Day, John

1574 – 1640?

John Day was born in Cawston, Norfolk, and educated at Ely. In 1592 he became a sizar of Caius College, Cambridge, but he was expelled in the next year for stealing a book. He became a playwright, collaborating on or authoring 22 plays. Little is known of his personal life outside of a description by Ben Jonson in 1618/19 as a "rogue" and a "base fellow." It is likely that he was the "John Daye, yeoman" who killed fellow dramatist Henry Porter in Southwark 1599, although if he did murder his colleague it did not interrupted his writing career. The date of his death is unknown, but an elegy on him by John Tatham was published in 1640.

• A critical edition of John Day's The parliament of bees
• Humour out of breath
• John Day's The Isle of Guls
• Nero & other plays
• Nero & other plays; edited, with introd. and notes, by Herbert P. Horne [and others]
• The blind beggar of Bednall Green
• The Blind-Beggar of Bednal-Green, vvith The merry humor of Tom Strowd the Norfolk Yeoman, as it was divers times publickly acted by the Princes Servants
• The fair maid of Bristow. 1605
• The faire maide of Bristow
• The Ile of Gvls, 1606
• The travailes of the three English brothers, Sir Thomas, Sir Anthony, Mr. Robert Shirley
• The works of John Day