About Shakespeare   Elizabethan England   The Globe     TimeLinks	TimeLinks 1558  Queen Elizabeth begins her 45-year reign as queen of England. 1560  Mary Queen of Scots' husband, Francis II, is murdered and his 10-year-old brother ascends the throne. 1564  William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe are born in England. 1570   Giambattista della Porta invents the pinhole camera. 1572  Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe is the first to observe a supernova. 1576  Venetian painter Titian dies in Rome. 1576  The first playhouse in England is run by James Burbage. 1580  King Philip II of Spain becomes King Philip I of Portugal after the Portuguese defeat in the Battle of Alcantara. 1587-8  Christopher Marlowe writes Tamburlaine and The Tragedy of Dr. Faustus. 1588  Spanish Armada is battered by the English navy before escaping around the Scottish coast. 1589  William Lee of England invents the first knitting machine. 1589  Henry VI, Part 1 becomes William Shakespeare's first play to open onstage. 1590  The first three books of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene are published, and the "Spenserian stanza" is coined. 1591  English colonists who had been sent to Roanoke Island mysteriously disappear. 1595  Shakespeare writes Romeo and Juliet and Love's Labours Lost. 1596  Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is completed. 1598  Ben Jonson pens Every Man in His Humour. 1598  King Henry IV of France issues the Edict of Nantes, allowing Huguenots to practice Protestantism. circa 1599  The Globe Theatre is built. 1590s  After Lisbon closes its spice market to England and the Netherlands, the Dutch East Trading Company is founded. 1603  James VI of Scotland rises to the English throne after the death of Elizabeth I, uniting England and Scotland under one crown under his new name, James I. 1600s  Catherine de Vivonne of Paris founds the first salon, or meeting place, for the exchange of cultures and ideas. 1605  Miguel de Cervantes publishes Don Quixote. 1605-6 Shakespeare writes Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. 1609  Johannes Kepler writes the first of Kepler's Laws, which establishes that the planets move in an elliptical path around the sun; Galileo builds his first telescope. 1610  King Henry IV of France is assassinated by a fanatic and is succeeded by his son Louis XIII. 1614  English settler John Rolfe marries Pocahontas, the daughter of a Native American chief. 1614  John Webster writes his play The Duchess of Malfi. 1616  William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes both die.