the policy of the stagers, who wished to secrete it within their own
walls. Hence many pieces were taken down in short-hand, and imper-
fectly copied by ear from a representation: others were printed from
piece-meal parts surreptitiously obtained from the theatres, incorrect
and without the poet's knowledge. To some of these causes we owe the
train of blemishes that deform those pieces which stole singly into the
world in our author's life.

Malone, in his introduction to Shakespeare's Works, 1790,
says of the quartos:

Undoubtedly they were all surreptitious, that is, stolen from the
playhouse and printed without the consent of the author or the pro-
prietor.

Sir Sidney Lee has made the most confident assertions as to
the conditions of dramatic publication. He says:

It was contrary to the custom of the day for dramatists to print
their plays for themselves or to encourage the printing of them by
others or to preserve their manuscripts. Like all dramatists of his age,
Shakespeare composed his plays for the acting company to which he
attached himself; like them he was paid by the company for his writ-
ings, and in return made over to the company all property and right in
his manuscripts.

The theatrical manager viewed the publication of plays as injurious
to his interests, and until a play had wholly exhausted its popularity on
the stage, he deprecated its appearance in print. But however in-
different the Elizabethan dramatist was to the reading public, and
however pronounced were the manager's objections to the publication
of plays, there developed among playgoers and others at the close of the
sixteenth century a wish to peruse in private dramas that had achieved
success in the theatre. Publishers quickly sought to gratify this desire
for their own ends. ¹

In a later work, the 1916 edition of his Life of Shakespeare
(pp. 297, 100, and 545), Sir Sidney Lee admits that the publisher
usually bought (not stole) his copy from an actor, but he con-
tinues to insist on the irregularity of play publication:

The playhouse authorities deprecated the publishing of plays in the
belief that their dissemination in print was injurious to the receipts of
the theatre, and Shakespeare would seem to have had no direct re-
sponsibility for the publication of his plays. Professional opinion

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