SOURCE: Burns, Raymond S. “Introduction.” In John Day's The Isle of Guls, A Critical Edition, edited by Raymond S. Burns, pp. 1-45. New York: Garland Publishing, 1980.

In the following excerpt, Burns offers a brief account of the publication history of The Isle of Guls, explicates the play's satire of the court of James I, and examines its sources and background.

Publication of the Text

John Day (c. 1574-c. 1640)¹ is a shadowy figure whose name appears with some regularity in the pages of Henslowe's Diary from 1598 to 1603. Of the score or more plays in which he had a hand during this time, only one, The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (1600), survives. Fate has dealt more kindly with his later works, for four additional plays have come down to us from the period 1604 to 1608: Law Tricks (1604), The Ile of Guls² (1606), The Travels of the Three English Brothers (1607), and Humour...