The Isle of Dogs was a play by Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson, written in the late 1500s in the reign of Queen Elizabeth and performed in 1597 by Pembroke’s Men, the theatre company sponsored by Henry Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. Apparently the play was so offensive that as soon as it was performed, it was immediately banned and the playwrights and actors who were involved with it were actually arrested and imprisoned. (They were released shortly thereafter.)
To this day, nobody knows what the play was about or what was in it that was so upsetting to the people in high places that it was suppressed with such haste. There are no copies of it, and no record of its contents. It’s one of the greatest mysteries of Elizabethan drama.
So what do you think it was about? Obviously it is pure speculation, but does anyone have a theory?