Some quartos, like that of Hamlet of 1604, are
excellent, and how they came to be printed from good texts, and
whether or not the texts were given to the press by Shakespeare's
Company, or were sold, or stolen, is the question. Mr. Pollard
argues, on grounds almost certain, that "we have strong prima facie
evidence that the sale to publishers of plays afterwards duly entered
on the Stationers' Registers was regulated by their lawful owners."
{208a}
The Preface does not explicitly deny that some of the separately
printed texts were good, but says that "divers" of them were stolen
and deformed. My view of the meaning of the Preface is not generally
held. Dr. H. H. Furness, in his preface to Much Ado about Nothing
(p. vi), says, "We all know that these two friends of Shakespeare
assert in their Preface to the Folio that they had used the Author's
manuscripts, and in the same breath denounce the Quartos as stolen
and surreptitious." I cannot see, I repeat, that the Preface
denounces ALL the Quartos. It could be truly said that DIVERS stolen
and maimed copies had been foisted on "abused" purchasers, and really
no more IS said. Dr. Furness writes, "When we now find them using as
'copy' one of these very Quartos" (Much Ado about Nothing, 1600), "we
need not impute to them a wilful falsehood if we suppose that in
using what they knew had been printed from the original text,
howsoever obtained, they held it to be the same as the manuscript
itself .
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