d
to an author in getting before the public a good text of his writings.
It also indicates that the good copies were obtained by printers in a
legal manner, and so probably purchased directly from the theaters,
whether from the copy which the prompter had, or from some transcript
of the play. The notion that all plays were printed in Shakespeare's
time by a process of piracy is thus not borne out by these facts.

The five bad quartos deserve a moment's attention. The first of these,
_Romeo and Juliet_, printed and published by John Danter in 1597, omits
over seven hundred lines of the play, and the stage directions are
descriptions rather than definite instructions. The book is printed in
two kinds of type, a fact due probably to its being printed from two
presses at once. Danter got into trouble later on with other books
from his dishonest ways. The second poor quarto, _Henry V_, printed in
1600, was less than half as long as the Folio text, and was probably
carelessly copied by an ignorant person at a performance of the play.
The third, the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, was pirated through the
publisher of _Henry V_, John Busby, who assigned his {119} part to
another printer on the same day. As in the case of _Romeo and Juliet_,
the stage directions are mere descriptions. No play of Shakespeare's
was more cruelly bungled by an unscrupulous copyist. The first edition
of _Hamlet_ in 1603 was the work of Valentine Sims. While the copying
is full of blunders, this quarto is considered important, as indicating
that the play was acted at first in a much shorter and less artistic
version than the one which we now read. For eight months of 1603-1604
the theaters of London were closed on account of the plague, and
Shakespeare's revision of _Hamlet_ may have been made during this time.
At any rate, the later version appeared about the end of 1604. The
last of these pirated quartos, _Pericles_, was probably taken down in
shorthand at the theater. Here, unfortunately, as this play was not
included in the First Folio, and as all later quartos were based on the
First Quarto, we have to-day what is really a corrupt and difficult
text. Luckily, Shakespeare's share in this play is small.

The title-pages of the quartos of Shakespeare bear convincing
testimony, not only to the genuineness of his plays, but also to his
rise in reputation. Only six of his plays were printed in quartos not
bearing his name. Of these, two--_Rom