1608 in literature

List of years in literature (table)
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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1608.

Events

• January 10 – Ben Jonson's The Masque of Beauty is performed by Queen Anne and her retinue at the Banqueting House, Whitehall, a sequel to The Masque of Blackness.
• February 9 – Another masque by Jonson, The Hue and Cry After Cupid, is performed at the Banqueting House, with sets designed by Inigo Jones.
• March 31 – Hamlet is performed aboard the East India Company ship Red Dragon, under the command of Capt. William Keeling.
• June - Thomas Overbury is knighted.
• Performances of George Chapman's play The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron in London are suppressed after the French Ambassador complains to King James.
• Henry Ainsworth publishes a response to Richard Bernard's The Separatist Schisme.
• Father Francisco Blancas de San Jose establishes a printing press at Abucay Church in the Philippines to produce books in the Spanish and Tagalog languages; Tomas Pinpin joins the staff the following year.
• Juan Ruiz de Alarcón returns to Mexico from Spain, to take up an academic post.
• Arthur Johnston goes to Italy to study at Padua.
• The Morgan Bible is given by Cardinal Bernard Maciejowski, Bishop of Cracow, to Abbas I (Shah of Persia).
• Thomas Coryat begins his walking tour of Europe.

New books

• George Abbot – A Brief Description of the Whole World
• Robert Armin – A Nest of Ninnies
• Thomas Dekker
  • The Dead Term
  • The Bellman of London
• Francesco Maria Guazzo – Compendium Maleficarum
• Mathurin Régnier – Les Premieres d'Euvres ou Satyres de Regnier
• Salomon Schweigger – Newe Reyßbeschreibung Teutschland Auss to Constantinople
• "P. F." – The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus

New drama

• Lording Barry – Ram Alley (published)
• George Chapman – The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron
• John Day – Humour Out of Breath and Law Tricks (published)
• Lope de Vega
  • El acero de Madrid ("The steel of Madrid")
  • La adúltera perdonada (autos sacramentales)
  • Lo fingido verdadero ("What you Pretend Has Become Real")
  • Los melindres de Belisa
  • Peribáñez y el Comendador de Ocaña
• Thomas Heywood – The Rape of Lucrece published
• Ben Jonson
  • The Masque of Beauty performed, and published with The Masque of Blackness
  • The Hue and Cry After Cupid (performed and published)
• Henry Machin & Gervase Markham – The Dumb Knight
• The Merry Devil of Edmonton (attributed to Thomas Dekker, Michael Drayton, William Shakespeare and others; published; first performed by 1604)
• Thomas Middleton
  • The Family of Love, A Mad World, My Masters, and A Trick to Catch the Old One (published)
  • A Yorkshire Tragedy (attributed; published with attribution to "W. Shakspeare")
• John Sansbury – Periander
• William Shakespeare – King Lear (published)

Poetry

• See 1608 in poetry

Births

• February 6 – António Vieira, Portuguese Jesuit orator and writer (died 1697)
• February 12 – Daniello Bartoli, Jesuit writer (died 1685)
• June 19 (bapt.) – Thomas Fuller, English cleric and historian (died 1661)
• December 8 – Vendela Skytte, Swedish salonist and poet (died 1629)
• December 9 – John Milton, English poet and author (died 1674)
• Unknown date – Antoine Le Maistre, French lawyer, author and translator (died 1658)

Deaths

• January 28 – Enrique Henríquez, Portuguese Jesuit theologian (born 1536)
• February 16 – Nicolas Rapin, French translator, poet and satirist (born 1535)
• February 26
  • Thomas Craig, Scottish poet (born c. 1538)
  • John Still, English bishop, once credited with writing Gammer Gurton's Needle (born c. 1543)
• March 29 – Laurence Tomson, English theologian (born 1539)
• April 19 – Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, statesman and poet (born 1536)
• June 19
  • Alberico Gentili, Italian legal writer (born 1552)
  • Johann Pistorius (the younger), German controversialist and historian (born 1546)
• July 26 – Pablo de Céspedes, Spanish poet and artist (born 1538)
• September – Mary Shakespeare, English mother of Shakespeare (born c. 1540)
• October 19
  • Martin Delrio, Netherlandish-born Spanish theologian (born 1551)
  • Geoffrey Fenton, English writer and politician (born c. 1539)
• Unknown dates
  • George Bannatyne, Scottish collector of Scottish poems (born 1545)
  • Nicolas de Montreux, French novelist, poet and dramatist (born c. 1561)
• Probable year – Jean Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, French poet (born 1536)