1591 in literature

Events

• May – A dispute with James Burbage impels the Admiral's Men to leave The Theatre and move to Philip Henslowe's Rose Theatre in London.
• Summer – Sir Walter Ralegh secretly marries Elizabeth Throckmorton.
• October 4 – John Lyly's Midas is entered in the Stationers' Register.
• November 8 – Publisher Thomas Millington becomes a "freeman" of the Stationers' Company.
• Poet and historian Andrea Cornaro founds in Candia the philological academy L’Accademia degli Stravaganti, his brother, poet Vitsentzos Kornaros, being among the other members.
• Publication of the first of the Conimbricenses commentaries on Aristotle by the Jesuits of the University of Coimbra, Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis Societatis Jesu in octo libros physicorum Aristotelis Stagyritæ, on Aristotle's Physics.

  New books

Prose

• Andrea Alciato – Emblemata
• Robert Greene – Greene's Farewell to Folly
• John Greenwood – A Breife Refutation of Mr George Giffard, etc.
• Melis Stoke – Rijmkroniek
• "A. W." – A Book of Cookrye

  Children

• Anonymous – A Pretty and Splendid Maiden's Mirror

  Drama

• Anonymous
• *Fair Em, the Miller's Daughter of Manchester
• *Mucedorus
• *The Troublesome Reign of King John
• John Lyly – Endymion, the Man in the Moon
• Muretus – Julius Caesar
• Robert Wilmot – Tancred and Gismund

  Poetry

• Sir John Harington – Orlando Furioso in English Heroical Verse
• James VI of Scotland – Lepanto
• Sir Philip Sidney – Astrophel and Stella

  Births

• March 6 – Tommaso Tamburini, Italian Jesuit theologian
• August – Robert Herrick, English poet
• Unknown dates
• *Thomas Goffe, English dramatist
• *Ivan Bunić Vučić, Ragusa poet

  Deaths

• February 28 – Arthur Faunt, English Jesuit missionary
• July 7 – Noël du Fail, French short story writer
• July 22 – Veronica Franco, Venetian poet and courtesan
• August 23 – Luis de León, Castilian poet, theologian and orator
• December 21 – John of the Cross, Castilian poet and friar
• Unknown date – Johann Fischart, German satirist