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Valentine Simmes (flourished 1585 – 1622) was an Elizabethan era and Jacobean era printer; he did business in London, "on Adling Hill near Bainard's Castle at the sign of the White Swan." Simmes has a reputation as one of the better printers of his generation, and was responsible for several quartos of Shakespeare's plays. [See: Folios and Quartos (Shakespeare).]

Nothing is known of Simmes's early life or personal history. He was active as a printer starting in 1585. In an eight-year period from 1597 through 1604, Simmes printed nine Shakespearean quartos for various London stationers or booksellers.

For the bookseller Andrew Wise, Simmes printed:

• Richard III, Q1 (1597)
• Richard II, Q1 (1597)
• Richard II, Q2 (1598)
• Richard II, Q3 (1598)

For Wise and William Aspley, Simmes printed:

• Henry IV, Part 2, Q (1600)
• Much Ado About Nothing, Q (1600)

For Thomas Millington, Simmes printed:

• Henry VI, Part 2, Q2 (1600)^[1]

For Nicholas Ling and John Trundell, Simmes printed:

• Hamlet, Q1 (1603) — the "bad quarto."

For Matthew Law, Simmes printed:

• Henry IV, Part 1, Q3 (1604).

Also for Nicholas Ling, Simmes printed Q3 of The Taming of a Shrew (1607), the alternative version of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. (Scholars dispute the exact nature of the relationship between the two versions.)^[2] And for Thomas Pavier, Simmes printed Q1 of Sir John Oldcastle (1600), a play of the Shakespeare Apocrypha.^[3] For "the Widow Newman," Simmes printed the second, 1607 edition of Lawrence Twine's The Pattern of Painful Adventures, one of the sources for Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre.

SImmes also printed a range of other significant texts in English Renaissance theatre, including:

• An Humorous Day's Mirth (1599)
• The Shoemaker's Holiday (1600)
• The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1604)
• The Coronation Triumph (1604)
• The Entertainment at Althorp (1604)
• Hymenaei (1606)
• The Troublesome Reign of King John (1611)

—among other works. In Simmes's era, the trades of printer and bookseller were generally separate, though a few individuals, like William Jaggard, functioned in both. Simmes normally kept to the printshop side of the business, though he did occasionally publish too, as with the 1600 first quarto of Thomas Dekker's Shoemaker's Holiday.

Best known for his printing of plays, Simmes worked on non-dramatic projects as well; he printed Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611) for the bookseller Richard Bonian—a volume of poems by Emilia Lanyer, it was one of the very rare books by a woman published in that era.^[4] For John Clapham's The History of Great Britain (1606), he was both printer and publisher.

Despite the quality of much of his work, Simmes "was constantly in trouble for printing unauthorized works, and in 1622 was forbidden to work as a master printer."^[5]

1. ^ This Q2 of 2H6 was the early alternative text, The First Part of the Contention Betwixt the Two Famous Houses of York and Lancaster. Halliday, p. 217.
2. ^ Halliday, pp. 483-4.
3. ^ Chambers, Vol. 3, pp. 306-7.
4. ^ Marshall Grossman, ed., Aemilia Lanyer: Gender, Genre, and the Canon, Lexington, KY, University Press of Kentucky, 1998; p. 1.
5. ^ Halliday, p. 454.

• Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.
• Ferguson, W. Craig. Valentine Simmes, Stationer: A Bibliographical Study of an Elizabethan Printer and Publisher. Birmingham (UK), 1959; Charlottesville, VA, 1968.
• Halliday, F. E. A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964. Baltimore, Penguin, 1964