1596 in poetry

From your confessor, lawyer and physician,

Hide not your case on no condition — From Sir John Harington, A New Discourse of a Stale Subject, called the Metamorphosis of Ajax

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).

Works published in English

 * Anonymous, King Edward the Fourth and the Tanner of Tamworth, a ballad
 * Thomas Campion, Poemata
 * Thomas Churchyard, A Pleasant Discourse of Court and Wars
 * Henoch Clapham, A Briefe of the Bible [sic]
 * Peter Colse, Penelopes Complaint; or, A Mirrour for Wanton Minions
 * Anthony Copley, A Fig for Fortune
 * Roger Cotton:
 * An Armour of Proofe: Brought from the tower of David, to fight against Spannyardes, and all enimies of the trueth [sic]
 * A Spirituall Song: Conteining an historicall discourse from the infancie of the world, until the present time [sic]
 * Sir John Davies, published anonymously, Orchestra; or, A Poem of Dauncing [sic]
 * John Dickenson, The Shepheardes Complaint
 * Michael Drayton:
 * Mortimeriados, a long poem on the Wars of the Roses, in ottava rima (revised as The Barrons Wars 1603)
 * The Tragicall Legend of Robert Duke of Normandy: [with] The legend of Maltilda; The legend of Piers Gaveston [sic]
 * Bartholomew Griffin, Fidessa, a sequence of sonnets
 * Sir John Harington, A New Discourse of a Stale Subject, called the Metamorphosis of Ajax (also known by the shorter title Metamorphosis of Ajax) [sic], a satire for which Harrington was banished from the English court
 * Gervase Markham, The Poem of Poems; or, Sions Muse [sic]
 * Christopher Middleton, The Historie of Heaven
 * William Smith, Chloris; or, The Complaint of the Passionate Despised Shepheard [sic]
 * Edmund Spenser:
 * Colin Clouts Come Home Againe [sic]
 * Fowre Hymnes, published with the second edition of Daphnaida 1591
 * Prothalamion; or, A Spousall Verse in Honour of the Double Marriage of Ladie Elizabeth and Ladie Katherine Somerset [sic]
 * The Second Part of the Faerie Queene: Containing the fourth, fifth and sixth books (books 1–3 first published in 1590; see also Faerie Queene 1609)
 * William Warner, Albions England [sic], fourth edition (12 books); see also Albions England [sic] 1586, second edition 1589, third edition 1592, fifth edition 1602, A Continuance of Albions England [sic] 1606

Works published in other languages

 * Francisco Rodrigues Lobo, Romances
 * Alonso Pinciano, Filosofía antigua poética  ("Antique Poetic Philosophy"), Spanish criticism

Births

 * September 4 – Constantijn Huygens (died 1687), Dutch poet and composer
 * September – James Shirley (died 1666), English poet and playwright
 * Xiao Yuncong (died 1673), Chinese landscape painter, calligrapher, and poet

Deaths

 * October 3 – Florent Chrestien (born 1540), French satirist and Latin poet
 * Bargeo (born 1517), Italian, Latin-language poet
 * Georg List (born 1532), German
 * Henry Willobie (born 1575), English
 * Ou Daren (born 1516), Ming dynasty poet and scholar