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1598
The first description of a performance of Love’s Labor’s Lost appears in a sonnet sequence by Robert Tofte printed in 1598, the same year the play was first published.
February 4, 1598
In this 1598 survey of those storing grain in Stratford-upon-Avon, “W[illia]m Shackesp[ear]e” is listed as holding 10 quarters of malt.
October 25, 1598
This is the only known surviving letter written to Shakespeare, but he may never have received it. (No known letters survive written by him.) It is addressed “To my Loveinge good ffrend & contreymann Mr.
ca. 1598
The scholar and writer Gabriel Harvey was known and mocked in his lifetime for making copious notes in the margins of printed books. An inventor of words, friend of Edmund Spenser, and rival of Thomas Nashe, he constantly sought to improve himself through note-taking and repetitive reading.
1598
Love’s Labor’s Lost, first edition: One of the first instances of Shakespeare's name on a title page
William Shakespeare's name first appeared on the title pages of three plays in 1598, including this edition of Love's Labor's Lost. Fourteen copies of this edition are known to survive. The sub-title, "Newly corrected and augmented By W.
1598
In “A Remembrance of some English Poets,” the poet Richard Barnfield praises Edmund Spenser, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, and Shakespeare.
1598
Francis Meres provided one of the earliest printed assessments of Shakespeare’s plays and poetry in his 1598 publication, Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury in a chapter entitled “A comparatiue discourse of our English Poets, with the Greeke, Latine, and Italian Poets.
1599
This 1599 printing is the only surviving copy of the sixth edition of Venus and Adonis, first published in 1593.
1599
Sometime after Sir George Buc, the future Master of the Revels, purchased the anonymous play George a Greene, Pinner of Wakefield shown here, he added two manuscript notes to the title page.
1599
Like the two draft grants of arms from 1596, this draft exemplification of arms from 1599 is in the handwriting of William Dethick, Garter King of Arms.
