Revisiting, Revising, and Regenreing John Day's 'The Parliament of Bees‪'‬

This newly updated edition of John Day’s The Parliament of Bees includes both the 1641 quarto and also a complete transcription of the earlier manuscript of the text. The editions of both manuscript and quarto feature modern spelling and punctuation, extensive explanatory notes and glosses, considerable attention to the differences between ​the two texts, and a lengthy introduction that delves into the significance of genre and character, particularly in the context of animal studies.  In the text, Day creates dialogues between a series of upright or misbehaving bees under the rule of the “Master Bee.” Day describes each bee in a series of ten poetical scenes, called "Colloquies" or “Characters,” and then concludes the text with two more “Characters” in which Oberon, King of the Fairies, holds court to judge the various bees. Deanna Smid makes the case that the work is often misgenred and therefore not fully appreciated, asserting that as a play or masque, it might be considered mediocre, even dull. However, she posits that if the work is analyzed for what it is—a character book—the text reveals the intertwined genres that underpin apian poetics itself and represents a fascinating early modern exemplar of the relationship between literature and the natural world. 


Deanna Smid is Professor in the Department of English, Drama, and Creative Writing at Brandon University, Canada. She previously published The Imagination in Early Modern English Literature (2017).