d execution. But the effect, as a whole, is
marred by a profusion of almost all the worst faults of the drama of the
whole period from Peele to Davenant. The incoherence and improbability of
the action, the reckless, inartistic, butcherly prodigality of blood and
horrors, and the absence of any kind of redeeming interest of contrasting
light to all the shade, though very characteristic of a class, and that no
small one, of Elizabethan drama, cannot be said to be otherwise than
characteristic of its faults. As the best example (others are _The
Insatiate Countess_, Chettle's _Hoffmann_, _Lust's Dominion_, and the
singular production which Mr. Bullen has printed as _The Distracted
Emperor_) it is very well worth reading, and contrasting with the really
great plays of the same class, such as _The Jew of Malta_ and _Titus
Andronicus_, where, though the horrors are still overdone, yet genius has
given them a kind of passport. But intrinsically it is mere nightmare.

Of a very different temper and complexion is the work of John Day, who may
have been a Cambridge graduate, and was certainly a student of Gonville and
Caius, as he describes himself on the title-page of some of his plays and
of a prose tract printed by Mr. Bullen. He appears to have been dead in
1640, and the chief thing positively known about him is that between the
beginning of 1598 and 1608 he collaborated in the surprising number of
twenty-one plays (all but _The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green_ unprinted)
with Haughton, Chettle, Dekker, and others. _The Parliament of Bees_, his
most famous and last printed work, is of a very uncommon kind in
English--being a sort of dramatic allegory, touched with a singularly
graceful and fanciful spirit. It is indeed rather a masque than a play, and
consists, after the opening Parliament held by the Master, or Viceroy Bee
(quaintly appearing in the original, which may have been printed in 1607,
though no copy seems now discoverable earlier than 1641, as "Mr. Bee"), of
a series of characters or sketches of Bee-vices and virtues, which are very
human. The termination, which contains much the best poetry in the piece,
and much the best that Day ever wrote, introduces King Oberon giving
judgment on the Bees from "Mr. Bee" downwards and banishing offenders. Here
occurs the often-quoted passage, beginning--

"And whither must these flies be sent?"

and including the fine speech of Oberon--

"You should have cried so in yo