The author of a play was, however, really less interested than the manager who had bought it. The manager of a theater seems, from what evidence we possess, to have believed that the printing of a play injured the chances of success upon the stage. The play was sold by the author directly to the manager, whose property it became. Copies of it might be sold to some printer by some of the players in the company, by the manager himself, or, in rarer cases, by some unscrupulous copyist taking down the play in shorthand at the performance. When a play had got out of date, it would be more apt to be sold than while it was still on the stage. In some cases, however, the printing might have no bad effect upon the attendance at its performances. During the years before 1623, seventeen of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto. Two of these, _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Hamlet_, were printed in two very different versions, so that we have nineteen texts of Shakespeare's plays altogether published before the First Folio. A complete table of these {117} plays with the dates in which the quartos appeared follows:-- 1594. Titus Andronicus. Later quartos in 1600 and 1611. 1597. Richard II. Later quartos in 1598, 1608, and 1615. 1597. Richard III. Later quartos in 1598, 1602, 1605, 1612, and 1622. 1597. Romeo and Juliet. Later quartos in 1599 (corrected edition) and 1609. 1598. I Henry IV. Later quartos in 1599, 1604, 1608, 1613, and 1622. 1598. Love's Labour's Lost. 1600. Merchant of Venice. Later quarto in 1619. (Copying on the title-page the original date of 1600, however.) 1600. Henry V. Later quartos in 1602 and 1619. (Dated on the title-page, 1608.) 1600. Henry IV, Part II. 1600. Midsummer Night's Dream. Later quarto in 1619. (Dated, however, 1600.) 1602. Merry Wives of Windsor. Later quarto in 1619. 1603. Hamlet. 1604. Second edition of Hamlet. Later quartos in 1605 and 1611. 1608. King Lear. Later quarto in 1619. (Title-page date, 1608.) 1608. Pericles. Later quartos in 1609, 1611, and 1619. 1609. Troilus and Cressida. A second quarto in 1609. 1622. Othello.