Seventeenth Century
±1601AD Shakespeare’s Hamlet
1602AD Dutch East India Company chartered
±1603-8AD Shakespeare begins his great tragedies (Othello, Macbeth and King Lear)
1604AD Guy Fawkes executed
1605AD Cervantes’s Don Quixote (part 1)
1607AD Montiverdi’s opera Orfeo
1608AD Hamlet performed aboard The Dragon at Sierra Leona and off the east coast of South Africa. Richard II was done en route.
1609AD Kepler’s Astronomica Nova. Galileo’s telescope. Lope de Vega’s The New Art of Writing Plays published. Shakespeare’s co. performs indoors at the Blackfriars.
1610AD A “very pretty comedy” was played in the three days on board a Portuguese ship while passing the Cape.
1611AD King James version of the Bible. Shakespeare’s The Tempest performed
1613AD First Romanov becomes Tsar of Russia
1616AD The notion of a sun-centered universe rejected by Inquisition
1618AD Proscenium arch introduced as permanenent feature in the Teatro Farnese, built in the Ducal Palace in Parma. Start of the Thirty Years’ War in Germany
1620AD Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum, expounds a new way of learning. The English commanders Fitzherbert and Shilling take possession of the Cape of Good Hope in the name of James I.
1623AD Velasquez becomes court painter to Philip IV of Spain. Bernini’s statue of David.
1624AD Cardinal Richelieu Louis XIII’s chief minister.
1625AD Charles 1 king of England.
1628AD William Harvey’s treatise on the circulation of the blood.
1632AD Galileo’s Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the World. Van Dyck court painter to Charles I of England.
1633AD Galileo has to recant his ideas.
1635AD French Academy founded by Richelieu.
1636AD Corneille’s Le Cid.
1637AD Descartes’s Discourse on Method. First theatre built in Amsterdam, under the influence of the Rederijkers.
1638AD Galileo’s Discourses on Two New Sciences.
1641AD Descartes’s Meditations
1642AD Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. Theatres in England closed by act of parliament Civil war in England (Roundheads and Cavaliers).
1643AD Torricelli invents barometer.
1644AD Milton’s Areopagitica. Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy. Theatres in Madrid closed for 6 years.
1648AD The Taj Mahal completed in Agra, India. De Nieuwe Haerlem flounders in Table Bay and Leendert Janz is left behind with the cargo. Builds a temporary fort. Peace of Westphalia ends 30 years’ war in Germany.
1649AD Charles I tried and beheaded in England.
1652AD Jan van Riebeeck lands at the Cape to start a refreshment station.
1653AD The Portuguese ship Nossa Senhora de Belem wrecked on the Natal coast, and they played comedies and farces to pass the time. Van Riebeeck Governor 1652-uses musicians to establish good relations with the Khoi, having music played during their visits. He however only allows his settlers one day a year of feasting on the Sunday after the return of the home fleet. Cromwell becomes Lord Protector of England.
1657AD First “Free Burghers” allocated land by the Dutch government at the Cape.
Return to
Return To A Chronology of South African Theatre and Performance
Return to The ESAT Entries
Return to Main Page
