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Events from the year 1672 in literature.

Events

  • January 25 – London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, is destroyed by fire. The King's Company moves to the theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields, which the rival Duke's Company left the previous year.
  • June – Thomas Killigrew mounts another all-female production of his The Parson's Wedding with the King's Company. (The first occurred in 1664.) Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster and Dryden's The Maiden Queen are also staged with all-women casts and new prologues by Dryden for the productions.
  • September 13 – John Bunyan is released after twelve years' imprisonment for preaching without a licence.
  • December – John Dryden's play Marriage à la Mode is first performed in London by the King's Company.
  • The Mercure de France is first published, under the title Mercure galant.

New books

Prose

  • Nicolás Antonio – Bibliotheca Hispana Nova
  • Nicolas Denys – Description Géographique et Historique des Costes de l’Amérique Septentrionale (Description and Natural History of the Coasts of North America)
  • Richard Cumberland – De legibus naturae (On natural laws)
  • Melchor Fuster – Conceptos predicables
  • Gadla Walatta Petros (Ethiopian hagiography in Ge'ez language)
  • Nathaniel Hodges – Loimologia
  • James Janeway – A Token for Children, Part 2
  • John Milton – Art of Logic
  • Pierre Nicole – A Discourse Against Plays and Romances
  • César Vichard de Saint-Réal – Dom Carlos

Drama

  • Anonymous – Emilia (adapted from the Costanza di Rosamondo of Aurelio Aureli)
  • Anonymous – The Illustrious Slaves
  • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
  • Eco y Narciso
  • El hijo del sol, Faetón
  • La niña de Gómez Arias
  • Thomas Corneille – Ariane
  • John Dryden
  • The Assignation
  • Marriage à la mode (first performed; published the following year)
  • John Lacy (published)
  • The Dumb Lady, or The Farrier Made Physician
  • The Old Troop, or Monsier Ragou
  • Molière – Les Femmes Savantes
  • Henry Nevil Payne – The Morning Ramble
  • Jean Racine – Bajazet
  • Edward Ravenscroft – The Citizen Turned Gentleman
  • Thomas Shadwell
  • Epsom Wells
  • The Miser
  • George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, and others – The Rehearsal (published)

Poetry

  • Miguel de Barrios – El coro de las musas

Births

  • January 18 – Antoine Houdar de la Motte, French writer, (died 1731)
  • March – Sir Richard Steele, Irish dramatist, satirist and politician (died 1729)
  • May 1 – Joseph Addison, English essayist, poet and politician (died 1719)
  • August 2 – Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Swiss paleontologist, historian and travel writer (died 1733)
  • October 27 – Maria Gustava Gyllenstierna, Swedish writer (died 1737)

Deaths

  • June 14 – Matthew Wren, English scholar and cleric (born 1629)
  • June 20 – Alonso Andrada, Spanish biographer and ascetic writer (born 1590)
  • September 12 – Tanneguy Le Fèvre, French classicist (born 1615)
  • September 16 – Anne Bradstreet, pioneering American female author (born c. 1612)
  • November 21 – Robert Creighton, Scottish classicist, politician and bishop (born 1593)
  • December 27 – Jacques Rohault, French philosopher (born 1618)

References