[MS.] Lansdowne MS. 725, with title. ‘An olde manuscript conteyning the Parliament of Bees, found in a Hollow Tree in a garden at Hibla, in a Strange Languadge, And now faithfully Translated into Easie English Verse by John Daye, Cantabridg.’ [Epistles to William Augustine, signed ‘John Day, Cant.’ and to the Reader, signed ‘Jo: Daye’.]
S. R. 1641, March 23 (Hansley). ‘A booke called The Parliamt of Bees, &c., by John Day.’ Will Ley (Eyre, i. 17).
1641. The Parliament of Bees, With their proper Characters. Or A Bee-hive furnisht with twelve Honycombes, as Pleasant as Profitable. Being an Allegoricall description of the actions of good and bad men in these our daies. By John Daye, Sometimes Student of Caius Colledge in Cambridge. For William Lee. [Epistle to George Butler, signed ‘John Day’, The Author’s Commission to his Bees, similarly signed, and The Book to the Reader. The text varies considerably from that of the manuscript.]
Edition by A. Symons in Nero and Other Plays (1888, Mermaid Series).
This is neither a play nor a mask, but a set of twelve short ‘Characters’ or ‘Colloquies’ in dialogue. The existence of an edition of 1607 is asserted in Gildon’s abridgement (1699) of Langbaine, but cannot be verified, and is most improbable, since the manuscript Epistle refers to an earlier work already dedicated by Day, as ‘an unknowing venturer’, to Augustine, and this must surely be the allegorical treatise Peregrinatio Scholastica printed by Bullen (Introd. 35) from Sloane MS. 3150 with an Epistle by Day to William Austin, who may reasonably be identified with Augustine. But the Peregrinatio, although Day’s first venture in dedication, was not a very early work, for Day admits that ‘I boast not that gaudie spring of credit and youthfull florish of opinion as some other filde in the same rancke with me’. Moreover, it describes (p. 50) an ‘ante-maske’, and this term, so far as we know, first came into use about 1608 (cf. ch. vi). The Bees therefore must be later still. On the other hand, it can hardly be later than about 1616, when died Philip Henslowe, whom it is impossible to resist seeing with Fleay, i. 115, in the Fenerator or Usuring Bee (p. 63). Like Henslowe he is a ‘broaker’ and ‘takes up’ clothes; and
Most of the timber that his state repairs,
He hew’s out o’ the bones of foundred players:
They feed on Poets braines, he eats their breath.
Now of the twelve Characters of the Bees, five (2, 3, 7, 8, 9) are reproduced, in many parts verbatim, subject to an alteration of names, in The Wonder of a Kingdom, printed as Dekker’s (q.v.) in 1636, but probably identical with Come See a Wonder, licensed by Herbert as Day’s in 1623. Two others (4, 5) are similarly reproduced in The Noble Soldier, printed in 1634 under the initials ‘S. R.’, probably indicating Samuel Rowley, but possibly also containing work by Dekker. The precise relation of Day to these plays is indeterminate, but the scenes more obviously ‘belong’ to the Bees than to the plays, and if the Bees was written but not printed in 1608–16, the chances are that Day used it as a quarry of material when he was called upon to work, as reviser or collaborator, on the plays. Meanwhile, Austin, if he was the Southwark and Lincoln’s Inn writer of that name (D. N. B.), died in 1634, and when the Bees was ultimately printed in 1641 a new dedicatee had to be found.
Lost and Doubtful Plays