Nathaniel Butter
Encyclopedia
Nathaniel Butter was a London
publisher of the early 17th century. 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.
on 20 February 1604, and registered his first title before the end of that year. In his career, Butter concentrated on bookselling and publishing; as was a common practice in his era, he commissioned printers to print his books, and worked with most of the printers of his generation.
on 26 November 1607
, by Butter and colleague John Busby. The first quarto edition of the play was published the following year, printed by Nicholas Okes, with Butter listed as publisher. Busby appears to have dropped out of the enterprise prior to publication.
Scholars have given Butter's volume intense scrutiny, since it, along with the contrasting First Folio
text of the play, is crucial to the "textual problem" of King Lear. Q1 of Lear was the first play printed in Okes's shop; the origin and nature of the manuscript text that underlay the printed version is a matter of uncertainty.
The case of King Lear Q1 grew complicated in 1619
, when William Jaggard
reprinted the play, apparently without Butter's permission, in his cryptic false folio
affair. This problematic second quarto was issued with the false date of 1608 and the false inscription "Printed for Nathaniel Butter." Butter's London shop was at the sign of the Pied Bull, and the title page of his genuine 1608 Q1 is marked "to be sold at his shop in Pauls
Church-yard at the signe of the Pide Bull neere St. Austins Gate." To differentiate between Butter's genuine 1608 Lear edition and Jaggard's false one, scholars have termed Butter's volume "the Pide Bull edition" after its title page inscription.
In addition to Shakespeare's play, Butter published a range of other playbooks. One of these was the first quarto
of The London Prodigal
, one of the plays of the Shakespeare Apocrypha
. The title page of Butter's 1605
edition assigns the play to Shakespeare — an attribution universally rejected by scholars and critics.
Similarly problematic was Butter's edition of Thomas Heywood
's play about Queen Elizabeth
, If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody
. Butter registered Part 1 of the play on 5 July 1605, and Part 2 on September 14 of the same year, and published the two parts in separate quartos in 1605 and 1606
respectively. In his 1612
prose work An Apology for Actors, Heywood complained that Butter's text of his play had been pirated from the theatre, by an audience member who recorded the play in shorthand
— one of the few indications that such practices occurred in the era of English Renaissance drama
. Heywood's complaint did not prevent Butter from reprinting both texts, repeatedly, into the early 1630s.
Butter published various other plays, including:
He also published Dekker's prose work The Bellman of London (1608), and the 1607 second edition of Lawrence Twine's The Pattern of Painful Adventures
, a source for Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre
.
On 21 May 1639, Butter left the playbook business: he transferred all his copyrights to plays to fellow stationer Miles Fletcher, and for the remainder of his career concentrated primarily on the news.
rules of the Stuart
monarchy, resulting in fines, or, in rare cases, imprisonment. Butter got into significant trouble when he published a quarto pamphlet criticizing the 1619 accession of the new Holy Roman Emperor
, Ferdinand II
, titled A Plain Demonstration of the Unlawful Succession of Ferdinand II, Because of the Incestuous Marriage of His Parents (1620
). This document, printed for Butter by William Stansby
, falsely claimed to be printed "at the Hague" to avoid trouble — a gesture that proved fruitless. (In the complex religious politics of the time, radical Protestants and Puritans were hostile to Ferdinand, and the Stuarts were hostile to Puritans.) The London authorities pursued the matter vigorously: by the spring of 1622 Butter was petitioning to be released from prison, pleading for mercy on behalf of himself, his pregnant wife, and their three children. The printer Stansby followed Butter into custody, and in petitions of his own he blamed the whole affair on Butter. The petitions of both men were successful, and they were released, after short incarcerations, to continue their careers.
form; early circulating news manuscripts — rather like hand-written newspapers, available by subscription from the earliest news services — were becoming more common in Butter's generation, and Butter himself was actively involved in their creation and dissemination. He also printed pamphlets on topical and controversial subjects, like the Calverley murders that were dramatized in A Yorkshire Tragedy
, as well as international reporting like News from Spain and News from Sweden. Butter's shop at the Pied Bull was itself a kind of early news agency; news correspondent (in the literal sense) John Pory
sent and received his communications from there, and news-conscious customers came in to find the latest tracts and pamphlets.
The next step in the evolution of the modern newspaper occurred at the start of the 1620s, when a group of London publishers and printers began disseminating printed news sheets based on the Dutch style of news bulletin, called the "coranto," that was a recent innovation at the time. This group included Butter, Thomas Archer, Edward Allde
, Bartholomew Downes, William Newberry, and William Shefford, with Archer and Butter as apparently the most prominent participants. Archer was jailed for printing corantos without permission in 1621 — but in the same year a license to publish the news bulletins was issued to an "N. B.," most probably Butter. All of the extant copies of the Corante
, the "earliest English newspaper" (1621), bear the initials "N. B."
On 23 May 1622
, Butter published the first edition of a periodical variously called News from Most Parts of Christendom or Weekly News from Italy, Germany, Hungaria, Bohemia, the Palatinate, France and the Low Countries. "From its miscellaneous contents and periodicity of production, it is regarded as the true forerunner of the English newspaper." In 1624, Butter partnered with colleague Nicholas Bourne to continue publishing the Certain News of the Present Week, or, more succinctly, the Weekly News. Butter's innovation of a regular printed news journal caused an explosion of imitators, most of which were far more sporadic, temporary, and ephemeral than Butter's effort. "Nathaniel Butter's Weekly News was the first English newspaper which appeared duly numbered like our newspapers of the present day."
(The Weekly News was printed as a small quarto-sized pamphlet or booklet, in contrast to the earlier single-sheet corantos. These "newsbooks" remained the dominant form until the mid-1660s, when the more modern newspaper format appeared. Butter's periodical reported only foreign news; for which they subscribed.)
Butter's achievement was controversial in its time; among other hostile responses, one critic, playing on Butter's name, referred to his publications as "Batter" that "besmear each public post and church door...." Ben Jonson
in particular was hostile and dismissive toward the new enterprise, and ridiculed Butter in his 1625
play The Staple of News
. In a nice irony, Jonson borrowed the plot for his play from The London Prodigal, issued a generation earlier by Butter. Jonson's play, seasoned with "butter" puns, caricatures Butter as Cymbal, the head of the news agency the Staple of News. Jonson also mocked the nascent news industry in his 1620 masque News from the New World Discovered in the Moon
.
In the early 1630s, Butter and Bourne reached the peak of their success with newsbooks selling well as a result of the successes of Gustavus Adolphus's campaign. They additionally began a news magazine series called 'The Swedish Intelligencer' that ran successfully under variant titles to 1634. Their enterprise was controversial, however: in October 1632, their weekly publication was banned all "gazettes and pamphlets of news from foreign parts." (In their mere existence, news reports of the combat of the Thirty Years' War
were seen as implicit criticisms of the royal policy of neutrality.) In 1638 they were granted a patent from King Charles I
for the publication of news and history, in return for a £10 annual donation toward the upkeep of St. Paul's Cathedral. Butter remained committed to reporting news of the war — until the start of the English Revolution
in 1642.
Butter's publications often carried verbose 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).
's translations of Homer
— the Iliad
in 1611
, and the Odyssey
in 1614
— stand out.
And in his long career, Butter published a wide range of other material: from joke books like The Cobbler of Canterbury (1608), to Tobias Gentleman's England's Way to Win Wealth, and to Employ Ships and Mariners (1614]), to religious works like Abraham Darcy's The Original of Idolatries (1624), to polemics like Joseph Hall's An Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament (1640) — and virtually everything in between.
After 1642, Butter declined into obscurity. According to his terse 1664 obituary, "Nath: Butter an old stationer, died very poore."
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
publisher of the early 17th century. The publisher of the first edition of Shakespeare's
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
King Lear
King Lear
King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological...
in 1608
1608 in literature
The year 1608 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 10 - Ben Jonson's The Masque of Beauty is performed by Queen Anne and her retinue at the Banqueting House, Whitehall, a sequel to The Masque of Blackness....
, he has also been regarded as one of the first publishers of a newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
in English.
Beginnings
Nathaniel Butter was the son of a Thomas Butter, a bookseller; the son followed the father's profession. Nathaniel became a "freeman" (a full member) of the Stationers CompanyWorshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers
The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. The Stationers' Company was founded in 1403; it received a Royal Charter in 1557...
on 20 February 1604, and registered his first title before the end of that year. In his career, Butter concentrated on bookselling and publishing; as was a common practice in his era, he commissioned printers to print his books, and worked with most of the printers of his generation.
Drama
King Lear was entered into the Stationers' RegisterStationers' Register
The Stationers' Register was a record book maintained by the Stationers' Company of London. The company is a trade guild given a royal charter in 1557 to regulate the various professions associated with the publishing industry, including printers, bookbinders, booksellers, and publishers in England...
on 26 November 1607
1607 in literature
The year 1607 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*February 2 - The King's Men perform Barnes's The Devil's Charter at Court.*June 5 - John Hall marries Susanna, daughter of William Shakespeare....
, by Butter and colleague John Busby. The first quarto edition of the play was published the following year, printed by Nicholas Okes, with Butter listed as publisher. Busby appears to have dropped out of the enterprise prior to publication.
Scholars have given Butter's volume intense scrutiny, since it, along with the contrasting First Folio
First Folio
Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. is the 1623 published collection of William Shakespeare's plays. Modern scholars commonly refer to it as the First Folio....
text of the play, is crucial to the "textual problem" of King Lear. Q1 of Lear was the first play printed in Okes's shop; the origin and nature of the manuscript text that underlay the printed version is a matter of uncertainty.
The case of King Lear Q1 grew complicated in 1619
1619 in literature
The year 1619 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*Richard Burbage dies in March; his place as the star of the King's Men is filled by Joseph Taylor.*René Descartes has a dream that helps him develop his ideas on analytical geometry....
, when William Jaggard
William Jaggard
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...
reprinted the play, apparently without Butter's permission, in his cryptic false folio
False Folio
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....
affair. This problematic second quarto was issued with the false date of 1608 and the false inscription "Printed for Nathaniel Butter." Butter's London shop was at the sign of the Pied Bull, and the title page of his genuine 1608 Q1 is marked "to be sold at his shop in Pauls
St Paul's Cathedral
St Paul's Cathedral, London, is a Church of England cathedral and seat of the Bishop of London. Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. St Paul's sits at the top of Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London, and is the mother...
Church-yard at the signe of the Pide Bull neere St. Austins Gate." To differentiate between Butter's genuine 1608 Lear edition and Jaggard's false one, scholars have termed Butter's volume "the Pide Bull edition" after its title page inscription.
In addition to Shakespeare's play, Butter published a range of other playbooks. One of these was the first quarto
Book size
The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms is commonly used by libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books, ranging from "folio" , to "quarto" and "octavo"...
of The London Prodigal
The London Prodigal
The London Prodigal is a play in English Renaissance theatre, a city comedy set in London, in which a prodigal son learns the error of his ways. The play was published in quarto in 1605 by the stationer Nathaniel Butter, and printed by Thomas Cotes...
, one of the plays of the Shakespeare Apocrypha
Shakespeare Apocrypha
The Shakespeare Apocrypha is a group of plays that have sometimes been attributed to William Shakespeare, but whose attribution is questionable for various reasons...
. The title page of Butter's 1605
1605 in literature
The year 1605 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 1 - The Queen's Revels Children perform George Chapman's All Fools at Court....
edition assigns the play to Shakespeare — an attribution universally rejected by scholars and critics.
Similarly problematic was Butter's edition of Thomas Heywood
Thomas Heywood
Thomas Heywood was a prominent English playwright, actor, and author whose peak period of activity falls between late Elizabethan and early Jacobean theatre.-Early years:...
's play about Queen Elizabeth
Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
, If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody
If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody
If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody is a two-part play by Thomas Heywood, depicting the life and reign of Elizabeth I of England, written very soon after the latter's death. The title deliberately echoes that of Samuel Rowley's 1605 play When You See Me You Know Me.Part 1 is a chronicle history of...
. Butter registered Part 1 of the play on 5 July 1605, and Part 2 on September 14 of the same year, and published the two parts in separate quartos in 1605 and 1606
1606 in literature
The year 1606 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*May 27 - The English Parliament passes An Act to Restrain Abuses of Players, which tightens the censorship controls on public theatre performances, most notably on the question of profane oaths.*December 26 - Shakespeare's King...
respectively. In his 1612
1612 in literature
The year 1612 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 6 - Ben Jonson's masque Love Restored is performed.*January 12 - The King's Men and Queen Anne's Men unite for the first of two Court performances in January, with Thomas Heywood's The Silver Age*January 13 - The King's...
prose work An Apology for Actors, Heywood complained that Butter's text of his play had been pirated from the theatre, by an audience member who recorded the play in shorthand
Shorthand
Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed or brevity of writing as compared to a normal method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek stenos and graphē or graphie...
— one of the few indications that such practices occurred in the era of English Renaissance drama
English Renaissance theatre
English Renaissance theatre, also known as early modern English theatre, refers to the theatre of England, largely based in London, which occurred between the Reformation and the closure of the theatres in 1642...
. Heywood's complaint did not prevent Butter from reprinting both texts, repeatedly, into the early 1630s.
Butter published various other plays, including:
- the first quarto of Samuel RowleySamuel RowleySamuel Rowley was a 17th century English dramatist and actor.Rowley first appears in the historical record as an associate of Philip Henslowe in the late 1590s. Initially he appears to have been an actor, perhaps a sharer, in the Admiral's Men, who performed at the Rose Theatre...
's When You See Me You Know MeWhen You See Me You Know MeWhen You See Me You Know Me is an early Jacobean history play about Henry VIII, written by Samuel Rowley and first published in 1605.The play was acted by Prince Henry's Men, the company to which Rowley belonged through most of his acting career, and premiered most likely in 1604 at the Fortune...
(1605) - Thomas Dekker's The Whore of Babylon (1607)
- Fulke Greville's closet dramaCloset dramaA closet drama is a play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader or, sometimes, out loud in a small group. A related form, the "closet screenplay," developed during the 20th century.-Form:...
Mustapha (1609) - Dekker's The Honest Whore, Part 2The Honest WhoreThe Honest Whore is an early Jacobean city comedy, written in two parts; Part 1 is a collaboration between Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton, while Part 2 is the work of Dekker alone...
(1630) - the third and fourth quartos of Heywood's The Rape of Lucrece (1630, 1638).
He also published Dekker's prose work The Bellman of London (1608), and the 1607 second edition of Lawrence Twine's The Pattern of Painful Adventures
The Pattern of Painful Adventures
The Pattern of Painful Adventures was a 1576, prose novel. A later edition, printed in 1607 by Valentine Simmes and published by Nathaniel Butter, was drawn on by William Shakespeare for his play Pericles, Prince of Tyre...
, a source for Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre
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...
.
On 21 May 1639, Butter left the playbook business: he transferred all his copyrights to plays to fellow stationer Miles Fletcher, and for the remainder of his career concentrated primarily on the news.
Controversy
17th-century stationers not infrequently got themselves in trouble with the strict censorshipCensorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
rules of the Stuart
House of Stuart
The House of Stuart is a European royal house. Founded by Robert II of Scotland, the Stewarts first became monarchs of the Kingdom of Scotland during the late 14th century, and subsequently held the position of the Kings of Great Britain and Ireland...
monarchy, resulting in fines, or, in rare cases, imprisonment. Butter got into significant trouble when he published a quarto pamphlet criticizing the 1619 accession of the new Holy Roman Emperor
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
, Ferdinand II
Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor
Ferdinand II , a member of the House of Habsburg, was Holy Roman Emperor , King of Bohemia , and King of Hungary . His rule coincided with the Thirty Years' War.- Life :...
, titled A Plain Demonstration of the Unlawful Succession of Ferdinand II, Because of the Incestuous Marriage of His Parents (1620
1620 in literature
The year 1620 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*The Book of Psalmes: Englished both in Prose and Metre with Annotations by Henry Ainsworth is the only book brought to New England by the pilgrim settlers....
). This document, printed for Butter by William Stansby
William Stansby
William Stansby 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.-Life:As for...
, falsely claimed to be printed "at the Hague" to avoid trouble — a gesture that proved fruitless. (In the complex religious politics of the time, radical Protestants and Puritans were hostile to Ferdinand, and the Stuarts were hostile to Puritans.) The London authorities pursued the matter vigorously: by the spring of 1622 Butter was petitioning to be released from prison, pleading for mercy on behalf of himself, his pregnant wife, and their three children. The printer Stansby followed Butter into custody, and in petitions of his own he blamed the whole affair on Butter. The petitions of both men were successful, and they were released, after short incarcerations, to continue their careers.
News
Until Butter's historical era, news in England was transmitted primarily in manuscriptManuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
form; early circulating news manuscripts — rather like hand-written newspapers, available by subscription from the earliest news services — were becoming more common in Butter's generation, and Butter himself was actively involved in their creation and dissemination. He also printed pamphlets on topical and controversial subjects, like the Calverley murders that were dramatized in A Yorkshire Tragedy
A Yorkshire Tragedy
A Yorkshire Tragedy is an early Jacobean era stage play, a domestic tragedy printed in 1608. The play was originally assigned to William Shakespeare, though the modern critical consensus rejects this attribution, favouring Thomas Middleton....
, as well as international reporting like News from Spain and News from Sweden. Butter's shop at the Pied Bull was itself a kind of early news agency; news correspondent (in the literal sense) John Pory
John Pory
John Pory was an English government administrator, traveller, and author of the Jacobean and Caroline eras; he is widely considered to have been the first news correspondent in English-language journalism.-Life and work:...
sent and received his communications from there, and news-conscious customers came in to find the latest tracts and pamphlets.
The next step in the evolution of the modern newspaper occurred at the start of the 1620s, when a group of London publishers and printers began disseminating printed news sheets based on the Dutch style of news bulletin, called the "coranto," that was a recent innovation at the time. This group included Butter, Thomas Archer, Edward Allde
Edward Allde
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.-Life:Edward Allde was part of a family of professional...
, Bartholomew Downes, William Newberry, and William Shefford, with Archer and Butter as apparently the most prominent participants. Archer was jailed for printing corantos without permission in 1621 — but in the same year a license to publish the news bulletins was issued to an "N. B.," most probably Butter. All of the extant copies of the Corante
Corante
Corante: or, Newes from Italy, Germany, Hungarie, Spaine and France was the first English newspaper. The earliest of the seven known surviving copies is dated September 24, 1621 , and the latest is dated October 22 of that same year.As with its predecessors, of which the earliest surviving copy is...
, the "earliest English newspaper" (1621), bear the initials "N. B."
On 23 May 1622
1622 in literature
The year 1622 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*February 28 - Loiola, a Latin comedy mocking the Jesuits, is acted at Cambridge; the performance is repeated before King James I on March 12.*March 12 - Teresa of Ávila The year 1622 in literature involved some significant...
, Butter published the first edition of a periodical variously called News from Most Parts of Christendom or Weekly News from Italy, Germany, Hungaria, Bohemia, the Palatinate, France and the Low Countries. "From its miscellaneous contents and periodicity of production, it is regarded as the true forerunner of the English newspaper." In 1624, Butter partnered with colleague Nicholas Bourne to continue publishing the Certain News of the Present Week, or, more succinctly, the Weekly News. Butter's innovation of a regular printed news journal caused an explosion of imitators, most of which were far more sporadic, temporary, and ephemeral than Butter's effort. "Nathaniel Butter's Weekly News was the first English newspaper which appeared duly numbered like our newspapers of the present day."
(The Weekly News was printed as a small quarto-sized pamphlet or booklet, in contrast to the earlier single-sheet corantos. These "newsbooks" remained the dominant form until the mid-1660s, when the more modern newspaper format appeared. Butter's periodical reported only foreign news; for which they subscribed.)
Butter's achievement was controversial in its time; among other hostile responses, one critic, playing on Butter's name, referred to his publications as "Batter" that "besmear each public post and church door...." Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
in particular was hostile and dismissive toward the new enterprise, and ridiculed Butter in his 1625
1625 in literature
The year 1625 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 1 - The King's Men act Henry IV, Part 1 at Whitehall Palace....
play The Staple of News
The Staple of News
The Staple of News is an early Caroline era play, a satire by Ben Jonson. The play was first performed in late 1625 by the King's Men at the Blackfriars Theatre, and first published in 1631.-Publication:...
. In a nice irony, Jonson borrowed the plot for his play from The London Prodigal, issued a generation earlier by Butter. Jonson's play, seasoned with "butter" puns, caricatures Butter as Cymbal, the head of the news agency the Staple of News. Jonson also mocked the nascent news industry in his 1620 masque News from the New World Discovered in the Moon
News from the New World Discovered in the Moon
News from the New World Discovered in the Moon was a Jacobean era masque, written by Ben Jonson; it was first performed before King James I on January 7, 1620, with a second performance on February 29 of the same year...
.
In the early 1630s, Butter and Bourne reached the peak of their success with newsbooks selling well as a result of the successes of Gustavus Adolphus's campaign. They additionally began a news magazine series called 'The Swedish Intelligencer' that ran successfully under variant titles to 1634. Their enterprise was controversial, however: in October 1632, their weekly publication was banned all "gazettes and pamphlets of news from foreign parts." (In their mere existence, news reports of the combat of the Thirty Years' War
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....
were seen as implicit criticisms of the royal policy of neutrality.) In 1638 they were granted a patent from King Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
for the publication of news and history, in return for a £10 annual donation toward the upkeep of St. Paul's Cathedral. Butter remained committed to reporting news of the war — until the start of the English Revolution
English Revolution
"English Revolution" has been used to describe two different events in English history. The first to be so called—by Whig historians—was the Glorious Revolution of 1688, whereby James II was replaced by William III and Mary II as monarch and a constitutional monarchy was established.In the...
in 1642.
Butter's publications often carried verbose 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).
Miscellaneous works
Among the varied products of Butter's enterprise, his editions of George ChapmanGeorge Chapman
George Chapman was an English dramatist, translator, and poet. He was a classical scholar, and his work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been identified as the Rival Poet of Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Minto, and as an anticipator of the Metaphysical Poets...
's translations of Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
— the Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
in 1611
1611 in literature
The year 1611 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 1 - Oberon, the Faery Prince, a masque written by Ben Jonson and designed by Inigo Jones, is performed at Whitehall Palace....
, and the Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
in 1614
1614 in literature
The year 1614 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*Sir Francis Bacon's dual role as MP and attorney-general is objected to by Parliament.*Izaak Walton owns an ironmonger's shop in Fleet Street, London.*Lope de Vega becomes a priest....
— stand out.
And in his long career, Butter published a wide range of other material: from joke books like The Cobbler of Canterbury (1608), to Tobias Gentleman's England's Way to Win Wealth, and to Employ Ships and Mariners (1614]), to religious works like Abraham Darcy's The Original of Idolatries (1624), to polemics like Joseph Hall's An Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament (1640) — and virtually everything in between.
After 1642, Butter declined into obscurity. According to his terse 1664 obituary, "Nath: Butter an old stationer, died very poore."