Internet Shakespeare Editions

Toolbox

Years 1607-1608

Shakespeare's life contemporary events
1607
June 5. Susanna Shakespeare marries Dr. John Hall at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford.
Sept. 5. Hamlet is performed aboard the English ship Dragon at Sierra Leone.
Nov. 26. King Lear entered in Stationers' Register.
Dec. 31. Edmund Shakespeare, an actor, is buried at St. Saviour's church in Southwark. He may have been Shakespeare's younger brother.
Founding of Jamestown, Virginia.
The Great Frost in London. The Thames freezes over.
Cyril Tourneur's The Revenger's Tragedy is published.
Theatres are closed from July to November because of the plague.
Parliament rejects the unification of Scotland with England.
Antagonism over enclosures leads to the Midlands Revolt.
Thomas Deloney dies.
1608
Feb. 21. Shakespeare's first grandchild Elizabeth, daughter of John and Susanna Hall, is christened.
May 20. Antony and Cleopatra is entered in the Stationers' Register.
Aug. 9. Shakespeare and six associates lease the Blackfriars theatre for a twenty-one year period.
Sept. 7. Shakespeare's mother, Mary, is buried at Stratford.
Oct. 16. Shakespeare becomes godfather to William Walker of Stratford.
Dec. 17. John Addenbrooke is arrested for a debt owed to Shakespeare.
Parliament rejects James' proposal for the union of England and Scotland, but all subjects born after 1603 acquire common nationality.
Galileo constructs an astronomical telescope.
John Milton is born.
Robert Cecil is appointed Lord Treasurer; the Crown is over £500,000 in debt.