ublishers exercised its powers for the
protection of its members rather than of authors. A publisher wishing to
establish a monopoly in a book he had acquired entered it on the
Stationers' Register, paying a fee of sixpence, and was thereby
protected against piracy. When the copy so registered was improperly
acquired, the state of the case is not so clear. At times the officials
showed hesitation about registering a book until the applicant "hath
gotten sufficient authoritye for yt," and _As You Like It_, for example,
appears in the Register only "to be staied," which it was until the
publication of the first Folio. Further, the pirated _Romeo and Juliet_
and _Henry V_ were never entered at all; the pirated _Hamlet_ and
_Pericles_ were entered, but to other publishers, who in the case of
_Hamlet_ brought out a more correct text in the following year; the
pirated _Merry Wives_ was transferred from one publisher to another on
the day of entry, and actually issued by the second. Thus this group of
plays does not support the view that the Stationers' Company stood ready
to give perpetual copyright to their members even for obviously stolen
goods. It is to be noted, too, that the previous publication of these
surreptitious copies formed no hindrance to the later issue of an
authentic copy. The second Quarto of _Hamlet_, printed from a complete
manuscript, followed, as has been said, the first the next year, and the
same thing happened in the case of _Romeo and Juliet_.

[Page Heading: Publisher's Copyright]

On the other hand, the great majority of the Quartos printed from
playhouse copies of the plays were regularly entered, and the rights of
the original publisher preserved to him. The appearance of groups of
plays in the market following interference with theatrical activity such
as came from the plague in 1594, from the breaking up of companies, or
from Puritan attempts at restriction, confirm the belief that these
better Quartos were honorably acquired by the publishers from the
companies owning them, when the actors thought that there was more to
gain than to lose by giving them to the press.

[Page Heading: Table of Quarto Editions]

The accompanying "Table of Quarto Editions" gives the names of all the
Shakespearean plays issued in this form before the publication of the
collected edition in 1623, known as the First Folio. In the cases of
_Romeo and Juliet_, _1 Henry IV_, _Love's Labour's Lost_, _Merchant of
Veni