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 anonymous playwriter about an expedition of soldiers, is 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 at Kilcolman, County Cork, near Doneraile in Ireland, is burned down by native forces under Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone.