Thomas Millington

Thomas Millington (fl. 1591 – 1603) was a London publisher of the Elizabethan era, who published first editions of three Shakespearean plays. He has been called a "stationer of dubious reputation" [F. E. Halliday, "A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964," Baltimore, Penguin, 1964; p. 317.] who was connected with some of the "bad quartos" and questionable texts of Shakespearean bibliography. [Laurie E. Maguire, "Shakespearean Suspect Texts: The "Bad" Quartos and Their Contexts," Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996; pp. 17, 87 and ff.]

Life and work

He was the son of a William Millington, a "husbandman" of Hamptongay, Oxfordshire, and was apprenticed to a Henry Carre for a period of eight years, beginning on St. Bartholomew's Day (August 24) in 1583. Thomas Millington became a "freeman" (full member) of the Stationers Company on November 8, 1591. For a time he was in partnership with fellow guild member Edward White; their shop was located, and their title pages specify, "at the little north door of Paul's at the sign of the Gun."

Millington's business was at the lower end of the publishing scale in Elizabethan England; he printed many ballads, including some by Thomas Deloney. In 1595 he published "The Norfolk Tragedy", a ballad based on the story of Babes in the Wood. During the mid-1590s Millington was fined three times by his guild, for issuing ballads to which he did not own the rights and similar small offenses. [Joseph Ames, "Typological Antiquities," London, 1790 edition; Vol. 3, p. 1379.]

hakespeare

He also printed playbooks — most notably, of three of Shakespeare's plays:
* On March 12, 1594, Millington entered into the Stationers' Register the early alternative version of Shakespeare's "Henry VI, Part 2," short-titled "The First Part of the Contention Betwixt the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster" (the full title is much longer). He published the play in quarto later that year, in a text that is generally classed as a bad quarto. The printing was done by Thomas Creede.
* In 1595, with no Register entry, Millington published the early alternative version of "Henry VI, Part 3," called "The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York" — another "bad quarto." The printing was by "P. S." (The play should not be confused with "The True Tragedy of Richard III", a separate work.)
* In 1600, in partnership with stationer John Busby, Millington published the first quarto of "Henry V," yet another bad quarto, again printed by Creede. Millington did not enter the play into the Stationers' Register, though an entry dated August 4, 1600 cites the play and notes it is "to be stayed." This apparently was an attempt by some party, perhaps the Lord Chamberlain's Men or their representative, to prevent the publication of "Henry V." If so, the attempt was clearly unsuccessful; and another Register entry dated ten days later, on August 14, transfers the rights to the play to stationer Thomas Pavier. [E. K. Chambers, "The Elizabethan Stage," 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923; Vol. 3, p. 486, Vol. 4, p. 7.] [Halliday, p. 318.]

Millington published the second quartos of both "The First Part of the Contention" and "The True Tragedy" in 1600. And he had a link to one other Shakespearean play: when John Danter published Q1 of "Titus Andronicus" in 1594, the volume's title page states the book would be sold at Millington and White's shop in St. Paul's Churchyard. In a Stationers' Register entry of April 19, 1602, Millington transferred his rights to the two "Henry VI" plays and "Titus" to Pavier, the same man who gained the rights to "Henry V" two years earlier.

End

Thomas Millington published Henry Chettle's "England's Mourning Garment" in 1603, but then disappears from the historical record — as did fellow publisher Andrew Wise in the same year. The major outbeak of bubonic plague in London in 1603 might not have been coincidental; printer Peter Short died in 1603, while publisher William Ponsonby passed on in 1604.

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