condemned such playwrights as sought "a double sale of their labors,
first to the stage and after to the press" (p. 100 ).

Eight or nine of these plays [ Shakespeare's] were published during
the period, but the publishers operated independently of the author,
taking all the risks, and, at the same time, all the receipts. The com-
pany usually forbade under heavy penalties the author's sale to a
publisher of a play which had been acted. The publication of Shake-
speare's plays in no way affected his monetary resources. But his
friendly relations with the printer Field doubtless secured him, despite
the absence of any copyright law, some part of the profits in the large
and continuous sale of his narrative poems. (p. 297 ). ²

One infers that the author was indifferent, the manager,
opposed to the publication of plays. How, then, are we to
account for play publication? Sir Sidney Lee admits that
printed plays were in demand, and names several possible
sources. On page 100 of his Life of Shakespeare, he notes two
ways of getting play copy. One was, through chance requisition
of one of the many copies made of a play for actors or patrons,
in which case "it was issued without any endeavor to obtain
either author's or manager's sanction." The other method, by
no means uncommon, was to take down the play by shorthand
from a performance. It was so that at least four of Shakespeare's
plays were secured for their publishers, according to Lee,
namely: Romeo and Juliet, Henry V., Merry Wives, and Pericles
(pp. 546-7).

It is such views as Lee's that are responsible for the very
general suspicion of the texts of a large proportion of the plays
of the period. A similar attitude to Lee's is shown in a widely
used work of reference, the Cambridge History of English Litera-
ture ( N. Y., 1910). Mr. Ernest Walder goes so far as to assert
(vol. v, pp. 289 - 290 ) that playwrights in general were in-
different to publication, and acting companies in general
positively opposed to it; and that the Shakespeare quartos were
alike surreptitious (although eight of them, "duplicated" in
the Folio text, are entitled to rank as the only authoritative
texts!).

The playwright's sole ambition was to see his play on the stage.
Hardly any play was published by its author without some apology.

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