Although William Shakespeare was a successful playwright in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, about half of his plays were not printed during his life, leading scholars to the conclusion that the printed versions of his plays were likely produced without his direct supervision. One theory on how some of his plays made it into print is called the Memorial Reconstruction Theory. It suggests actors who performed the original play recalled their lines or audience members transcribed performances. Scholars point to the inconsistencies between the First Folio of 1623, which was a supervised publication overseen by key members of the theater company of which Shakespeare was a founding member, and other quartos printed prior to the Folio. Often, these quartos serve as proof of the inaccuracy in early printed Shakespeare texts.

Memorial Reconstruction

Scholars believe Shakespeare did not have direct involvement with the printing of any his dramatic works; it is possible he oversaw the publication of some of his narrative poems, such as in the 1590s. They theorize that actors or audience members may have transcribed plays from memory. This form of creating the script of a play for publication compromises the reliability of the text. Did the actors accurately remember what they performed as Shakespeare acted alongside them or supervised from backstage, or did they invent entire lines or passages to fill the gaps in their memory? Could a member of the audience have taken notes accurately enough during the rapid dialogue of a play to reflect the author’s words?

The biggest argument for this theory has been the key differences between the texts of about half the plays in The First Folio, compiled by John Heminges and Henry Condell roughly seven years after the death of Shakespeare and the early quartos of some of Shakespeare’s works. These versions of the plays differ in length, language, grammar, and more.

An example of this can be found when looking at and which were both printed pre-1595 as plays exploring the history of King Henry VI, while the play in the First Folio entitled was printed in 1623. Both and were not attributed to Shakespeare when initially printed and were shorter in text than in The First Folio. Disputes exist on both sides of the argument as to which is the more accurate version of the story, or if one is just a revision of the other. However, regardless of how scholars see the problems in these texts, readers now can never be certain what Shakespeare intended.

Bad Quartos

Early publications of Shakespeare’s plays were printed as quartos: small, single-play texts about the size of a modern paperback book. A number of Shakespeare’s early printed plays have been labeled bad quartos. A bad quarto can be something as simple as bad printing (misalignments on the page, obvious misspellings, etc.). It is possible they were the result of audience members or actors from rival companies at his plays, transcribing dialog and actions from the play as it was performed and publishing the transcription as their own or selling it to other theatres. These bad quartos offer a window in early modern printing practices and also into the evolution of Shakespeare’s plays

The Example of

presents a significant puzzle for the modern editor trying to determine what Shakespeare wrote. exists in three significantly different versions: the bad quarto of 1603 the authorized quarto which followed (1604); most modern versions of the play rely extensively on this edition the Folio text of 1623

In both the first and second quartos, the first line in Hamlet’s first soliloquy reads, O, that this too, too sallied flesh would melt. The Folio substitutes sallied for the seemingly more logical word, solid. But sallied occurs elsewhere as a variant spelling of the word sullied (dirty, sinful, or corrupted). Could it be that the earlier versions are right, and that Hamlet imagines himself, like trodden snow, dirtied and capable of purification only if his flesh goes through the cycle of thawing, evaporating, and condensing into dew? Of course, Shakespeare may also have revised the play between its first printing as a quarto and his death, leading his colleagues to publish the updated text in the First Folio. So which is most accurate?

Determining Accuracy

Scholars question the printings from the so-called bad quartos because they were created from the potentially inaccurate ear of an actor or audience member. They have argued extensively over differences in text from the quartos and the First Folio for not just , but also . Many have concluded that although the First Folio can not guarantee every bit of dialog written is Shakespeare’s, it is one of the most accurate records we have of his writing because it was supervised by his colleagues who performed alongside him for many years.

Key Print Sources Bourus, Terri. . vol. 31, no. 12, Mar. 2019, p. 72. Hosley, Richard. . vol. 4, no. 1, 1953, pp. 11–33. Kim, Heejin. Plays. vol. 15, no. 4, 2019, pp. 356–378. Lesser, Zachary. After Q1: An Uncanny History of the Shakespearean Text. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. Menzer, Paul. . University of Delaware Press, 2008.

Key Online Sources Best, Michael. . . . University of Victoria, 4 Jan. 2011. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/literature/publishing/problems.html. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026. Mowat, Barbara, and Paul Werstine. . . https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/hamlet/an-introduction-to-this-text/. Accessed 7 Jul. 2025.