John Day, although not a playwright of perhaps even the second rank, is important historically. His was a career that illustrates the precarious fortunes of those young men who came to London to make their livings as playwrights, particularly of those who entered theater owner Philip Henslowe's stable of hacks. He seems, typically, to have been so busy following current interests and fashions that he never developed a dramatic interest or style of his own, though passages of lyrical loveliness in Humor Out of Breath, and the structural neatness and charm of the colloquies in The Parliament of Bees, suggest what, under more favorable conditions, he might have done. More important, however, his best-known work, The Isle of Gulls, illustrates the inbred character of the satiric comedies written for the private theaters of his time and can itself indicate what ultimately led to the closing of the theaters...