Rahul Sharma (Editor)

1642 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1642.

Contents

Events

  • May – 35-year-old John Milton marries the teenage Mary Powell. A few weeks later she leaves him in London and returns to her family in Oxfordshire.
  • May–June – English Cavalier poet Richard Lovelace is incarcerated in the Gatehouse Prison, Westminster for defying Parliament, during which time he perhaps writes "To Althea, from Prison".
  • September 2 – The theatres in London are closed by the Puritan government; the "lascivious mirth and levity" of stage plays are to "cease and be forborn" for the next eighteen years, during the English Civil War and the Interregnum. Reportedly Richard Brome's A Jovial Crew is staged on the final day, and so is the last play performed during the era of English Renaissance theatre.
  • John Denham's Cooper's Hill is the first example in English of a poem devoted to local description, in this case the Thames scenery around the author's home at Egham in Surrey.

    • Prose

  • Thomas Browne – Religio Medici
  • Thomas Fuller – The Holy State and the Profane State
  • Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft – Nederduytsche Historiën (History of the Netherlands, publication begins)
  • Sir Walter Ralegh – The Prince, or Maxims of State
  • Alonso de Castillo Solórzano – La garduña de Sevilla y anzuelo de las bolsas

    • Drama

  • Antonio Coello – Los empeños de seis horas (approximate date)
  • Pierre Corneille – Polyeucte
  • François le Métel de Boisrobert – La Belle Palène
  • Donaires del gusto
  • Pierre du Ryer – Saul
  • Francis Jaques – The Queen of Corsica
  • James Shirley – The Sisters
  • Jan Vos – Klucht van Oene (The Farce of Oene)

    • Poetry

  • John Denham – Cooper's Hill
  • Richard Lovelace – "To Althea, from Prison"
  • Alonso de Castillo Solórzano – Academias morales de las musas

    • Births

  • March 15 (baptised) – Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester, English politician and writer (died 1711)
  • April 21 – Simon de la Loubère, French diplomat, writer, mathematician and poet (died 1729)
  • April 30 – Christian Weise, German dramatist and poet (died 1708)
  • December 30 – Vincenzo da Filicaja, Florentine poet (died 1707)
  • Unknown dates
  • Ihara Saikaku (井原 西鶴), Japanese poet and creator of the ukiyozōshi (floating world) genre of prose (died 1693)
  • James Tyrrell, English political philosopher (died 1718)
  • Probable year of birth
  • Thomas Shadwell, English dramatist (died 1698)
  • Edward Taylor, English-born colonial American poet and author (died 1729)

    • Deaths

  • May 14 – Nicolas Ysambert, French theologian (born c. 1565)
  • June 1 – Sir John Suckling, English poet (born 1609)
  • July 5 – Festus Hommius, Dutch Calvinist theologian (born 1576)
  • Unknown dates
  • Abdul-Haqq Dehlavi, Indian Islamic scholar and writer (born 1551)
  • Sir Francis Kynaston, English poet (born 1587)
  • James Mabbe, English scholar, poet and translator (born 1572)

    • In literature

  • June – Opening of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter (1850).

    • References

    1642 in literature Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA