previously ill-produced by pirates) "are now offered to your view
cur'd, and perfect of their limbes; and ALL THE REST" (that is, all
the plays which had not been piratically debased), "absolute in their
numbers, as he conceived them." So obscure is the Preface that not
ALL previously published separate plays are explicitly said to be
stolen and deformed, but "DIVERS stolen copies" are denounced. Mr.
Pollard makes the same point in Shakespeare Folios and Quartos, p. 2
(1909).

Now, as a matter of fact, while some of the quarto editions of
separate plays are very bad texts, others are so good that the Folio
sometimes practically reprints them, with some tinkerings, from
manuscripts. Some quartos, like that of Hamlet of 1604, are
excellent, and how they came to be printed from good texts, and
whether or not the texts were given to the press by Shakespeare's
Company, or were sold, or stolen, is the question. Mr. Pollard
argues, on grounds almost certain, that "we have strong prima facie
evidence that the sale to publishers of plays afterwards duly entered
on the Stationers' Registers was regulated by their lawful owners."
{208a}

The Preface does not explicitly deny that some of the separately
printed texts were good, but says that "divers" of them were stolen
and deformed. My view of the meaning of the Preface is not generally
held. Dr. H. H. Furness, in his preface to Much Ado about Nothing
(p. vi), says, "We all know that these two friends of Shakespeare
assert in their Preface to the Folio that they had used the Author's
manuscripts, and in the same breath denounce the Quartos as stolen
and surreptitious." I cannot see, I repeat, that the Preface
denounces ALL the Quartos. It could be truly said that DIVERS stolen