to conceive how any audience, albeit composed of maids-of-honour and lords-in-waiting, could have sat patiently through a performance of Campaspes, or Mother Bombie. Doubtless in adopting prose to so large an extent, Day was influenced by Lyly's example; but Day's prose is far less cumbersome than Lyly's, and moves with a lighter step. His style is not disfigured by those tortuous currents of laboured antithesis and pedantic allusion that make Lyly, except in the smallest of doses, nauseous even to the most patient of readers.

First in the list of our author's plays in order of publication stands the Ile of Guls. Day formed his plot, as he tells us, on the Arcadia of “that worthy gentleman Sir Philip Sidney;” and often we find that he has not scrupled to borrow the very words of that delicious though occasionally tedious romance. Few people would be unwilling to confess to a feeling of disappointment after a first reading of the Arcadia. Nobody now thinks of placing it in the same rank with the Faery Queene; but among his contemporaries, and in the age following, Sidney's fame stood at least as high, if not higher, than Spenser's. Sidney has always been regarded with something of that strange reverence that gathered in the Middle Ages about the name of Vergil. There is more than a literary interest in the Arcadia; we can never separate the artist's personality from his work. Criticism stands aloof while we admire with our whole hearts the exquisite moral feeling of the beautiful old romance, the heroic gentleness and stainless purity that constitute its uniqueness, and make it a treasure more golden than gold. As we open the Arcadia, all the leaden weights of worldliness and selfishness drop from us. We are listening in some pleasant greenery to the carolling of birds and the piping of shepherds: here is the holy ground of Truth, here are chaste men and lovely maids. We feel vexed with Day for having intruded on our sylvan sanctity. Compared with many of Fletcher's heroines, the ladies of the Ile of Guls are paragons of virtue, but they are very far removed from the ideal purity of the Arcadia. Desperately anxious not to “lead apes in hell,” the duke's daughters somewhat overstep the bounds of maidenly reserve; but their prettiness and wit serve as an excuse for their inconstancy. They are delightful creatures, revelling in their butterfly existence: we have not the heart to be angry with them. The polish of the Court has not rubbed off their charming girlishness: their frankness and unaffectedness are very refreshing. Nor are there wanting touches of tenderness and pathos; as in the pity expressed for the “Sylvan commoners” (II. 2), where the delicacy of the language could hardly be improved. We could wish that this strain of dainty moralizing had been pursued further. The cleverest scene in the play is the description of the match at tennis (II. 5). Not for a moment is there a pause in the rapid interchange of stroke and counter-stroke. Outside of Shakespeare's early comedies it would be difficult to find among the dramatists of the time such another tour de force of sprightly repartee. In this perilous play of tight-rope dancing Day takes a special delight: his step is always light and true.

There is much freshness in the drawing of the contending suitors. They are admirable examples of Elizabethan gallants, generous and mettlesome without grossness, worthy rivals for the favour of the duke's witty daughters. Very diverting, too, is the roguishness of the page, “a most acute juvenal, volable, and free of grace,” who pokes his fun at everybody in turn, and never suffers us to be dull in his company; who knows when his master has had enough of his fooling, but always contrives to get the last word; who, if he had been pitted with Moth, would have come off not so badly. In the plots and counterplots of the Duke and Duchess, the writer needs all his tact to overcome our natural repugnance. The rapturous language in which their passion (save the mark!) finds expression was probably meant at once to draw our attention from the coarseness of the situations and to point more sharply against them the shafts of ridicule in the sequel. The vulgar upstart Dametas, and his hypocritical serving-man Manasses, are tolerably life-like figures. Possibly Dametas is intended for a caricature. About the Court there must have been many who, in the language of an old playwright, had “learning enough to take a bribe, and witte enough to be proud.” Manasses is even more plainly a caricature. His mock sermon (pp. 276-7)—with its abundance of commonplace imagery, its emphasis and repetition—is a capital skit on the long-winded discourses of the Puritans.⁶ It is surprising that the Puritans were held up to so little ridicule by the writers for the stage. Ben Jonson, it is true, took up the cudgels and administered to them a sound thrashing in the person of Zeal-of-the-Land Busy; but Ben Jonson's heavy strokes were probably felt less keenly than the cool and provoking bitterness of the Dedication to Shirley's Bird in the Cage, addressed to the author of Histriomatix, then undergoing imprisonment for libel. Day lays on his colours thickly, and does not care to mix any light with the shade; but there is nothing brutal in the sketch. Manasses is not for a moment such a monster of deformity as Cyril Tourneur's Languedoc Snuff. The characters both of Manasses and Dametas are quite within the lines of comedy: their rascality does not rise to the dignity of thorough-paced villainy; they are rogues, but not miscreants.

But the interest of the Ile of Guls lies chiefly in the dexterous development of the plot. The play is full of “business”: the liveliness and bustle are unceasing. Few situations could be conceived more ludicrous than the final scene of gullery at Adonis's chapel, where the bewildered actors are seen wandering in a maze of droll entanglement, made only the more intricate as explanation is heaped on explanation. We may be sure that at the fall of the curtain the applause was loud and hearty, and that everybody went home in a good humour.

In the following year, 1607, was published The Travels of the Three English Brothers. This play has no extraordinary merits, and is evidently a hasty piece of patchwork. It is not difficult to distinguish Day's hand in the playful naughtiness of the conversation between the Sophy's “Neece” and Dalibra (pp. 341-8). The grossness of the scene between Kemp and the Italian “Harlaken” (pp. 369-73) is suggestive of Rowley, but the quickness and pertness of the sallies point rather to Day. To Day, too, must be assigned the spirited scene (pp. 377-89) in which the Sophy's niece avows her love for Robert Sherley, and hurls defiance at his accusers. All Day's heroines are genuine; all have a charming frankness of manner and a hearty detestation of whatever is mean and contemptible; and they know how to express their likes and dislikes gracefully and vigorously. The only other place where Day's hand can be distinctly recognized is in the conversation between the Gaoler and Sir Thomas Sherley (pp. 389-91).⁷ Rowley had far more terseness and vigour than either of his associates, and if his strength had been duly tempered with judgment, would have done great things. Zariph, though so undisguisedly a copy of Shylock, is a very life-like figure. The few rough strokes convey an idea of strength that would be wanting in a more finished sketch. There is undoubtedly too much of the “'Ercles vein” in Rowley; he pitches his voice in too high a key, and wants often naturalness and freedom. The whole of the first scene (pp. 321-8), which is undoubtedly Rowley's, moves on stilts; the style is forced without being dignified. In scene 7 (pp. 360-3) the grating metrical irregularities and noisy vehemence again remind us of Rowley. Elsewhere his hand cannot be traced with any certainty; but it would be absurd to speak authoritatively on such a point. In the dispute between Robert Sherley and Halybeck, on pp. 332-5, there are some stirring passages: in one place Robert Sherley grows savagely eloquent:—

Thou art better goe downe quick vnto thy grave
Then touch him; better abuse thy Parents,
Be thine owne murtherer, let thine owne bloud out
And seale therewith thine own damnation:
Better do all may tumble thee to hell
Than wrong him.

These lines would seem to belong to Rowley, but the early part of the same scene is assuredly Wilkins'. A curious conceit is found on p. 330:—

They shall have graves like thee dishonoured,
Vnfit for heauen or earth: this we prepare,
Betwixt them both weele seat you in the Ayre.

In Wilkins' Miseries of Inforct Marriage we come across it again:—

My brothers unto shame must yield their blood:
My babes at others' stirrups beg their food
Or else turn thieves too and be chok'd for it,
Die a dog s death, be perch'd upon a tree;
Hang'd betwixt heaven and earth as fit for neither!

Hazlitt's Dodsley, ix. 559.

The concluding scene, which is carefully and equably written, may likewise be set down to Wilkins' account; although I think with Mr. Fleay that the speech of Fame at the end belongs to Rowley. But it is not worth while to make a minute analysis. None of the three authors is shown at his best; and the play, as a whole, is but a flimsy production.

Two of our author's plays were published in 1608—Law Trickes and Humour out of Breath; the former licensed in March 1607-8 and the latter in the following April. Day's characters bear a strong family resemblance. Count Lurdo in Law Trickes recalls Dametas, and Emilia exhibits the same freshness and spirit as charmed us in Violetta and Hippolita. Nor are the pages a whit less versatile than their predecessor in the Isle of Guls. Day's muse does not take a wide sweep. In Law Trickes we must not look for any deep studies of character: what we may expect to find, and what we do find, is abundance of graceful writing, wit without end, and a few touches of tender pathos. The choicest piece in the play is where the Countess chides and counsels the maids who sit sewing by an hour-glass. Nothing could be more exquisite than the fanciful moralizing of the forsaken lady:—

3 GEN.
Pray, madam, teach me to take out this knot
Of hearts ease.
COUNT.
                                                            Hearts ease! I have almost forgot:
I could have wrought it well when I was young,
But in good sadnesse I have had none long.
What's that?
2 GEN.
                                                  A branch of Rue.
COUNT.
                                                                                                    A common weede:
Of all herbes else I worke that well indeede.
How chance your flower is behind the glasse?
2 GEN.
Indeede, Ile get it up.
COUNT.
                                                                                          Indeede, alas,
I cannot chide with her; yet tyrant care
At my intreate will not one sigh forbeare.
2 GEN.
Why sigh you, madam?
COUNT.
                                                                                Oh, I greeve to see
Youth run to catch at their owne misery.
You are like Aprill or rose buds in May,
You never wither till the wedding day:
Even so did I, so pretty soules will you;
Youth wears mild Hearts Ease, sorrow bitter Rue.”

(pp.163-4)

Such verses as these, for their purity and sweet plaintiveness, deserve a place in our memory.

The sudden transformation of Polymetes, the dreamy student, into the wild gallant is a little unaccountable. At his first entry he puts us in mind of Charles in Fletcher's Elder Brother, but he soon suffers severely in the comparison. His complaint of the decay of learning, and his comparison of law to

                                                            A golden chaine
That linkes the body of a Common-Wealth
Into a firme and formall Vnion.

(p. 127)

display a power of real eloquence and lofty contemplation; so that we begin to feel quite angry with our author when this high promise is brought to nothing. If Polymetes had degenerated into a vulgar profligate, the offence would have been unpardonable; but his fantastic singularity gives a certain piquancy to his misconduct and makes our censure fall lightly. We feel that he is a good fellow at heart, one who has lived much among books and little among men and women. When he leaves the society of his books and looks out into the world, he is disgusted with the humdrum march of commonplace existence—

The same three hundred sixty-five
Dull days to every year alive,

and longs to

Grasp this sorry scheme of things entire.

What tremendous proportions would Polymetes have assumed in Marlowe's hands! Day's hero is a kind of miniature Faustus or Tamburlaine. He has no ambition to attain physical or intellectual power: he is content to “let the world slide” while he gives the fashion to a company of good-fellows. Breaking away from the restraints of society he throws himself into thorough-paced bohemianism. He appoints himself Master of the Revels, and is determined to find mirth in everything. When his short-lived reign of merriment is abruptly broken off, it is impossible to resist smiling at the quaint devices suggested by his ready wit. The audience must have been fairly convulsed by the series of mystifications in which the Duke is entangled. Joculo's cock-and-bull story about the English post is an admirable piece of fooling, and Julio's explanation is even more delightfully ludicrous. The page's personation of his mistress and the wit-combat that ensues are lively and well sustained. Nor must we pass over Horatio's kind-hearted little page, who so dexterously “turned to mirth a scene so tragicall.” As for his master, Horatio, the sooner we forget him the better. He is a sinister spirit—a subject for Webster or Cyril Tourneur, not for Day: his presence clouds the brightness of the play. We could wish that Day had never meddled with villains at all. But once Horatio rises to real dignity of language:—

I hate the base and rascal multitude;
I cannot nod, ride bare-head through the street,
Nor wreath my body like a Cable Hat-band
To everie Pedler and Mechanick Townesman:
I hate the poore, am enuious at the rich,
Loue none.”

Humour out of Breath is (always excepting the Parliament of Bees) our author's most characteristic work. In the banished Duke's moralizing the sweet low tone of pathos has an accent of its own that is quite genuine, though it rings very softly. The ladies are, of course, witty and pretty. We see in them the potentiality of a Rosalind or Beatrice. By studying the old dramatists we learn to appreciate better the omnipotence of Shakespeare. Our admiration for the Duchess of Malfi or The Faithful Shepherdess heightens our wonder of Othello or Midsummer Night's Dream. Hazlitt once said that a man should throw away all his other books and keep only his Shakespeare; and one is sometimes tempted to take the advice in earnest. The witty encounter between Octavio's sons and Antonio's daughters seems polished to the last touch, but how poor and thin it becomes when we turn to the brilliant sallies of Beatrice and Benedict! In his very limited range Day is an admirable writer, but how awkward of gait and slow of speech are his brightest characters when set beside Shakespeare's matchless figures! Shakespeare sits enthroned “above the flight of ages;” nor is life so short but that we may find time to do honour to those who lived in Shakespeare's England, and “learned his great language, caught his clear accents.” In Humour out of Breath Day has followed in the master's steps, not as a slavish imitator, but as an intelligent student. The mannerisms of Shakespeare's early work, the playful dallying with words and phrases, the delightful diffuseness, the elaborate antithesis, are reproduced not by laboured effort but by happy spontaneity. Here are some dainty lines that might almost pass as an extract from Love's Labour's Lost:—

OCT.
Tis good to doubt, but tis not good to feare,
Yet still to doubt will at the last proue feare;
Doubt loue, tis good, but tis not good to feare it;
Loue hurts them most that least of all come neere it.
FR.
Then to doubt loue is the next way to love?
OCT.
Doubtles it is if you misdoubt not loue.
HIP.
Doubt and misdoubt, what difference is there here?
OCT.
Yes, much: when men misdoubt tis sayd they feare.
FR.
But is it good in loue to be in doubt?
OCT.
No, not in loue, doubt then is iealousie:
Tis good to doubt before you be in loue;
Doubt counsells how to shun loues misery.
FR.
Your doubtfull counsell counsells vs to loue.

This chasing of a word through line after line is a perilous practice, and is likely, if the writer is not at his brightest, to degenerate into what Mr. Swinburne aptly calls “a villainous trick of verbiage.” In Humour out of Breath it must be owned that the conceits sometimes fall rather flat. Although none of his verses are outrageously bad, and there is never such an utter collapse as we find again and again in professed academical writers like Greene and Peele, yet the effect is often anything but satisfactory.

But it is better to give praise where praise is due and avoid fault-finding. Aspero is a fine frank spirit, free from all taint of baseness, one who as friend or foe would have earned the respect of Faulconbridge. He speaks in a free, terse language; and when he announces his intention of meeting the usurper face to face, his words sound like a challenge, and ring with the clash of meeting swords. His bluff wooing of Florimel and the lady's arch raillery are in our author's happiest manner. The scene in which, with the help of the page, they cozen Hortensio at blindman's-buff must have given rare scope to the Children of the King's Revels for displaying their nimbleness. At the private houses prices were higher and audiences more select than at the larger theatres. Day seems to have kept well in mind throughout the play the requirements of his hearers. He has been more than usually careful to preserve an air of “polish and politeness:” he has caught Lilly's grace of writing without his pedantry. Altogether Humour out of Breath amply justifies its name. Conceits shower thicker and thicker upon us as we are whirled along in a round of rhymes, until we find ourselves at last wellnigh breathless with mirth.

Passing to the Parliament of Bees, we find ourselves encountered by several difficulties: First, there is a doubt about the date of its publication. In Gildon's edition of Langbaine's Dramatick Poets, 1699, in Giles Jacob's Poetical Register, 1719, and again in the Companion to the Play-house, 1764, mention is made of a 4to. of 1607. Charles Lamb, too, in the Extracts from the Garrick Plays, makes his quotations from “the Parliament of Bees: A Masque. By John Day. Printed 1607.” Now, it is just possible that Lamb printed from the 1641 4to., and merely followed tradition in assigning 1607 as the date of the first edition. Certainly there is no copy of the 1607 4to. at the present time in the Garrick collection. Mr. E. W. Gosse assures me that he remembers reading the Bees in a 4to. of the early date, which he found after a personal search in the King's Library of the British Museum. I regret that I have not been an equally successful explorer: I have found a copy of the later 4to. in the King's Library, but there is no trace of the earlier edition. If the reader will compare the first extract given by Lamb with the text of 1641, he will find several differences. In one place Lamb's reading is decidedly better. For “Akron boughs” (p. 571), where the MS. gives “acorne cuppes,” Lamb prints “acorn bowls.” But I am inclined to think that this is a correction of Lamb's—a correction which he considered so obvious as not to require a note. The abridged Langbaine, Giles Jacob, and the author of the Companion to the Play-house, give only a bare list of our author's plays, and it is likely enough that the date of the Bees may have been confused with that of the Three English Brothers; just as Giles Jacob confuses the two plays in another particular, making Rowley and Wilkins to have had a hand in the Bees, and leaving Day wholly responsible for the Three English Brothers. But for the fact that Mr. Gosse has a strong impression of having seen the 1607 4to., we might reasonably suppose that a slip was made in the first instance by Gildon, later compilers perpetuating the blunder of their predecessor.

Leaving now the question of the date, we are met by another difficulty. I showed in the “note” to the Parliament of Bees that whole pages of Day's Masque are to be found almost word for word in Dekker's Wonder of a Kingdom;⁸ and Mr. J. M. Thomson, of Edinburgh, has since pointed out to me that Characters 4 and 5 are to be found in Samuel Rowley's Spanish Souldier, published in 1634, but written much earlier. Compare with Character 4, Sig C v—C 2 v, and F v—F 2; and with Character 5, D 3 v—E. It is painful that Day should lie under the suspicion of decking himself in borrowed plumes. If he really filched whole scenes from Dekker and Samuel Rowley, the pleasure that we get from the Parliament of Bees would be seriously impaired. But it is no less reasonable than graceful to assume that Day adopted this means of reclaiming his anonymous contributions to various plays. In fact the Parliament of Bees is a dainty piece of patchwork. With the exception of Characters 1, 11, and 12, which were plainly written for the occasion, the Masque seems to have been made up of scenes, more or less revised, contributed to the Wonder of a Kingdom, the Spanish Souldier, and other plays that have either been lost or where the connection remains yet to be pointed out. This view saves Day's credit without aspersing the fair fame of Dekker and Samuel Rowley. Dekker did not think it necessary to own his obligations to Day, and Day, when the occasion offered itself, put his own property to his own use. Samuel Rowley, it will be remembered, was in his grave when the Spanish Souldier was published. If Day had only a slight share in the Wonder of a Kingdom, there is nothing strange in the absence of his name from the title-page: in fact, the strangeness would rather have been if Dekker had taken the trouble to make a note of acknowledgment. The only dramatist who took a lofty view of the rights and duties of authorship was Ben Jonson: witness his address To the Reader prefixed to Sejanus. Suckling's hit at the old poet in the Session of the Poets,

His were called Works while others were but plays,

had more point then than now. What was esteemed arrogant presumption by his contemporaries is now considered honourable self-respect. Would that his example had been followed by others! Ben Jonson kept his eye steadily fixed on the future; but writers like Day and Dekker were more modestly disposed. They knew that the laurels would wither on their brow, but they did not therefore repine. Though they worked, and worked hard too, for a livelihood, without thought of future fame, yet they had the artist's pride in their work. The indifference displayed in Day's Addresses to the Reader contrasts curiously with the painful care, as shown by a comparison of the MS. with the printed copy, that he spent in polishing his Masque. Page by page, and line by line he revised the first draft, cancelling sometimes, through an excessive fastidiousness, passages that the reader would willingly see restored. Much of the work that Day did for Henslowe was no doubt done from necessity, without any thorough enjoyment; but it was pleasure and not profit that dictated the Parliament of Bees. Probably the Masque was composed merely to gratify the author's feelings and without any view to representation on the stage. I doubt whether Day had sufficient influence to get his Masque represented at Court. His dedications were addressed to gentlemen, who may have been bountiful, but certainly were not distinguished. The Parliament of Bees assuredly deserved to have been acted; for a daintier sample of exquisite workmanship in this form of writing could hardly be found. The colloquy between Arethusa and Ulania in Character 6 displays a sweetness of fancy and fluency of expression that almost lift the author for a moment to the side of him who wrote the Midsummer Night's Dream. The modulation of the verse is flawless: the rhymed heroics ring with a silvery chime. No heavy ornaments encumber the light speed: the musical rhymes bubble up brightly without a stain: the diction is quaint and crisp, and most artfully artless. But hear Charles Lamb, the truest and subtlest of all critics:—

                                                                                          “The doings,
The births, the wars, the wooings

of these pretty little winged creatures are with continued liveliness portrayed throughout the whole of this curious old drama, in words which Bees would talk with, could they talk; the very air seems replete with humming and buzzing melodies while we read them. Surely bees were never so be-rhymed before.”

Day nowhere appears to such advantages as in Character 6. The companion picture in Character 8 is not nearly so perfect. Throughout this colloquy the readings of the printed copy are a great improvement on the MS., but still the language is strained. There is not the same delightful ease and freedom: the author has not been able “to recapture the first fine careless rapture.” Yet the conceit is prettily pursued, and when the colloquy ends we could almost wish that the fanciful extravagancy had been continued longer. Character 6 and 8 are undoubtedly the gems of this quaint old Masque; and it is satisfactory that Day's title to these two scenes has not been called in question.

Hardly less characteristic are the Author's Commission to his Bees and the Booke to the Reader. We are quite captivated at starting by the arch tenderness of the author's appeal. In these two copies of verse, admirable for their grace and compactness, it is delightful to watch the conflict between the poet's pride and modesty. Equally charming is the description of the solemn assembling of the Bees' Parliament in Character 1, where we cannot but admire the elaborate periods and eloquent sententiousness of the Master Bee's opening address, and the mock gravity with which the bills are preferred and sentences are passed against the several offenders.

Characters 2 and 3, describing the Russet Bee and the Plush Bee, reflect much credit on Day—if they belong to him. Giacomo Gentili, who is identical with the Russet Bee, is described by Hazlitt as “that truly ideal character of a magnificent patron.” The Plush Bee bears some resemblance to Polymetes; whom, however, he far surpasses in the extravagance of his humours. Polymetes is not without fine capabilities, and wants only the right twist in order to become a pattern of nobility; but the Plush Bee has acquired the settled habits of viciousness, and is completely abandoned. The one, in Aristotelian language, is ἁκρατὴς, but the other is ἁκόλαsτος beyond redemption.

Characters 4 and 5, which deal with the neglect shown to soldiers and poets, are (as I have said) to be found in Samuel Rowley's Spanish Souldier. Day has been at no pains to conceal the fact that these two characters are excerpts. There is a curious abruptness in the opening lines of Character 4, “Is Master Bee at leisure to speak Spanish with a Bee of service?” Why speak Spanish? In Character 5, as given by the 4to, the author's drift is difficult to divine. For a moment the reader is at a loss to see why the additional lines (p. 564) preserved by the MS., and required to make the sense complete, were cancelled in the revised copy. It will be observed that Stuprata of the MS. answers both to Iltriste and Arethusa of the 4to. There is an unpleasant suggestiveness in the name “Stuprata;” and it would seem that Day had intended at first to represent her as won over from her lover's side by the solicitations of the Master Bee. So we should gather from the table of Arguments in the MS.:—

Stuprate by a willing force,
having indurde a wisht divorce,
repents, & c.

The continual references (pp. 579-81) in the MS. to her “sin” and “shame” would be otherwise unintelligible. Her own account, as given by the MS. (p. 564) conflicts with this view; but we could hardly expect her to expose her shame to a stranger. On a revision of his work, Day rightly saw that the least hint of Stuprata's infidelity would have tainted throughout the clear current of the poem. He therefore determined to change the unfortunate name, and to let Character 5 stand unconnected with Characters 6 and 8. Of course the author cannot be acquitted of carelessness for leaving Character 5 in so unfinished a state; but how great has been the gain in the two later characters! Arethusa's abandonment of her lover is now nothing more than a piece of passing petulance; the fair fame of the pretty bee is unstained, and the whole of the ugly business is resolved into a lovers' quarrel. After this happy change, Chariolus, when he hears the feigned news of his mistress' death, can descant on her “virgin modesty:” now her “chastity” can go “attir'd in white,” not in the hateful black of the MS. Would that the Faithful Shepherdess had undergone a like revision!

Character 5 is more in our author's vein than the complaint of Armiger in Character 4. Day is fond of lamenting the decay of learning, and the shifts to which poets are reduced; witness his Peregrinatio Scholastica and Polymetes' eloquent tirade in the first act of Law-Trickes. If more of his plays had come down it might be found that he was equally zealous for the soldier's profession.

In Character 7 we are again introduced to the Plush Bee. We leave him still running his headlong course, spurning the counsel of his provident uncle. We are reminded of the careful Octavio and the spendthrift prince, his nephew, in Dekker's If this be not a good Play the Divel is in it.

Only the Quacksalving Bee and the Usuring Bee remain. In more or less vigorous language the blood-suckers of the time were assailed by most of the old dramatists; but the quacksalvers suffered comparatively little interruption. There is much gusto in the hale old man's rejection of the “imposterous Quacksalver's” services:—

I am healthfull both in body and in wits;
Coughs, rheumes, catarrhes, gouts, apoplectic fits,
The common sores of age, on me nere ran:
No Galenist or Paracelsian
Shall ere read Physick lecture out of me:
Ile be no subject for Anatomie.

The complacency with which he enumerates the several maladies is admirable. At the end of the character the MS. preserves some curious lines that were cancelled in the printed copy, as being, no doubt, on second thoughts, considered too bitter. Certainly they jar harshly with the good-humoured tone of the rest of the character.

With the description of “Obron in Progressu,” and “Obron in his Star-Chamber” the Parliament of Bees is brought pleasantly to an end. The octosyllabic verse in which these two scenes are written is handled with rare delicacy. We seem to hear the light beat of tiny wings as the “bees of worth” come flying up to Obron's throne to present in the daintiest language their several offerings, and to receive with fitting compliments their well-merited rewards. But Obron can be stern as well as gentle; and dire must have been the consternation produced in the winged commonwealth at hearing the sentence of banishment pronounced on the “transgressing bees:”—

Fruit, half ripe, hang rivell'd and shrunk
On broken Armes torne from the trunk.
.....The mossie weeds half swelter'd serv'd
As beds for vermin hunger-sterv'd.

What a contrast to the

Garden and orchard, lawns and flowery meads

of the first Character! Hardly poor Ovid at Tomi could sigh more pathetically for the politeness of Rome than these banished bees for the blossom'd thyme.

But it is time to take leave of the “winged collonie;” not without a hope that for many a year to come the humming of Day's pretty bees may sound pleasantly in the reader's ear, in the pauses of more serious work, on August afternoons and December evenings.

Note.—Two anonymous plays—The Return from Parnassus and The Maid's Metamorphosis—have been attributed to Day. In Notes and Queries, III. S. ix. 387, the late Mr. Bolton Corney claimed the Return from Parnassus for Day, adducing a few (not very cogent) arguments, as follows:—

The Return from Parnassus was acted at Cambridge and published at London in 1606, 4to. It is anonymous; but a copy which has been submitted to my examination bears this envoi: “To my Lovinge Smallocke J: D:” Now it seems to me probable that the above initials denote John Day, a dramatist of the period, and that he was the author of the admired play in question. I have to produce three points of evidence as entitled to impartial consideration:—

1. It is certain that John Day was educated at Cambridge, and it may be fairly assumed that the students in the exercise of their histrionic faculties would make choice of one of the productions of their own university.
2. The play was printed by G. Eld for John Wright in 1606, and the play entitled The Travels of the Three English Brothers, which is the avowed production of Day, was published by John Wright in 1607.
3. I have compared the envoi with the Lansdowne MS. 725, and with due allowance for the difference between a running hand and a formall address believe them to be by the same writer. The Lansdowne MS. also has J: D:

4. The extensive acquaintance with the literature of the metropolis which this play exhibits might be held as adverse to my conclusions, but the objection must vanish before the fact that Day often wrote in association with Dekker, Chettle, and others—and perhaps that circumstance may account for the harsh treatment which Ben Jonson receives and the somewhat equivocal praise of the poems of Shakespeare without one word on his plays.

Arguments 1 and 2 have really no value at all; and as I have never seen the envoi I cannot test the argument drawn from the handwriting. But Mr. Bolton Corney might have made more of his case. While mentioning The Travels of the Three English Brothers he should have added that Will Kemp is there made one of the dramatis personæ, as in the Return from Parnassus. Again, the Return from Parnassus deals with the neglect that attends scholars, and shows how only roguery prospers: precisely similar is the teaching of much of the Peregrinatio Scholastica. In the play there is a vigorous attack on Simony, showing how learning is no qualification for promotion in the Church: so in tract 17 of the Peregrinatio Scholastica we have an account of the entertainment received by Learning from a “Cuntry Vicker”—one who had just “learning enough to read a mariadge and buriall and, if neede be, to saye a homelie of a hollidaie,” and who was possessed of “but a poore vicoridge which one Mr. Symon-Monye, or more familiarlie sym-monie, helpt me to.” The Return from Parnassus was preceded by an earlier play (now lost), The Pilgrimage to Parnassus, a title which reminds us of (Peregrinatio Scholastica, or) Learninges Pilgrimage. As we pass in review the dramatists of the time, no likely candidate is suggested for the authorship of the anonymous play; but Day's claim cannot possibly be supported on the very slender evidence that has been adduced. That he made some contributions to the play is not, perhaps, altogether improbable.

The Maid's Metamorphosis (1600) has been assigned to Day by no less an authority than Mr. E. W. Gosse. This play is commonly regarded as belonging to Lyly; but that tiresome writer could never have so completely divested himself of his pedantry. Moreover, the rhymed heroics in which the play is written remind us more of the author of the Parliament of Bees than of any other writer of the time: Lyly has nowhere shown the slightest ability for this form of writing. The page, Joculo, is as lively as his namesake in Humour out of Breath; but Lyly's attempts at repartee are among the worst on record: In my forthcoming Collection of Inedited Old Plays, I shall examine the Maid's Metamorphosis more closely.

Notes

1. Contributed, together with the acrostic, by J. F. Herbert, Esq., to the [Old] Shakespeare Society Papers, i., 19-20.

2. Ben Jonson's Conversations with William Drummond (ed. David Laing), p. 4.

3. Ibid., p. 12.

4. In the anonymous copy of verses written to commemorate the burning of the Cockpit by the 'prentices on Shrove Tuesday, 1616, we read:—

   Books old and young on heaps they flung,
             And burnt them in the blazes,
   Tom Dekker, Haywood, Middleton,
             And other wandring crayzies:
   Poor Daye that daye not scapte away, & c.

5. Langbaine quotes these verses, and adds:—“At this jingling rate he runs on to the end after the rate of a Gentleman of Lincolns Inn, who writ a more ingenious Poem upon the Transactions between a Landlord and his Tenant Day who privately departed from him by Night; printed in a single sheet, Lond. 1684.” In Baker's Biographia Dramatica our author is confused with the absconding tenant, and in consequence is pronounced to have been “of rather loose morals!”

6. A choice specimen of a mock Puritan sermon of later date was privately printed a few years ago by the Rev. C. H. Daniel, of Worcester College, Oxford, from a MS. in the College Library. This tract, which Mr. Daniel printed with his own hand, is (like other productions from the same gentleman's printing-press) of the highest rarity.

7. Mr. Fleay on first thoughts was inclined to distribute the scenes thus:—“Day's share: Sc. 3, 11, with Niece & Maid in them. Rowley's: Prol., Sc. 1, 7, 9, 10, and a bit at end of 13. Wilkins': Sc. 2 & 12, with Bassa; 4, 5, 6, with Chorus, & 13, except Rowley's bit.” Afterwards, guided by metrical considerations, he adopted the following arrangement:—“Rowley, positively (?) ascertained by his peculiar system of blank verse, Prol., Sc. 1, 7, 10, and from ‘speak what else,’ p. 402, to end. Wilkins, known by short lines, especially 4-feet lines, Sc. 2, 6, 8, 13 on to p.402. The rest probably Day, but not distinctive enough to decide on this ground only; but Sc. 3, 11, 12, and 9 (including first Jew scene) are certainly his; 3, 4, 5 and choruses more doubtful, but more like him than either of the others.” I cannot agree with Mr. Fleay in assigning the first Jew scene to Day; and I doubt whether Day followed up scene 12 after the Gaoler had retired.

8. Compare also with p. 19 of my reprint a passage in Dekker's If this be not a good Play the Divill is in it, iii. 275 (Pearson's Reprint).