Day, JOHN

Day, JOHN, a dramatist, of whose life hardly anything is known. He is mentioned in Henslowe's Diary in 1598 as an active playwright. But few of his earlier works have come down to us save The Blind Beggar of Bednal Green. Day collaborated freely with contemporary writers, as Chettle and Dekker. Ben Jonson in his conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden grouped him with some other admirable gentlemen and authors as a rogue and a base fellow. His best works that have reached us are a graceful comedy, Humour out of Breath, and The Parliament of Bees, a kind of allegorical masque in which all the characters are bees. 'The very air,' says Charles Lamb, 'seems replete with humming and buzzing melodies. Surely bees were never so berhymed before.' An edition of Day's works was privately printed by A. H. Bullen in 1881.