Richard Field the Stratford Printer (d. 1624)
Topic: Richard Field the Stratford Printer
Identity guardrail: the printer is not Neville's clerical friend
This packet concerns Richard Field the Stratford-born London printer, baptized in 1561 and dead in 1624. It does not concern Dr Richard Field (1561–1616), the theologian, rector of Burghclere, prebendary of Windsor, and dean of Gloucester.
The direct Neville friendship belongs to the cleric. Nathaniel Field's 1716–17 biography says that Dr Field “often visited Sir Henrie Nevill” and preserves a Neville daughter's recollection that her father “rejoiced in no Mans Companie more” and was “in a manner overjoyed” when Field arrived. That evidence is documented in richard field cleric neville friendship.
The printer's controlled identity is different:
- son of Henry Field, a Stratford-upon-Avon tanner;
- apprenticed in 1579 in the London book trade and trained in Thomas Vautrollier's shop;
- successor to the Vautrollier business;
- printer and stationer in Blackfriars and later Wood Street;
- printer of Venus and Adonis (1593) and Lucrece (1594);
- active through 1624.
The British Book Trade Index gives the printer's death year as 1624 and records his apprenticeship, London addresses, succession to Vautrollier, and Stationers' Company offices. A. E. M. Kirwood's standard study is explicitly titled “Richard Field, Printer, 1589–1624”.
Why the confusion is especially easy
Both men were born in 1561. A current Shakespeare Documented aggregation page is headed “Field, Richard, 1561–1616”, but the documents beneath the heading concern the Stratford printer's 1593 and 1594 Stationers' Register transactions. The heading has attached the cleric's death year to the printer's documents. Individual records on that site remain valuable, but the lifespan in the shared heading must not be copied.
The printer's securely documented Shakespeare role
Shakespeare Documented reproduces the 18 April 1593 Stationers' Register entry in which Richard Field, written “ffeild,” entered Venus and Adonis. The 1593 title page reads “Imprinted by Richard Field,” and the 25 June 1594 register entry records Field's transfer of the copy to John Harrison the elder. The Bodleian title-page image and catalogue description directly control the first edition.
Field also printed Lucrece for John Harrison in 1594. These are direct, overt printer associations with Shakespeare's narrative poems. They must be distinguished from the bracketed bibliographical attributions discussed below for Love's Martyr and Time Is a Turne-Coate.
Selected literary and scholarly printing
Field's importance is much broader than two Shakespeare poems. His press participated in the production of books that recur throughout the Neville research:
| Date | Book | Nature of the Field connection |
|---|---|---|
| 1589 | George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie | Printed by Richard Field; the book's discussion of courtly and concealed writing makes it central to the project's publication-history questions. |
| 1591 | Sir John Harington, Orlando Furioso in English Heroical Verse | Printed by Field; a major English route into Ariosto. |
| 1593 | Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis | Field entered the copy and is named in the imprint. |
| 1594 | Shakespeare, Lucrece | Printed by Field for John Harrison. |
| 1595 | Thomas North, The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes | Field's expanded Plutarch printing; relevant to the plays' source history and Neville's own Plutarchan language. |
| 1596 | Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene | Catalogue and device evidence assign the printing to Field for William Ponsonby. |
| 1601 | Robert Chester, Love's Martyr | STC/Folger attribution “Printed by Richard Field for Edward Blount”; the title page itself says only “Imprinted for E.B.” |
| 1602 | Thomas Campion, Observations in the Art of English Poesie | Printed by Field for Andrew Wise. |
| 1604 | John Hanson, Time Is a Turne-Coate | Catalogue metadata supplies [by R. Field]; the bracketed attribution requires physical bibliographical control. |
| 1624 | Camden's Annales in French translation | The old Dictionary of National Biography identifies this as the last book known to bear Field's imprint. |
The table combines openly named imprints with later bibliographical attributions. It is not permission to flatten those two kinds of evidence. Where a printer name is bracketed in STC or a catalogue, the brackets must remain visible.
Field's shop operated within a trade in which printer, bookseller, copyright holder, and financial publisher could be different people. “Printed by Field” must not automatically be expanded to “published, commissioned, edited, or authored by Field.”
Relation to Neville
No direct personal meeting, friendship, letter, or household visit between the printer and Henry Neville is presently controlled. The printer matters to the Neville project through books, stationers, poetic texts, and possible transmission networks. The documented repeated visitor to Neville's house is Dr Richard Field the cleric.
This distinction changes how the evidence should be phrased:
- correct: “Richard Field the printer printed Venus and Adonis.”
- correct: “Dr Richard Field often visited Henry Neville.”
- unresolved: “Henry Neville knew Richard Field the printer.”
- incorrect: using the cleric's 1616 death, Windsor office, or Neville friendship as biography of the printer.
Quoted Source Passages
1. B12045 Controls the Love's Martyr Title Route
- Source: EarlyPrint metadata header B12045 header.
- Quotation:
"Loves martyr: or, Rosalins complaint"
- What it proves: The Richard Field packet's Love's Martyr lane is attached to a concrete EarlyPrint/TCP metadata witness.
- Limits: The local
EarlyPrint corpus databasedoes not currently contain a fulltextsrow forB12045, so this is header/catalogue control, not full-text control.
2. B12045 Supplies the R. Field / E. Blount Metadata Imprint
- Source: EarlyPrint metadata header B12045 header.
- Quotation:
"Imprinted [by R. Field] for E. B[lount]"
- What it proves: The Field/Blount printer-publisher link for Love's Martyr is a real bibliographical metadata lane.
- Limits: The bracketed names are from STC metadata; page-image collation is still needed for final title-page wording.
3. B12045 Records the Shakespeare Phoenix-and-Turtle Context
- Source: EarlyPrint metadata header B12045 header.
- Quotation:
"The phoenix and the turtle"; "Threnos" by William Shakespeare
- What it proves: The metadata explicitly routes the Shakespeare poem through the Love's Martyr witness.
- Limits: It does not prove the tweet thread's phrase-borrowing claims or any Neville publication plan.
4. A02622 Controls the Time Is a Turne-Coate Title
- Source: EarlyPrint/TCP
A02622, Time is a turne-coate,1604; extraction A02622; header A02622 header. - Quotation:
"Time is a turne-coate. Or Englands three-fold metamorphosis"
- What it proves: The second Richard Field-related text in the tweet thread is locally controlled as a specific EarlyPrint/TCP item.
- Limits: It proves the bibliographical route, not the alleged borrowing from the Ignoto poem.
5. A02622 Gives a Second Field Metadata Imprint
- Source: EarlyPrint/TCP
A02622; extraction A02622; header A02622 header. - Quotation:
"Printed [by R. Field] for I. H[anson?]"
- What it proves: The Richard Field link is not limited to one metadata record; both cited texts route through Field-attributed printing metadata.
- Limits: The names are STC-suggested and bracketed. Treat as bibliographical metadata until page images are checked.
Source-Control Position
- EarlyPrint metadata confirms a real Field bibliographic lane:
B12045(Loves martyr: or, Rosalins complaint,1601) is listed as imprinted[by R. Field]for E. Blount, with printer/publisher names from STC;A02622(Time is a turne-coate,1604) is listed as printed[by R. Field]forI. H[anson?], also with names suggested by STC. - The same local controls also show that
A18592is the1611cancel-title issue of Chester's Loves martyr material and is printed by E. Allde for Mathew Lownes, not Field. - The later direct-text audit below verifies the phrase cluster. The Folger catalogue and original 1601 scan now control the distinction between title-page wording and the STC attribution to Field.
- Neville's false-place-printing proposal is controlled in the printed Winwood correspondence, p. 124, but it does not name Field or either poetic book.
- No direct Stationers' Register audit has yet proved the negative claim that the books were never entered.
- A scoped BRO sweep for
Richard Fieldfound no direct transcription hit, but that old unqualified search must not be treated as a search for Dr Richard Field's separate Windsor and Neville relationship.
Status-Control Position
- Controlled: EarlyPrint/STC metadata supports Field printer attributions for
B12045andA02622; an original 1601 image witness and the Folger record control the first title page; direct TCP text establishes the rare-phrase cluster; Winwood p. 124 establishes Neville's separate discussion of false-place printing. - Still open: original images and material bibliography for Time Is a Turne-Coate; complete Stationers' Register control; the physical basis of the bracketed printer attributions; and any direct personal relationship between Neville and Richard Field the printer.
1. Verified Sourced Facts
- EarlyPrint metadata for
B12045identifies Loves martyr: or, Rosalins complaint (1601) and lists the imprint as:
Imprinted [by R. Field] for E. B[lount]
- EarlyPrint metadata for
A02622identifies Time is a turne-coate (1604) and lists the imprint as:
Printed [by R. Field] for I. H[anson?]
- Both printer names are bibliographical/STC attributions. The 1601 Love's Martyr title page has now been checked directly and does not print Field's name; an original Time Is a Turne-Coate image witness remains to be secured.
2. Ken Feinstein Twitter and Blog Information
- Feinstein, Ken. Tweet,
26 May 2022:
“Obvious parallels between this Ignoto poem and Rosalins Complaint.”
- The same thread states:
“Time is a Turne-Coate takes specific phrases directly from the Ignoto poem.”
Current evidence note: the later direct-text audit confirms a real cluster of distinctive verbal reuse, while leaving the route and agent of transmission unresolved.
- The same thread adds:
“Time is a Turne-Coate also takes phrases from the Ignoto poem of Love’s Martyr.”
- The same thread states:
“This is a false title page. It wasn’t printed in Middleborough.”
- The same thread states:
“Here Henry Neville proposes publishing a book with a false title page.”
- The same thread concludes:
“Remember Richard Field printed both Love’s Martyr and Time is a Turne-Coate. Neither was entered into the Stationers Register. Both have murky authorship.”
Current evidence note: preserve the printing statement as a bracketed bibliographical attribution, not two signed imprints; the negative Stationers' Register claim still awaits direct register control.
3. Citations
- Feinstein, Ken. Tweet, 26 May 2022, https://twitter.com/user/status/1529852495585071104. Local preservation: twitter Richard Field.
- Chester, Robert. Loves martyr: or, Rosalins complaint.
TCP B12045; EarlyPrint metadata: B12045 header. - Hanson, John. Time is a turne-coate.
TCP A02622; EarlyPrint metadata: A02622 header. - Chester, Robert. The anuals [sic] of great Brittaine / cancel-title issue of Loves martyr.
TCP A18592; EarlyPrint metadata: A18592 header.
4. Notes on Access
- This is now a mixed evidence packet: the printer attributions are bibliographical, the phrase cluster is directly controlled, and the false-place-printing passage is real but independent.
- The preserved thread is primarily about the Ignoto poem, Rosalins Complaint, and Time is a Turne-Coate; Richard Field appears in it as a printer link rather than as the main documentary subject.
- Neville's publication proposal is now directly controlled in Winwood, but it names neither the printer nor the poetic books. It cannot be used to authenticate the Field attributions.
- The hardened core is the combination of printer metadata, direct phrase comparison, the 1601 page-image witness, and the separate Winwood passage. The complete register and physical-printing questions remain open.
5. image witnesses
6. Direct Text and Bibliographical Audit, 13 July 2026
The complete eleven-image Twitter thread has now been recovered and inspected, and its phrase claims have been checked against the EarlyPrint/TCP texts. Plain-text controls are preserved as A19921 plain, A18592 plain, and A02622 plain.
The textual parallels are genuine and more extensive than the original two-image packet showed:
| 1599/1601 text | Time is a Turne-Coate (1604) |
|---|---|
| Epigrammes and Elegies, Ignoto: “I’le freely spend my Thrise decocted bloud.” | “To gormandize on their decocted bloud.” |
| Love’s Martyr: “THe siluer Vault of heauen” | “The siluer Vault with Epods deepe resounds” |
| “the foule-maskt-Ladie, Night” | “the foule-maskt gloomie Night” |
| “one sicke Phoebe, feuer-shaking Light” | “Phoebe’s feuer-shaking Light” |
| “holy-heated fires” and “the inward roome of mans Desires” | “Perfume the inward roomes … With sauours sweet, and holy-heated Fires” |
Local lemma-phrase searches deepen the result. Exact silver vault occurs in the relevant EarlyPrint index only in A02622 and A18592; exact decoct blood occurs only in A02622 and A19921. These are corpus observations within the installed EarlyPrint collection, not universal claims about all surviving early-modern print. Orthographic and hyphenated compounds require separate surface-spelling searches, so no inflated count is assigned to the other parallels.
The printer claim needs one important bibliographical qualification. The Folger catalogue record for STC 5119, *Loves Martyr*, gives the imprint London: Imprinted for E.B., 1601 and records the STC attribution “Printed by Richard Field for Edward Blount.” Field’s name is not printed on the title page. Likewise, the local A02622 metadata says [by R. Field]—brackets matter because this is a bibliographical attribution, while the title page itself says the book was printed for I.H.. The connection is therefore substantive but not a pair of openly Field-signed title pages.
The Winwood passage shown in the thread is also real but separate. On printed p. 124 Neville discusses a proposed book that could be “printed in England, though bearing the Name of Douay or som other Place.” The immediate subject is the circulation of Pasquier’s anti-Jesuit work. That letter documents Neville’s knowledge of false-place printing as a tactic; it does not name Field, Love’s Martyr, or Time is a Turne-Coate and cannot by itself authenticate either imprint.
The resulting research avenue is stronger and narrower than the original thread claim: two books bibliographically attributed to Field share a cluster of unusually specific poetic language, and Neville independently discussed false-place printing. The next tasks are to identify the compositor/paper/type evidence behind the Field attributions, establish the issue history of A18592, and search for intervening uses of each phrase between 1599/1601 and 1604. Authorship should not be assigned from phrase transmission alone.
An open-access page-image witness for Grosart’s edition of Love’s Martyr is available through Internet Archive/Wikimedia; it should be used for page images, not as a substitute for the Folger/STC bibliographical description.
2026-07-15 Preservation-First Expansion: original 1601 image witness and internal packet links
The project already holds an original-edition page-image witness for Love’s Martyr, and that internal control is now linked here rather than left isolated in a separate research directory:
- public_archive_witnesses;
- bim early english books 1475 1640 loves martyr chester r 1601;
- IA_LOVESMARTYR_1601.
The public landing page is Internet Archive, *Love’s Martyr* (1601). This witness should now be the first place to verify title-page wording, signatures, page sequence, and the phrase passages. The Grosart reprint remains useful for reading and navigation but should no longer stand in for the original print when an image of the 1601 witness is available.
The packet also needs an explicit link to the dedicated phrase-transmission analysis: richard field rare phrase transmission 1599 1601 1604. That topic contains the more specialized corpus work; this person packet should retain the bibliographical map, image witnesses, and publication-history cautions.
The Folger catalogue remains the authority for the distinction between title-page imprint and bibliographical attribution: record 161456 prints Imprinted for E.B. and supplies the STC attribution to Richard Field for Edward Blount. Field’s name must not be described as visibly printed on the title page.
No equivalent public original-image witness for Time Is a Turne-Coate was secured in this pass. That is an acquisition target, not a reason to remove the existing text and metadata controls.