Publishing King Lear (1608) at the Sign of the Pied Bull

Abstract

St Paul’s was not only a place for worship, but also a site of commercial exchange in which dramatic and non-dramatic publications were part of a textual and physical space for non-elite participation in political debate. This chapter focuses on Nathaniel Butter, who was one of the Churchyard’s most recognisable booksellers during the early seventeenth century, well known for publishing topical, newsworthy texts, but also commercial plays, including King Lear (1608). Rather than privileging, as previous studies have done, the play’s printer, Nicholas Okes, this chapter concentrates on Butter’s significant but overlooked role to explore why King Lear was published in 1608. It argues that Butter helped to construct the identity of St Austin’s Gate through his publications, which favour politically invested subjects with strong Protestant sympathies, and, in turn, that he was influenced by his surroundings—particularly the neighbouring bookshop of Matthew Law at the Sign of the Fox.