ABSTRACT
The first point to bear in mind when considering the printing of William Shakespeare's plays is that the theatre company for whom he worked, and of which he was a major shareholder, would not have considered it to be wholly in their own interest to have his plays in print. The story of the printing of Shakespeare's plays seems to be a bit of a fairy-tale plot in itself. The plays were written, some unscrupulous pirates attempted to hijack them, but friends of the author loyally restored them to their true state. Moreover, the tale seems to delineate clearly its own heroes and villains: the actors who first pirated the quartos and Jaggard and Pavier who tried to cash in on Shakespeare's memory are the villains, of course, while the King's Men are the heroes, valiantly trying to ensure that posterity inherited nothing but the true and authorized versions of Shakespeare's plays.
