Wither's account of the stationer's statutory freedom "to belye his Authors intentions" is largely correct, though, in fairness, most stationers did make reasonable attempts to produce an accurate text. Authors, of course, regularly protested the failures of the printing house, as in Thomas Heywood's well-known complaint (An Apology for Actors, London, 1612) against "the infinite faults escaped in my book of Britaines Troy by the negligence of the printer, as the misquotations, mistaking of sillables, misplacing halfe lines, coining of strange and neuer heard of words. These being without number, when I would haue taken a particular account of the Errata, the printer answered me, he would not publish his owne disworkemanship, but rather let his owne fault lye vpon the necke of the Author." But such charges also drew predictable replies from the stationers, who had to work quickly and often in circumstances that militated against precision, as John Windet insisted in a preliminary to a work of biblical commentary that he printed: "Some things haue escaped, others beene mistaken, partly by the absence of him who penned this Treatise, partly by the unleageableness of his hand in the written coppy." (Alexander Roberts, An Exposition Upon the Hundred and Thirtie Psalme, London, 1610).

tion, at least with regard to the drama, is true. Stationers for the most part showed little interest in either the quality or the origin of the dramatic texts they printed; they cared mainly that it be "vendible." Textual scholars, the heirs of Wither's dismay, have often used this fact to motivate their narratives of the transmission of Shakespeare's text. They similarly have stigmatized the stationers, or at least some, as dishonest and incompetent, all too willing to attempt a quick profit by publishing a pirated text of a play. But in truth the pirates, as Blayney (p.394) and Laurie Maguire (Shakespearean Suspect Texts, Cambridge University Press, 1996), among others, have recently reminded us, are largely bogeys of our imagination, functions of an anachronistic understanding of both the playhouse and the printing house. This is not to say that publishers did inevitably purchase their copy from the author or some other apparently legitimate owner; it is, however, to emphasize that stationers knew that the author's permission was not necessary to publish the work, and knew as well that in the case of drama the very notion of authorship is problematic. In any precise sense, the only pirates, and there were some, were those publishers who undertook to print a book that properly belonged to another stationer.

Unquestionably plays were often published without their authors' consent or even knowledge, and in forms of which no doubt their playwrights would never have approved; but this should not be taken as anything more than evidence of the usual--and fully legal procedures of the contemporary book trade. A potential publisher would purchase a manuscript of a play, which might in some cases be authorial, though it could as well be a scribal copy made for the acting company or for a collector, or a transcript made by one or more actors. For the potential publisher it made no difference; no one of these granted the publisher any clearer authority over the text. All he would have been concerned with was that the manuscript not cost too much, that it be reasonably legible, and that no other stationer have a claim to the play.

There are some examples of writers objecting to the publication of defective versions of their work, although these inevitably reveal how limited their ability was to oppose unauthorized publication. Usually the most they could do was provide authorized copy to replace the unsanctioned printing. Thus, Samuel Daniel explains the publication of the second edition of his Vision of the Twelve Goddesses in his dedication to the Countess of Bedford:

Madame: In respect of the vnmanncriy presumption of an indiscreet Printer, who without warrant hath divulged the late shewe at Court, . . . I thought it not amisse seeing it would otherwise passe abroad to the prejudice both of the Maske and the inuention, to describe the whole forme thereof in all points as it was then performed... (Samuel Daniel, The Vision of The Tweleve Goddesses, London 1604).

Similarly, Stephen Egerton, in a preface to the second edition of one of his sermons that had been taken down by a listener in shorthand (A Lecture preached by Maister Egerton, at the Blacke-friers, 1589, London, 1603), says that had it been his own doing originally he would have "beene more carefull in the manner of handling ... And therefore that which I now do, is rather somewhat to qualifie an errour that cannot be recalled, then to publish a worke that may be in any way greatly commodious to other." Both Daniel and Egerton are frustrated by the deficient texts that were published, but neither assumes that the publication of an unauthorized text is a legal issue. In the face of the publication of texts that neither author either delivered to or saw through the press, both realize that they have little recourse except to provide a better text for a new edition.

Regardless of the title page claims, playbooks were often unauthorized, published, that is, in editions that differed not only from the author's intended text but even from the text as it had been reshaped in performance; but these were not illegal printings. They do not provide evidence of criminal or dishonest business practices. Indeed this is true even for the so-called "bad quartos" of Shakespeare's plays. While these editions differ substantially from the familiar versions in which we know the play, and are arguably inferior if not corrupt, there is nothing to suggest their publishers knew them so. They operated in these cases very much as they did in all other publishing ventures, purchasing a play text on which they thought they might make a profit by having it printed and sold.

A published play text, we should remember, was not a priceless literary relic but a cheap pamphlet; it represented not the immortal words of a great writer but the work of professional actors whose skill involved improvisation as much as recall. The play itself had various lives in different theatrical venues, each of which would enforce changes upon the text. Why then would a publisher ever think in terms of the reliability or authority of the text?