1607 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1607.

Events

 * January 22 – Shortly before his death, bookseller Cuthbert Burby transfers the rights to print the text of The Taming of the Shrew to Nicholas Ling.
 * February 2 – The King's Men perform Barnes's The Devil's Charter at the English Court.
 * June 5 – Physician John Hall marries Susanna, daughter of William Shakespeare.
 * September 5 – Hamlet is performed aboard the East India Company ship Red Dragon, under the command of Captain William Keeling, anchored off the coast of Sierra Leone, the first known performance of a Shakespeare play outside England in English, and the first by amateurs.
 * September 30 – Richard II is performed aboard the Dragon.
 * unknown dates
 * First performance of the first wholly parodic play in English, Francis Beaumont's The Knight of the Burning Pestle, unsuccessfully, probably by child actors at the Blackfriars Theatre in London.
 * The King's Revels Children are active as a playing company in London: their repertoire includes Edward Sharpham's Cupid's Whirligig and Thomas Middleton's The Family of Love.

Prose

 * William Alabaster – Apparatus in Revelationem Jesu Christi
 * John Cowell – The Interpreter (suppressed by the English House of Commons for excessive royalism)
 * Michael Drayton – The Legend of Great Cromwell
 * Antoine Loysel – Institutes coutumières
 * César Oudin – Thrésor des deux langues françoise et espagnole
 * Lawrence Twine – The Pattern of Painful Adventures, second edition; a source for Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre
 * Honoré d'Urfé – L'Astrée (part 1)

Drama

 * William Alexander, 1st Earl of Stirling – The Monarchic Tragedies (second edition adding The Alexandrean and Julius Caesar to closet dramas Croesus and Darius
 * Anonymous – Claudius Tiberius Nero
 * Barnabe Barnes – The Devil's Charter
 * Francis Beaumont – The Knight of the Burning Pestle
 * Beaumont and Fletcher – The Woman Hater (published, earliest of their collaborations to appear in print)
 * Thomas Campion – Lord Hay's Masque
 * George Chapman – Bussy D'Ambois (published)
 * John Day, William Rowley, and George Wilkins – The Travels of the Three English Brothers
 * Thomas Dekker – The Whore of Babylon
 * Thomas Dekker and John Webster – Westward Ho and Northward Ho published
 * Dekker & Webster, with Henry Chettle (?), Thomas Heywood (?), and Wentworth Smith (?) – Sir Thomas Wyatt (published)
 * Thomas Heywood – The Fair Maid of the Exchange (published)
 * Ben Jonson – Volpone (published)
 * John Marston – What You Will (published)
 * Thomas Middleton
 * Michaelmas Term (performed)
 * The Phoenix (published)
 * The Puritan (published as "written by W.S.")
 * The Revenger's Tragedy (published)
 * Edward Sharpham – Cupid's Whirligig
 * Thomas Tomkis – Lingua (published)
 * George Wilkins – The Miseries of Enforced Marriage (published)

Poetry

 * Thomas Dekker – The Seven Deadly Sins of London

Births

 * March 8 – Johann von Rist, German poet (died 1667)
 * July 10 – Philippe Labbe, French Jesuit writer (died 1667)
 * October 4 – Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla, Spanish dramatist (died c. 1660)
 * November 1 – Georg Philipp Harsdorffer, German poet and translator (died 1658)
 * November 5 – Anna Maria van Schurman, Dutch poet (died 1678)
 * November 15 – Madeleine de Scudéry, French writer (died 1701)
 * Unknown dates
 * Alaol, Bengali poet (died 1673)
 * Antoine Gombaud, French essayist (died 1684)
 * Filadelfo Mugnos, Italian historian (died 1675)
 * Francisco Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán, Chilean writer and soldier (died 1682)

Deaths

 * January 6 – Guidobaldo del Monte, Italian philosopher (born 1545)
 * May – Sir Edward Dyer, English poet (born 1543)
 * June – Thomas Newton, English physician, clergyman, poet, author and translator (born c. 1542)
 * June 19 – Johannes Bertelius, historian of Luxembourg (born 1544)
 * June 30 – Caesar Baronius, Italian ecclesiastical historian (born 1538)
 * July 6 – Achille Gagliardi, Italian theologian (born 1537)
 * July 7 – Penelope Rich, Lady Rich, English noblewoman, inspiration for Sir Philip Sidney's "Stella" (born 1563)
 * October 31 – Wawrzyniec Grzymała Goślicki, Polish philosopher (born c. 1540)
 * Unknown dates
 * Cuthbert Burby, English publisher and bookseller
 * Dinko Ranjina, Croatian poet (born 1536)
 * Probable year of death – Henry Chettle, English dramatist (born c. 1564)