title: 1642 in literature
text: # 1642 in literature
  
  This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1642.
  
  ## Events
  
  * May – The 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 his time there he may be writing "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 18 years, during the English Civil War and the Interregnum. Richard Brome's A Jovial Crew is reportedly staged on the final day, making it the last to be performed in the era of English Renaissance theatre.
  
  ## New books
  
  ### Prose
  
  * Thomas Browne – Religio Medici
  * Gauthier de Costes, seigneur de la Calprenède – Cassandre
  * 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
  * Tohfatu'l-Ahbab, a Persian-language work by Muhammad Ali Kashmiri
  
  ### 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, 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
  * 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
     * Abdul-Qādir Bīdel, Persian Sufi poet (died 1720)
     * Josep Romaguera, Catalan author (died 1723)
     * 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)
  