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Nicholas Okes (died 1645) was an English printer in London of the Jacobean and Caroline eras, remembered for printing works of English Renaissance drama. He was responsible for early editions of works by many of the playwrights of the period, including William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Webster, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood, James Shirley, and John Ford.
Okes was the son of a "horner," a man who made hornbooks for the elementary education of small children; Okes's grandfather may have been a lute player. Nicholas Okes began his apprenticeship with printer Richard Field at Christmas 1595. He was made a "freeman" (full member) of the Stationers Company on 5 December 1603. His career advanced in 1606, in connection with the printing establishment of George and Lionel Snowden; Lionel left the firm and Okes took the man's place as George Snowden's partner (29 January 1606). Snowden, in turn, left the business on 13 April 1607, when Okes bought him out. Okes continued to use the Snowden's characteristic device, a winged horse above a caduceus (as on the title page of Lear, Q1) – though he later used an ornament of Jupiter riding an eagle between two oak trees.
The Snowden firm was long-standing, having been founded in 1586 by Thomas Judson; though at the start Okes possessed only a single press, two workmen, and a limited supply of type. Over time, however, Okes built a successful concern.
In February 1624, at St. Faith's in London, Okes married Mary Pursett, daughter of a fellow stationer, Christopher Pursett.
In a career that spanned more than three decades, Okes printed materials on a wide variety of subjects: history, literature, religion, science and mathematics, trade, travel, geography, cartography, even cookbooks. Yet his play texts have attracted the lion's share of attention from scholars, critics, and bibliographers.
One of Okes's earliest jobs was the printing of the fifth edition of Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece (1607) for the bookseller John Harrison (the fourth octavo edition, O4; often called, inaccurately, Q5). [1] In the following year, 1608, Okes printed the famous and crucial first quarto of King Lear for Nathaniel Butter. Q1 of Lear was the first play (of many) printed by Okes; it has been argued that some of the peculiarities in that intensely studied volume resulted from the inexperience of Okes and his compositors with works of drama. [2] [3]
In 1622, Okes printed the first quarto of Othello for Thomas Walkley. Okes worked on several projects with Walkley in the years around 1622 – though he also took Walkley to court in a financial dispute. (This in itself was not unusual: Walkley struggled financially in his early years in business and was sued by other colleagues, too.)
In a more remote Shakespearean connection, Okes printed The Merry Conceited Jests of George Peele (1607) for Francis Faulkner and Henry Bell. This was a key source for The Puritan , one of the plays of the Shakespeare Apocrypha.
Okes printed a range of other texts in Jacobean and Caroline drama, beyond the confines of the Shakespeare canon. They include: [4]
(In some cases, the line between bookseller/publisher and printer may not have been as clear-cut as in others. It is worth noting that Albumazar was entered into the Stationers' Register on 28 April 1615 – not by publisher Burre as would have been the norm, but by printer Okes; which suggests that Okes was more than just the printer hired for the job.)
The above list represents first editions. Okes also printed:
Inevitably, Okes also printed works of many sorts that had nothing to do with the drama; these included religious works by John Donne and others – and also Thomas Cooper's The Mystery of Witchcraft (1617). He printed Robert Tofte's translation of Ariosto's Satires (1608) for Roger Jackson, and Gervase Markham's The English Arcadia (1613) for Thomas Saunders. Okes also printed Rachel Speght's A Muzzle for Melastomus (1617) for Thomas Archer – one of the few works authored by a woman printed in this period.
Like most printers of his historical period, Okes concentrated on printing, and left publishing decisions to the booksellers who commissioned jobs from him. And yet, again like most printers of the era, Okes did a limited amount of publishing himself. (Booksellers and printers were all members of the Stationers Company, and could publish books and other works; but the practicalities of the retail book business made booksellers the logical and primary publishers.) Okes's title pages identify his business as "near Holborn Bridge" and "in Foster Lane."
Okes published the first quartos of Heywood's Age quintet: The Golden Age (1611), The Silver Age (1613), The Brazen Age (1613) and his The Iron Age, Parts 1 and 2 (1632), as well as the first and second quarto of Heywood's The Four Prentices of London (1615, 1632). He published some of Heywood's non-dramatic prose, including his important An Apology for Actors (1612); in that volume, Heywood included an address "to his approved good friend, Nicholas Okes," that praises the printer's "care and workmanship" and calls him "careful and industrious" and "serious and laborious."
Okes also published the texts of some of the city entertainments common in the era, including several written by Thomas Middleton when he was City Chronologer of London, plus others by John Webster and Anthony Munday.
As with his printing, Okes published non-dramatic works as well as plays. One example is Samuel Daniel's The Collection of the History of England (1618); another is Robert Chamberlain's A New Book of Mistakes (1637). He published Anthony Munday's translation of Amadis de Gaul (1618–19), one of the chivalric romances that were enormously popular in the era. Okes published A Short Treatise on Magnetical Bodies and Motions (1613) by Mark Ridley, a follower of William Gilbert, and John Napier's A Description of the Admirable Table of Logarithms (1616).
Printers who published usually needed a retail outlet for their wares. The title page of Okes's edition of The Silver Age states that the book would be sold by Benjamin Lightfoote. Okes's edition of Richard Jobson's The Golden Trade (1623) was sold by Nicholas Bourne; his edition of Sir Thomas Overbury's translation of Ovid (1620) was sold by John Wells.
A number of printers and publishers of Okes's era got into trouble with the strict censorship policies of the Stuart regime, resulting in fines and occasional imprisonment. Nathaniel Butter, Okes's publisher for Lear, served time in jail for his professional activities. Okes was in difficulties throughout his career for printing works without official approval; when he printed George Wither's controversial Satires (1621) without registration, Okes ended up in jail himself. He was imprisoned again in 1637, for his second edition of Francis de Sales' Introduction to a Devout Life. Okes had altered the text after it was approved by the authorities, re-inserting Catholic phraseology.
The 1637 trouble was serious. Okes probably knew that the Star Chamber was planning to restrict the number of master printers to a total of twenty; and given his record, he knew that he would not be among those twenty. Okes wrote a letter to Archbishop Laud, offering to step aside from his business if his son John (see below) would be among the twenty master printers. His effort was futile; neither Okes was among the restricted group of masters. The Stuarts, however, were better at proclaiming laws than at enforcing them; and they were distracted by other aspects of the political turmoil leading up to the English Civil War. The Okes firm managed to stay in business "by indulgence." [6]
At this historical remove, it is impossible to say whether Okes's choices over the problematic works he printed stemmed from economic motives, religious or political values, simple stubbornness, or a commitment to the earliest concepts of freedom of the press.
John Okes, [7] son of Nicholas, served an apprenticeship under his father and became a freeman of the Stationers Company on 14 January 1627. For some years he was in partnership with his father; together they printed Heywood's The Royal King and the Loyal Subject (1637) for James Becket, and Richard Brathwaite's The Lives of All the Roman Emperors (1636) for George Hutton.
John Okes continued in business on his own after his father's retirement; he was situated in Little St. Bartholomew's near Smithfield. He printed James Shirley's The Grateful Servant (1637) for William Leake; and Richard Brome's The Sparagus Garden and The Antipodes for Francis Constable, and Thomas Nabbes's The Unfortunate Mother for Daniel Frere (all 1640). He printed and published William Rowley's play A Shoemaker a Gentleman (1638) and Jonson's masque The Gypsies Metamorphosed (1640). (Like his father, printer/publisher John Okes needed a retail outlet for his products; his edition of Rowley's play was sold by bookseller John Cooper.) [8] The younger Okes continued in his father's role as a primary publisher of Heywood's non-dramatic prose.
John Okes died in 1644. His widow Mary continued his business, like some other stationers' widows did; but she does not appear to have succeeded or endured. For a brief historical moment, however, Mary Okes was at the center of attention of the English nation – when she testified about the Introduction to a Devout Life matter at the 1644 trial of Archbishop Laud. [9]
The earliest texts of William Shakespeare's works were published during the 16th and 17th centuries in quarto or folio format. Folios are large, tall volumes; quartos are smaller, roughly half the size. The publications of the latter are usually abbreviated to Q1, Q2, etc., where the letter stands for "quarto" and the number for the first, second, or third edition published.
John Benson was a London publisher of the middle seventeenth century, best remembered for a historically important publication of the Sonnets and miscellaneous poems of William Shakespeare in 1640.
False Folio is the term that Shakespeare scholars and bibliographers have applied to William Jaggard's printing of ten Shakespearean and pseudo-Shakespearean plays together in 1619, the first attempt to collect Shakespeare's work in a single volume. Publisher and bookseller Thomas Pavier is also implicated with 'printed for T.P.' appearing on the title pages.
William Jaggard was an Elizabethan and Jacobean printer and publisher, best known for his connection with the texts of William Shakespeare, most notably the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays. Jaggard's shop was "at the sign of the Half-Eagle and Key in Barbican."
Valentine Simmes was an Elizabethan era and Jacobean era printer; he did business in London, "on Adling Hill near Bainard's Castle at the sign of the White Swan." Simmes has a reputation as one of the better printers of his generation, and was responsible for several quartos of Shakespeare's plays. [See: Early texts of Shakespeare's works.]
Thomas Creede was a printer of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, rated as "one of the best of his time." Based in London, he conducted his business under the sign of the Catherine Wheel in Thames Street from 1593 to 1600, and under the sign of the Eagle and Child in the Old Exchange from 1600 to 1617. Creede is best known for printing editions of works in English Renaissance drama, especially for ten editions of six Shakespearean plays and three works in the Shakespeare Apocrypha.
Cuthbert Burby was a London bookseller and publisher of the Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras. He is known for publishing a series of significant volumes of English Renaissance drama, including works by William Shakespeare, Robert Greene, John Lyly, and Thomas Nashe.
Peter Short was an English printer based in London in the later Elizabethan era. He printed several first editions and early texts of Shakespeare's works.
Thomas Cotes was a London printer of the Jacobean and Caroline eras, best remembered for printing the Second Folio edition of Shakespeare's plays in 1632.
Richard Meighen was a London publisher of the Jacobean and Caroline eras. He is noted for his publications of plays of English Renaissance drama; he published the second Ben Jonson folio of 1640/41, and was a member of the syndicate that issued the Second Folio of Shakespeare's collected plays in 1632.
Richard Hawkins was a London publisher of the Jacobean and Caroline eras. He was a member of the syndicate that published the Second Folio collection of Shakespeare's plays in 1632. His bookshop was in Chancery Lane, near Sergeant's Inn.
George Eld was a London printer of the Jacobean era, who produced important works of English Renaissance drama and literature, including key texts by William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and Thomas Middleton.
Nathaniel Butter was a London publisher of the early 17th century. As the publisher of the first edition of Shakespeare's King Lear in 1608, he has also been regarded as one of the first publishers of a newspaper in English.
Edward Allde was an English printer in London during the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. He was responsible for a number of significant texts in English Renaissance drama, including some of the early editions of plays by William Shakespeare.
John Waterson was a London publisher and bookseller of the Jacobean and Caroline eras; he published significant works in English Renaissance drama, including plays by William Shakespeare, John Fletcher, John Webster, and Philip Massinger.
Thomas Pavier was a London publisher and bookseller of the early seventeenth century. His complex involvement in the publication of early editions of some of Shakespeare's plays, as well as plays of the Shakespeare Apocrypha, has left him with a "dubious reputation."
Francis Constable was a London bookseller and publisher of the Jacobean and Caroline eras, noted for publishing a number of stage plays of English Renaissance drama.
Thomas Walkley was a London publisher and bookseller in the early and middle seventeenth century. He is noted for publishing a range of significant texts in English Renaissance drama, "and much other interesting literature."
William Stansby (1572–1638) was a London printer and publisher of the Jacobean and Caroline eras, working under his own name from 1610. One of the most prolific printers of his time, Stansby is best remembered for publishing the landmark first folio collection of the works of Ben Jonson in 1616.
Augustine Matthews was a printer in London in the Jacobean and Caroline eras. Among a wide variety of other work, Matthews printed notable texts in English Renaissance drama.
