The Texts of King Lear and Their Origins: Volume 1, Nicholas Okes and the First Quarto

This is a study of a seventeenth-century printer and one of the books that he printed. It is an attempt to solve the problem of the relationship between the Quarto and Folio texts of King Lear, and its main purpose is to establish the bibliographical facts which are essential to a proper investigation of the 1608 Quarto text. In order to provide a context in which to assess the significance of the printing process, Peter Blayney has had to study the first two years of Okes's career in some detail. He has also paid attention to the way in which Okes's work differed from that of his predecessors in the same printing house, while investigation of proof-sheets and printers' copy has led him to examine a number of Okes's later books. Although it is primarily concerned with the printing of a single book, the present volume can therefore claim independant status as a large-scale study of a Jacobean printing house.