Thomas Cotes

Thomas Cotes (died 1641) was a London printer of the Jacobean and Caroline eras, best remembered for printing the Second Folio edition of Shakespeare's plays in 1632.

Cotes became a "freeman" (a full member) of the Stationers Company on January 6, 1606. He ran his own printing shop from 1620 to 1641; from 1635 on, he was in partnership with his brother Richard Cotes (died 1653). Their shop was in the Barbican in Aldersgate Street. (Their sister Jane was married to another printer, Robert Ibbitson.) Thomas Cotes acquired the rights to the business of Isaac Jaggard, printer of the First Folio, from Jaggard's widow Dorothy on June 19, 1627.

In his substantial career, Thomas Cotes produced other play texts of English Renaissance drama, including the 1637 quarto of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. He printed the second edition of Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess (1629) for Richard Meighen, one of the partners in the Second Folio syndicate; in 1639 he printed Wit Without Money for publishers Andrew Crooke and William Cooke, and also The Bloody Banquet. The latter volume was one instance in which Cotes functioned as both publisher and printer; in an age when the two functions were often (not always) separate, Cotes largely confined himself to printing. He worked on poetry, printing James Day's A New Spring of Divine Poetry and Thomas Jordan's Poetical Varieties (both 1637), both for Humphrey Blunden; he printed religious and polemical works, by William Prynne, Hugh Latimer, and others; And he produced a large share of ephemera and now-forgotten works, like The Book of Merry Riddles (1629).

Thomas Cotes was survived by two sons, James and Thomas. The exact date of his death is not recorded; his last will and testament was signed on June 22, 1641, and probated on July 19 of the same year. At the time of his death, he was the clerk of the parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate. His will assigned full rights to their business to brother Richard, the surviving partner, in return for a payment of £100.