Thomas Cotes (died 1641) was a

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

printer of the Jacobean and Caroline eras, best remembered for printing the

Second Folio The Second Folio is the 1632 edition of the collected plays of William Shakespeare. It follows the First Folio of 1623. Much language was updated in the Second Folio and there are almost 1,700 changes. The major partners in the First Folio had ...

edition of

Shakespeare's William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

plays in

1632 Events January–March * January – The Holland's Leguer, a brothel in London, is closed after having been besieged for a month. * February 22 – Galileo's ''Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems'' is publi ...

Life and work

Thomas Cotes became a "freeman" (a full member) of the Stationers Company on 6 January 1606; he was a former apprentice of

William Jaggard William Jaggard ( – November 1623) 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 ...

, who would print the

First Folio ''Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies'' is a collection of plays by William Shakespeare, commonly referred to by modern scholars as the First Folio, published in 1623, about seven years after Shakespeare's death. It is cons ...

with his son Isaac. Cotes ran his own printing shop from 1620 to 1641; from 1635 on, he was in partnership with his brother

Richard Cotes Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from Old Frankish and is a compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'str ...

(died 1653). Their shop was in the Barbican in

Aldersgate Street Aldersgate is a Ward of the City of London, named after one of the northern gates in the London Wall which once enclosed the City. The Ward of Aldersgate is traditionally divided into Aldersgate Within and Aldersgate Without, the suffix den ...

. (Their sister Jane was married to another printer,

Robert Ibbitson Robert Ibbitson (''fl.'' 1648–1654) was a 17th-century publisher in London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east ...

.) On 19 June 1627, Thomas Cotes acquired the business and copyrights of Isaac Jaggard, son and heir of William Jaggard, from Jaggard's widow Dorothy. A royal decree of 1637 named Thomas Cotes one of the twenty Master Printers of the Stationers Company.

Drama

In his substantial career, Cotes was a major producer of play texts of

English Renaissance drama English Renaissance theatre, also known as Renaissance English theatre and Elizabethan theatre, refers to the theatre of England between 1558 and 1642. This is the style of the plays of William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonso ...

. He printed the

first quarto 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 a ...

of ''

The Two Noble Kinsmen ''The Two Noble Kinsmen'' is a Jacobean tragicomedy, first published in 1634 and attributed jointly to John Fletcher and William Shakespeare. Its plot derives from "The Knight's Tale" in Geoffrey Chaucer's '' The Canterbury Tales'', which ha ...

'' (

1634 Events January–March * January 12– After suspecting that he will be dismissed, Albrecht von Wallenstein, supreme commander of the Holy Roman Empire's Army, demands that his colonels sign a declaration of personal loyalty. ...

) for publisher John Waterson, and the second edition of Fletcher's ''

The Faithful Shepherdess ''The Faithful Shepherdess'' is a Jacobean era stage play, the work that inaugurated the playwriting career of John Fletcher. Though the initial production was a failure with its audience, the printed text that followed proved significant, in t ...

'' (

1629 Events January–March * January 7– Henry Frederick, Hereditary Prince of the Palatinate, the 15-year-old son of the German Palatinate elector, Frederick V, drowns in an accident while sailing to Amsterdam. * January 19&nd ...

) for

Richard Meighen Richard Meighen (died 1641) 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 ...

, who was one of the partners in the Second Folio syndicate. He printed more than a dozen plays for

Andrew Crooke and William Cooke Andrew Crooke (died 20 September 1674) and William Cooke (died 1641?) were London publishers of the mid-17th-century. In partnership and individually, they issued significant texts of English Renaissance drama, most notably of the plays of James ...

, including many by

James Shirley James Shirley (or Sherley) (September 1596 – October 1666) was an English dramatist. He belonged to the great period of English dramatic literature, but, in Charles Lamb's words, he "claims a place among the worthies of this period, not so m ...

; he printed '' Pathomachia'' for Francis Constable. His quartos of ''

Pericles, Prince of Tyre ''Pericles, Prince of Tyre'' is a Jacobean play written at least in part by William Shakespeare and included in modern editions of his collected works despite questions over its authorship, as it was not included in the First Folio. It was p ...

'' (

1635 Events January–March * January 23 – 1635 Capture of Tortuga: The Spanish Navy captures the Caribbean island of Tortuga off of the coast of Haiti after a three-day battle against the English and French Navy. * January 25 ...

) and '' The Bloody Banquet'' (

1639 Events January–March * January 14 – Connecticut's first constitution, the Fundamental Orders, is adopted. * January 19 – Hämeenlinna ( sv, Tavastehus) is granted privileges, after it separates from the Vanaja parish ...

) were rare instances in which Cotes functioned as both publisher and printer. In an age when the two functions were often separate, Cotes largely confined himself to printing, and left publishing to booksellers like Meighen, Crooke and Cooke, and others.

Other works

Cotes worked on poetry, printing

John Taylor John Taylor, Johnny Taylor or similar may refer to: Academics *John Taylor (Oxford), Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, 1486–1487 *John Taylor (classical scholar) (1704–1766), English classical scholar *John Taylor (English publisher) (178 ...

the Water Poet's ''Wit and Mirth'' (1629) for James Boler, and James Day's ''A New Spring of Divine Poetry'' and Thomas Jordan's ''Poetical Varieties'' (both

1637 Events January–March * January 5 – Pierre Corneille's tragicomedy ''Le Cid'' is first performed, in Paris, France. * January 16 – The siege of Nagpur ends in what is now the Maharashtra state of India, as Kok Shah, t ...

), both for Humphrey Blunden. Most notably in this area, Cotes printed John Benson's important 1640 edition of Shakespeare's ''Poems.'' Cotes produced books on

heraldry Heraldry is a discipline relating to the design, display and study of armorial bearings (known as armory), as well as related disciplines, such as vexillology, together with the study of ceremony, rank and pedigree. Armory, the best-known bran ...

; religious and polemical works, by

William Prynne William Prynne (1600 – 24 October 1669), an English lawyer, voluble author, polemicist and political figure, was a prominent Puritan opponent of church policy under William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury (1633–1645). His views were presbyt ...

Hugh Latimer Hugh Latimer ( – 16 October 1555) was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, and Bishop of Worcester during the Reformation, and later Church of England chaplain to King Edward VI. In 1555 under the Catholic Queen Mary I he was burned at the ...

, and others; and a large share of ephemera and now-forgotten items – like ''The Book of Merry Riddles'' (1629), ''Wine, Beer, Ale and Tobacco'' (1630), and ''Robin Goodfellow, His Mad Pranks and Merry Jests'' (1640).

Later years

During his later years, Thomas Cotes served as the clerk of his London parish, St. Giles without Cripplegate; as such, he was a member of their guild, the Parish Clerks' Company. That guild maintained its own printing press, for issuing bills of mortality. (The Stuart regime was serious about security and censorship: the parish clerks' printing press was kept in a triple-locked room.) Thomas Cotes served as the clerks' printer from 1636 until his death in 1641. Thereafter the clerks' printing was done by brother Richard Cotes, who in turn was followed by Ellen or Ellinor Cotes, Richard's widow.Peter Hampson Ditchfield, ''The Parish Clerk'', London, Methuen, 1907; pp. 115–26. Thomas Cotes was survived by two sons, James and Thomas. The exact date of his death is not recorded; he was buried on 15 July 1641. His last will and testament was signed on 22 June 1641 and probated on 19 July the same year. His will assigned full rights to their business to brother Richard, the surviving partner, in return for a payment of £100.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cotes, Thomas English printers 1641 deaths Year of birth unknown