1596 in poetry
# 1596 in poetry

   From your confessor, lawyer and physician, Hide not your case on no condition

— From Sir John Harington, A New Discourse of a Stale Subject, called the Metamorphosis of Ajax

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).

## Works published in English

* Anonymous, King Edward the Fourth and the Tanner of Tamworth, a ballad
* Thomas Campion, Poemata
* Thomas Churchyard, A Pleasant Discourse of Court and Wars
* Henoch Clapham, A Briefe of the Bible
* Peter Colse, Penelopes Complaint; or, A Mirrour for Wanton Minions
* Anthony Copley, A Fig for Fortune
* Roger Cotton:
   * An Armour of Proofe: Brought from the tower of David, to fight against Spannyardes, and all enimies of the trueth
   * A Spirituall Song: Conteining an historicall discourse from the infancie of the world, until the present time
* Sir John Davies, published anonymously, Orchestra; or, A Poem of Dauncing
* John Dickenson, The Shepheardes Complaint
* Michael Drayton:
   * Mortimeriados, a long poem on the Wars of the Roses, in ottava rima (revised as The Barrons Wars 1603)
   * The Tragicall Legend of Robert Duke of Normandy: [with] The legend of Maltilda; The legend of Piers Gaveston
* Bartholomew Griffin, Fidessa, a sequence of sonnets
* Sir John Harington, A New Discourse of a Stale Subject, called the Metamorphosis of Ajax (also known by the shorter title Metamorphosis of Ajax), a satire for which Harrington was banished from the English court
* Gervase Markham, The Poem of Poems; or, Sions Muse
* Christopher Middleton, The Historie of Heaven
* William Smith, Chloris; or, The Complaint of the Passionate Despised Shepheard
* Edmund Spenser:
   * Colin Clouts Come Home Againe
   * Fowre Hymnes, published with the second edition of Daphnaida 1591
   * Prothalamion; or, A Spousall Verse in Honour of the Double Marriage of Ladie Elizabeth and Ladie Katherine Somerset
   * The Second Part of the Faerie Queene: Containing the fourth, fifth and sixth books (books 1–3 first published in 1590; see also Faerie Queene 1609)
* William Warner, Albions England, fourth edition (12 books); see also Albions England 1586, second edition 1589, third edition 1592, fifth edition 1602, A Continuance of Albions England 1606

## Works published in other languages

* Francisco Rodrigues Lobo, Romances
* Alonso Pinciano, Filosofía antigua poética ("Antique Poetic Philosophy"), Spanish criticism

## Births

* September 4 – Constantijn Huygens (died 1687), Dutch poet and composer
* September – James Shirley (died 1666), English poet and playwright
* Xiao Yuncong (died 1673), Chinese landscape painter, calligrapher, and poet

## Deaths

* October 3 – Florent Chrestien (born 1540), French satirist and Latin poet
* Bargeo (born 1517), Italian, Latin-language poet
* Georg List (born 1532), German
* Henry Willobie (born 1575), English
* Ou Daren (born 1516), Ming dynasty poet and scholar
