The book by which Alday is chiefly known is an English version of two French pamphlets, published in 1558, and it bears the title: ‘Theatrum Mundi, the Theatre or rule of the worlde, wherein may be sene the running race and course of every mans life, as touching miserie and felicity, wherein be contained wonderful examples and learned deuises to the ouerthrowe of vice and exalting of vertue.
Written in the French and Latin tongues by Peter Boaystuau (i.e., Pierre Boaistuau, surnamed Launay), and translated into English by John Alday.’ London, H. D. for Thomas Hacket, 16mo.
A third edition of the work was published in 1581, and there it was stated that John Alday had ‘perused, corrected, and amended’ the English rendering, ‘the old translation being corrupted.’ The latter part of the book—‘Of the Excellencie of Mankinde’—is frequently referred to by Robert Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholie.
Its full title runs: ‘A summarie of the Antiquities and wonders of the worlde, abstracted out of the sixtene first bookes of the excellente Historiographer Plinie, wherein may be sene the wonderfull workes of God in his creatures, translated out of French into English by I.
A translation of another French treatise from Alday's pen was printed by Thomas East for William Ponsonby in 1579; it bears the title, ‘Praise and Dispraise of Women: Gathered out of sundrye Authors, as well Sacred as Prophane, with plentee of wonderfull examples, whereoff some are rare and not heard off before, as by the principall notes in the Margent may appeare.