1636 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1636. Events January 31 – The King's Men perform Shakespeare's Julius Caesar at St James's Palace, London. February – James Shirley's tragicomedy The Duke's Mistress is performed at St James's Palace. March 3 – A "great charter" to the University of Oxford establishes the Oxford University Press as the second of England's privileged presses. April – Thomas Hobbes travels from Rome to Florence. May 10 – London theatres close, and remain almost continuously closed until the end of the year (and on to October 1637), due to an outbreak of bubonic plague. Playing companies are profoundly impacted; the King's Revels Men dissolve and other companies tour the countryside to survive. June – Tommaso Campanella, having left Italy for France, because of his pro-French views, gives a speech in front of Cardinal Richelieu; he teaches at the Sorbonne. August – King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria visit the University of Oxford. They are entertained with college theatricals, including William Strode's allegory The Floating Island (with music by Henry Lawes), which mocks William Prynne as the play-hating Melancholico; George Wilde's Love's Hospital; and William Cartwright's The Royal Slave (also with Lawes' music and design by Inigo Jones).