Folio") complain that "divers stolen and surreptitious copies" of
single plays have been put forth, "maimed and deformed by the frauds
and stealths of injurious impostors." They speak as if they were
unable to prevent, or had not the energy to prevent, these frauds.
In the accounts of the aforesaid Henslowe, we find him paying forty
shillings to a printer to stop or "stay" the printing of a play,
Patient Grizel, by three of his hacks.

We perhaps come across an effort of the company to prevent or delay
the publication of The Merchant of Venice, on July 17, 1598, in the
Stationers' Register. James Robertes, and all other printers, are
forbidden to print the book without previous permission from the Lord
Chamberlain, the protector of Will Shakespeare's company. Two years
passed before Robertes issued the book. {34a} As is well known,
Heywood, a most prolific playwright, boasts that he never made a
double sale of his pieces to the players and the press. Others
occasionally did, which Heywood clearly thought less than honest.

As an author who was also an actor, and a shareholder in his company,
Will's interests were the same as theirs. It is therefore curious
that some of his pieces were early printed, in quartos, from very
good copies; while others appeared in very bad copies, clearly
surreptitious. Probably the company gave a good MS. copy, sometimes,
to a printer who offered satisfactory terms, after the gloss of
novelty was off the acted play. {34b} In any case, we see that the
custom and interests of the owners of manuscript plays ran contrary
to their early publication. In 1619 even Ben Jonson, who loved
publication, told Drummond that half of his comedies were still
unprinted.