Nathaniel Butter facts for kids

Nathaniel Butter (died February 22, 1664) was a famous London publisher in the early 1600s. He was known for publishing the first version of Shakespeare's play King Lear in 1608. Many people also see him as one of the very first publishers of a newspaper in English!

Early Life and Career

Nathaniel Butter followed in his father Thomas Butter's footsteps, who was also a bookseller. Nathaniel became a full member of the Stationers Company on February 20, 1604. This meant he could officially publish books. He registered his first book title that same year. Throughout his career, Butter focused on selling and publishing books. Like many publishers back then, he hired printers to print his books and worked with many different printers of his time.

Publishing Plays

Nathaniel Butter played a big part in publishing plays.

King Lear Edition

King Lear was officially recorded by Butter and his partner John Busby on November 26, 1607. The first printed version of the play, known as the first quarto, came out the next year. It was printed by Nicholas Okes, with Butter listed as the publisher. Busby seems to have left the project before it was published.

This version of King Lear is very important to scholars. It helps them understand the play's original text, especially when compared to a later version called the First Folio. Butter's 1608 Lear was the first play printed in Okes's shop. No one is completely sure about the exact handwritten copy used to print this first version.

Things got a bit tricky in 1619 when William Jaggard reprinted King Lear without Butter's permission. This problematic second version was printed with the wrong date (1608) and falsely said "Printed for Nathaniel Butter." To tell the difference, scholars call Butter's real 1608 edition the "Pied Bull edition." This is because his shop was at the sign of the Pied Bull near St. Austin's Gate in St. Paul's Church-yard.

Other Plays Published

Besides Shakespeare's play, Butter published many other plays. One of these was the first printed version of The London Prodigal in 1605. This play was wrongly said to be by Shakespeare on its title page, but experts today agree it was not written by him.

Another interesting case was Thomas Heywood's play about Queen Elizabeth, called If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody. Butter published Part 1 in 1605 and Part 2 in 1606. Heywood later complained that Butter's text of his play was stolen from the theater by someone in the audience who wrote it down quickly. This is one of the few clues we have about how plays might have been copied without permission back then. Even with the complaint, Butter kept reprinting these plays until the early 1630s.

Butter also published other plays, including:

• When You See Me You Know Me by Samuel Rowley (1605)
• Mustapha by Fulke Greville (1609)

He also published a prose work by Dekker called The Bellman of London (1608). In 1607, he released the second edition of Lawrence Twine's The Pattern of Painful Adventures, which was a source for Shakespeare's play Pericles, Prince of Tyre.

On May 21, 1639, Butter stopped publishing plays. He sold all his rights to plays to another publisher, Miles Fletcher. After this, he focused mostly on news.

Pioneering News Publishing

Before Nathaniel Butter's time, news in England was mostly shared through handwritten copies. These early news manuscripts were like handwritten newspapers that people could subscribe to. Butter was very involved in creating and sharing these. He also printed small books (pamphlets) about important and sometimes controversial topics, like the Calverley murders. He also published international news, such as News from Spain and News from Sweden. Butter's shop at the Pied Bull was like an early news office. People like news reporter John Pory sent and received their messages there, and customers came to find the latest news pamphlets.

The First Newspapers

A big step in the history of newspapers happened in the early 1620s. A group of London publishers and printers, including Butter, started printing news sheets. These were based on a new Dutch style of news bulletin called a "coranto." Butter and Thomas Archer seemed to be the most active in this group. Archer was even jailed for printing corantos without permission in 1621. But in the same year, a license to publish these news bulletins was given to "N. B.," which was most likely Butter. All the existing copies of the Corante (1621), which is considered the "earliest English newspaper," have the initials "N. B."

On May 23, 1622, Butter published the first edition of a regular news publication. It had different names, like News from Most Parts of Christendom or Weekly News from Italy, Germany, Hungaria, Bohemia, the Palatinate, France and the Low Countries. Because it had various news and came out regularly, it is seen as the true beginning of the English newspaper. In 1624, Butter teamed up with Nicholas Bourne to keep publishing the Certain News of the Present Week, or simply the Weekly News. Butter's idea of a regular printed news journal led to many others trying to copy him. However, most of these were not as regular or long-lasting as Butter's effort. Nathaniel Butter's Weekly News was the first English newspaper that was numbered like our newspapers today.

The Weekly News was printed as a small booklet, different from the earlier single-sheet corantos. These "newsbooks" were the main way news was shared until the mid-1660s, when the more modern newspaper format appeared. Butter's publication only reported foreign news, which people subscribed to.

Challenges and Successes

Butter's work was not always popular. Some critics made fun of his name, calling his publications "Batter" that "besmear each public post and church door." The famous writer Ben Jonson especially disliked the new news business. He made fun of Butter in his 1625 play The Staple of News. Interestingly, Jonson used a plot idea for his play from The London Prodigal, which Butter had published years earlier. Jonson's play used many "butter" puns and showed Butter as a funny character named Cymbal, who ran a news agency. Jonson also made fun of the growing news industry in his 1620 play News from the New World Discovered in the Moon.

In the early 1630s, Butter and Bourne became very successful. Their newsbooks sold well because of the victories of Gustavus Adolphus's army. They also started a news magazine series called 'The Swedish Intelligencer,' which was successful until 1634. However, their work was sometimes controversial. In October 1632, their weekly publication was banned from printing "gazettes and pamphlets of news from foreign parts." This was because news reports about the fighting in the Thirty Years' War were seen as secretly criticizing the king's policy of staying neutral. In 1638, King Charles I gave them a special right to publish news and history. In return, they had to donate £10 each year to help maintain St. Paul's Cathedral. Butter continued to report news about the war until the start of the English Revolution in 1642.

Butter's publications often had very long titles, like A True Relation of a late very famous Sea-fight, made betwixt the Spaniard and the Hollander in Brasil, for many days together: Wherein the odds was very great, which made the success doubtful, but at last the Hollander got the Victory (1640).

Other Works Published

Among the many things Butter published, his editions of George Chapman's translations of Homer are notable. He published the Iliad in 1611 and the Odyssey in 1614.

Throughout his long career, Butter published a wide variety of other materials. These ranged from joke books like The Cobbler of Canterbury (1608) to books about trade like Tobias Gentleman's England's Way to Win Wealth, and to Employ Ships and Mariners (1614). He also published religious works and political writings.

After 1642, Butter became less known. His short obituary in 1664 simply stated, "Nath: Butter an old stationer, died very poore."