Thomas Creede - Publishing

Publishing

In some cases Creede functioned as a publisher as well as a printer, like Valentine Simmes and some others. Notably, he issued ten plays in quarto editions during an early phase of his career:

• A Looking Glass for London and England, Q1, 1594; Q2, 1598 (entered into the Stationers' Register on 5 March 1594)
• Selimus, 1594 (no Register entry)
• The Pedlar's Prophecy, 1595 (registered 13 May 1594)
• The Famous Victories of Henry V, 1598 (registered 14 May 1594)
• The Scottish History of James IV, 1598 (also registered 14 May 1594)
• Menaechmi, 1595 (registered 10 June 1594)
• The True Tragedy of Richard III, 1594 (Stationers' Register, 19 June 1594)
• Locrine, 1595 (registered 20 July 1594)
• Alphonsus King of Aragon, 1599 (no Register entry)
• Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes, 1599 (no Register entry).

Locrine is another work of the Shakespeare Apocrypha, while the anonymous Famous Victories of Henry V is generally regarded as a source for Shakespeare's play. Several plays on the list were published one or more years after registration; the reasons for the delays are unknown, though business considerations are an obvious possible answer. Creede's title pages for The Pedlar's Prophecy, The True Tragedy of Richard III, and A Looking Glass, Q1 and Q2, specify that the books would be sold by the stationer William Barley. (Creede printed a third quarto of A Looking Glass in 1602, though for this Q3 he was only the printer; Thomas Pavier was the publisher.)

It can be noted that when he acted as a publisher, Creede made no attributions of authorship that are certainly false.

He attributed James IV to Robert Greene, and A Looking Glass for London to Greene and Thomas Lodge, both of which are correct; he stated that William Warner's translation of the Menaechmi of Plautus was "written in English by W. W." And he credited Greene's Alphonsus to "R. G." Five plays were published with no attributions of authorship. When Creede stated, on the title page of Locrine, that the play had been revised by someone with the initials "W. S.," this record of reliability suggests that it may well have been so.

Creede also published works beyond the confines of drama. He issued books of verse, including reprints of Virgil, and works on spiritual subjects, like The Plain Man's Spiritual Plow by "I. C." (1607). Creede published the third edition of Ralph Robinson's English translation of Sir Thomas More's Utopia (1597) — and The True Law of Free Monarchies by King James I (1603). Prose works by playwrights of the era, including Middleton, Greene, and Thomas Dekker, issued from his press; Dekker's The Wonderful Year 1603, his account of the bubonic plague epidemic, is a noteworthy example. And Creede published, as well as printed, ephemera, like Lewis Lavaterus's Of Ghosts and Spirits (1596).