would have resulted in any thing like what we possess to-day, we have considered further on. Mr. Grant White admits, * as must everybody who examines into the matter, that whatever the printers printed was unauthorized and surreptitious. But, having admitted this much, Mr. White is too ardent a Shakespearean not to make some effort to throw a guise of authenticity around the text he has so lovingly followed. In the article we have just quoted from in our foot-note, he says, "It is not improbable that, in case of great and injurious misrepresentation of the text of a play by" this surreptitious method of publication, "fair copies were furnished by the theatrical people at the author's request in self-defence." Perhaps these plays might have found their way into print just as the comedy of "Play" found its way into print in 1868, ** or the play of "Mary Warner," *** at about the same date. At any rate the editors of the first folio speak of the "stolne and surreptitious copies" which had preceded them. * "Such of his plays as were published during his lifetime seem to have been given to the press entirely without his agency; indeed, his interest was against their publication.... It was the interest of all concerned, whether as proprietors, or only as actors, or, like himself, as both, that the theaters should have the entire benefit of whatever favor they enjoyed with the public. But the publishers, or stationers, as they were then called, eagerly sought copies of them for publication, and obtained them surreptitiously: sometimes, it would seem, by corrupting persons connected with the theater, and sometimes, as the text which they printed shows, by sending short-hand writers to the performance." ** Palmer v. DeWitt, 47 New York R. 532. *** Crowe v. Aiken. 2 Bissel R. 208. {112}The first and second editions of "Hamlet," says Mr. White, "in 1603 and 1604, might have been the result of such maneuvers on the part of the printers and the stenographers, or those who had access to the manuscripts of the author. However this may be, twenty of Shakespeare's plays were published by various stationers during his lifetime; they are known as the quartos, from the form in which they are printed. They are most of them full of errors.... Some of them seem to have been put in type from stage copies, or, not improbably, from an aggregation of the separate parts which were in the hands of the various actors." In other words, Shakespeare's works were so imperfectly printed, against his will, during his lifetime, that he himself authorized _other imperfect_--Mr. White says they were imperfect--versions to be likewise printed!