As to the sources of such plays as had been "maimed and deformed by
injurious impostors," and are now "offered cur'd and perfect of their
limbs," "it can be proved to demonstration," say the Cambridge
Editors, "that several plays in the Folio were printed from earlier
quarto editions" (but the players secured a retreat on this point),
"and that in other cases the quarto is more correctly printed, or
from a better manuscript than the Folio text, and therefore of higher
authority." Hamlet, in the Folio of 1623, when it differs from the
quarto of 1604, "differs for the worse in forty-seven places, while
it differs for the better in twenty places."

Can the wit of man suggest any other explanation than that the
editing of the Folio was carelessly done; out of the best quartos and
MSS. in the theatre for acting purposes, and,--if the players did not
lie in what they "often said," and if they kept the originals,--out
of some MSS. received from Shakspere? Whether the two players
themselves threw into the press, after some hasty botchings, whatever
materials they had, or whether they employed an Editor, a very
wretched Editor, or Editors, or whether the great Author, Bacon,
himself was his own Editor, the preparation of a text was infamously
done. The two actors, probably, I think, never read through the
proof-sheets, and took the word of the man whom they employed to edit
their materials, for gospel. The editing of the Folio is so
exquisitely careless that twelve printer's errors in a quarto of
1622, of Richard III, appear in the Folio of 1623. Again, the Merry
Wives of the Folio, is nearly twice as long as the quarto of 1619,
yet keeps old errors.

How can we explain the reckless retention of errors, and also the