1598 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1598.

Events

• Before September – A second edition of Love's Labour's Lost appears in London as the first known printing of a Shakespeare play to have his name on the title page ("Newly corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere").
• February 23 – Thomas Bodley refounds the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford.
• March 28 – Philip Henslowe contracts Edward Alleyn and Thomas Heywood to act for the Admiral's Men in London for two years.
• April 30 – A comedy, by an anonymous playwright about an expedition of soldiers, is the very first theatrical performance in North America, staged near El Paso for Spanish colonists.
• May 3 – The Spanish playwright Lope de Vega marries for the second time, to Juana de Guardo.
• c. May – The premiėre of William Haughton's Englishmen for My Money, or, A Woman Will Have Her Will introduces what is seen as the first city comedy, probably by the Admiral's Men at London's Rose Theatre.
• c. July/September – Ben Jonson's comedy of humours Every Man in His Humour is probably first performed, by the Lord Chamberlain's Men at the Curtain Theatre, London, perhaps with Shakespeare playing Kno'well.
• September 7 – Francis Meres' Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury is registered for publication, including the first list and critical discussion of Shakespeare's works; he also mentions that Shakespeare's "sugar'd sonnets" are circulating privately.
• September 22 – Ben Jonson kills actor Gabriel Spenser in a duel in London and is briefly held in Newgate Prison, but escapes capital punishment by pleading benefit of clergy.
• October – Edmund Spenser's castle, Kilcolman Castle near Doneraile in Ireland, is burned down by native forces under Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone. Spenser leaves for London shortly after.
• November 25 – Henry Chettle is paid for "mending" a play about Robin Hood to make it suitable for performance at court.
• December 28 – London's The Theatre is dismantled.
• unknown dates
• Lancelot Andrewes turns down the bishoprics of Ely and Salisbury.
• The English poet Barnabe Barnes is prosecuted in the Star Chamber for attempted murder of one John Browne, first by offering him a poisoned lemon and then by sweetening his wine with sugar laced with mercury sublimate; Browne survives both attempts.
• John Marston's The Metamorphosis of Pigmalion's Image and Certaine Satyres begins a trend in English satirical writing that leads to official suppression in the following year.

New books

Prose

• John Florio – A World of Words, Italian/English dictionary, the first dictionary published in England to use quotations ("illustrations") for meaning to the words
• Emanuel Ford – Parismus, the Renowned Prince of Bohemia (first part)
• King James VI of Scotland – The True Law of Free Monarchies
• Francis Meres – Palladis Tamia
• Merkelis Petkevičius – '
• John Stow – Survey of London
• Zhao Shizhen – Shenqipu (3rd century, possible first publication)
• Lucas Janszoon Waghenaer – Enchuyser zeecaertboeck (Enkhuizen book of sea charts)