1634 in literature

Events

• January 1 – The King's Men perform Cymbeline at the court of King Charles I of England.
• January 22 – The King's Men perform Davenant's The Wits at the Blackfriars Theatre in the City of London.
• February 3 – James Shirley's spectacular masque The Triumph of Peace is staged in London. A second performance takes place on February 13.
• February 6 – Shirley's play The Gamester is performed at court.
• February 18 – Thomas Carew's masque Coelum Britannicum is staged at Whitehall Palace.
• March – The Académie française begins life as a project sponsored by Cardinal Richelieu.
• February 29 – Under pressure from the Duke de Medinaceli, Francisco de Quevedo marries Doña Esperanza de Aragón.
• April
• *The first Théâtre du Marais is founded at a tennis court in Paris.
• *The first Oberammergau Passion Play is performed in Bavaria.
• April 7 – The King's Men perform Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois at court.
• April 8 – The tragicomedy The Two Noble Kinsmen is attributed in the Stationers' Register in London to the late John Fletcher and William Shakespeare; it is published for the first time later in the year.
• May 1 – Lodowick Carlell's play The Spartan Lady is performed, but has since been lost.
• May 7 – William Prynne is sentenced by the Star Chamber in England to a £5,000 fine, life imprisonment, pillorying and clipping of his ears when his Histriomastix is viewed as an attack on King Charles I of England and Queen Henrietta Maria.
• May 21 – A play called Lisander and Callista that is performed is probably a version of the Fletcher/Massinger collaboration The Lovers' Progress.
• July 30 – Ben Jonson's final masque, Love's Welcome at Bolsover, is performed at Bolsover Castle in the East Midlands of England.
• unknown date – The first part of Giambattista Basile's fairy tale collection The Pentamerone is published posthumously by his sister Adriana in Naples under the pseudonym Gian Alesio Abbatutis, including Cenerentola, an early version of Cinderella.

  New books

Prose

• Moses Amyraut – Traité de la predestination
• Alonso de Castillo Solórzano – La Niña de los embustes, Teresa de Manzanares
• Alonso Jerónimo de Salas Barbadillo – El Curioso y fabio Alexandro
• Francisco de Quevedo
• *La cuna y la sepultura
• *Translation of La introducción a la vida devota of Francis of Sales
• Thomas Herbert – Some Yeares Travels into Divers Parts of Asia and Afrique
• Johannes Kepler – Somnium
• Thomas Muffet – Insectorum sive Minimorum Animalium Theatrum
• John Pell – Astronomical History of Observations of Heavenly Motions and Appearances

  Children

• Anonymous – Pentamerone

  Drama

• Juan Ruiz de Alarcón – La verdad sospechosa
• Richard Brome and Thomas Heywood – The Late Lancashire Witches
• William Davenant
• *The Wits
• *Love and Honour, also known as The Courage of Love
• *The Temple of Love
• Lope de Vega – :es:Las bizarrías de Belisa|Las bizarrías de Belisa
• John Ford – Perkin Warbeck published
• Thomas Heywood – A Maidenhead Well Lost published
• Ben Jonson – Love's Welcome at Bolsover
• John Milton – Comus
• Thomas Nabbes – Tottenham Court
• James Shirley
• *The Example
• *The Opportunity
• *The Triumph of Peace

  Poetry

• Richard Crashaw – Epigrammatum sacrorum liber
• Lope de Vega
• *La Gatomaquia
• *:es:Rimas humanas y divinas del licenciado Tomé de Burguillos|Rimas humanas y divinas del licenciado Tomé de Burguillos
• William Habington – Castara
• Johann von Rist – Musa Teutonica

  Births

• January 16 – Dorothe Engelbretsdotter, Norwegian poet
• March 18 – Madame de la Fayette, French novelist
• April 6 – Pierre Thomas, French scholar and memoirist
• July 14 – Pasquier Quesnel, French theologian
• December 15 – Thomas Hansen Kingo, Danish poet, hymnist and bishop

  Deaths

• May 12 – George Chapman, English dramatist, poet and translator
• June 25 – John Marston, English dramatist
• August 9 – William Noy, English jurist and legal writer
• August 23 – Tomos Prys, Welsh-language poet
• December 22 – Matthew Rader, Tyrolean philologist and historian