Nicholas Okes (died 1645) was an English printer in London of the Jacobean and Caroline eras, remembered for printing works of English Renaissance drama. He was responsible for early editions of works by many of the playwrights of the period, including William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Webster, Thomas Middleton, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Heywood, James Shirley, and John Ford.

Okes was the son of a "horner," a man who made hornbooks for the elementary education of small children; Okes's grandfather may have been a lute player. Nicholas Okes began his apprenticeship with printer Richard Field at Christmas 1595. He was made a "freeman" (full member) of the Stationers Company on 5 December 1603. His career advanced in 1606, in connection with the printing establishment of George and Lionel Snowden; Lionel left the firm and Okes took the man's place as George Snowden's partner (29 January 1606). Snowden, in turn, left the business on 13 April 1607, when Okes bought him out. Okes continued to use the Snowden's characteristic device, a winged horse above a caduceus (as on the title page of Lear, Q1) – though he later used an ornament of Jupiter riding an eagle between two oak trees.

The Snowden firm was long-standing, having been founded in 1586 by Thomas Judson; though at the start Okes possessed only a single press, two workmen, and a limited supply of type. Over time, however, Okes built a successful concern.

In February 1624, at St. Faith's in London, Okes married Mary Pursett, daughter of a fellow stationer, Christopher Pursett.

In a career that spanned more than three decades, Okes printed materials on a wide variety of subjects: history, literature, religion, science and mathematics, trade, travel, geography, cartography, even cookbooks. Yet his play texts have attracted the lion's share of attention from scholars, critics, and bibliographers.

One of Okes's earliest jobs was the printing of the fifth edition of Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece (1607) for the bookseller John Harrison (the fourth octavo edition, O4; often called, inaccurately, Q5). In the following year, 1608, Okes printed the famous and crucial first quarto of King Lear for Nathaniel Butter. Q1 of Lear was the first play (of many) printed by Okes; it has been argued that some of the peculiarities in that intensely studied volume resulted from the inexperience of Okes and his compositors with works of drama.

In 1622, Okes printed the first quarto of Othello for Thomas Walkley. Okes worked on several projects with Walkley in the years around 1622 – though he also took Walkley to court in a financial dispute. (This in itself was not unusual: Walkley struggled financially in his early years in business and was sued by other colleagues, too.)

In a more remote Shakespearean connection, Okes printed The Merry Conceited Jests of George Peele (1607) for Francis Faulkner and Henry Bell. This was a key source for The Puritan, one of the plays of the Shakespeare Apocrypha.