quartos
quartos.A book in which the printed sheet is folded in half twice, making four leaves or eight pages, is known as a quarto. Renaissance play quartos were about the size and shape of modern comic books and sold for sixpence. About half of Shakespeare's plays were printed during his lifetime, usually in quarto format (see printing and publishing).
The acting companies for which Shakespeare wrote held the legal copy rights to his manuscripts. Theatre historians have traditionally maintained that the players were reluctant to allow their plays to be printed, either because they feared losing exclusive acting rights to another company or because they believed that the sale of printed texts might reduce the demand for performance. Thomas Heywood referred to certain play-texts as being ‘still retained in the hands of some actors, who think it against their peculiar profit to have them come in print’. And yet, when unauthorized versions of Shakespeare's...
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