In view of the fairly general agreement that play publication
was against the desires of the author and the interests of the
manager, it has seemed worth while to examine the reasons
for this belief and bring together some of the facts concerning
dramatic publication. I should say in advance that, if this
investigation seems at one point to assume a statistical char-
acter, I am very well aware that the statistics are not, and
cannot be, complete, owing to the great gaps in our records of
dramatic performances, the absence of positive information
as to whether plays entered on the Registers and not extant
were ever published or whether the first editions extant were
really the first published, and the inability to date exactly plays
printed without date. But even with the incomplete evidence
available, I believe that the facts readily accessible about the
publication of plays will, when seen together, tend to weaken
the theory that play publication was almost wholly surreptitious
except when plays had been used up for the stage.

The final intention of the book is to show that it is unwise to
draw a priori conclusions as to the unauthorized nature of
whole groups of plays, and that each text must be fairly judged
on its own evidence, and with an understanding of the typo-
graphical ideals and practices of the time.

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