1. Folio and Quarto Texts Of Shakespeare's Plays William Shakespeare and other authors of his time wrote their plays for acting companies whose primary purpose was to stage plays rather than publish them. To print and sell a play in book form was to give rival acting troupes and theatergoers access to the script, thereby diminishing its potential to profit from stage performances.

2. Nevertheless, unscrupulous publishers sometimes bought copies of plays from equally unscrupulous actors who had obtained a handwritten copy of the play or had written it down from memory. Occasionally, a publisher attended a play and copied the script himself while actors performed their parts. For example, publisher John Danter, hoping to make money by selling Romeo and Juliet, used notes taken during a 1597 performance of the play to piece together a copy of it for public sale.

3. These methods of acquiring a copy often resulted in the publication of scripts with many errors. To preserve the integrity of a play, the acting company that owned the script sometimes made its own arrangements to publish the text. Consequently, different printed versions of the play--some accurate, some inaccurate-- were in circulation. There were two publishing formats: quarto and folio, which are explained below.

4. The plays containing errors generally were in quarto form, although some good copies were published in this format. In 1623, friends and admirers of Shakespeare compiled a reasonably authentic collection of 36 of Shakespeare's plays in a folio edition of more than 900 pages that was entitled Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories & Tragedies. The printer and publisher was William Jaggard, assisted by his son Isaac. This edition became known as The First Folio. Because of the presumed authenticity of this collection, later publishers used it to print copies of the plays. Other folios were printed in 1632, 1663 and 1685.

5. Quarto and folio Quarto: A quarto is sheet of printing paper folded twice to form eight separate pages for printing a book. Folio: A folio is a sheet of printing paper folded once to form four separate pages for printing a book.

7. Act/Scene Division

8. Acts A major division in a play. Often, individual acts are divided into smaller units ("scenes") that all take place in a specific location. Originally, Greek plays were not divided into acts. They took place as a single whole interrupted occasionally by the chorus's singing. In Roman times, a five-act structure first appeared based upon Horace's recommendations. This five-act structure became a convention of drama (and especially tragedy) during the Renaissance. (Shakespeare's plays have natural divisions that can be taken as the breaks between acts as well; later editors inserted clear "act" and "scene" markings in these locations.)

9. Acts Though modern editions nearly always divide Shakespeare's plays into acts, among the early texts, only the First Folio has act divisions, and does not use them consistently. It is very doubtful that Shakespeare thought of his plays as having a five-act structure, or composed them in acts.

10. The Folio's use of Latin titles (e.g. Actus Secundus, scaena prima for Act Two, Scene One) is a reminder that act division is a feature that makes these English plays more "classical" and makes the Shakespeare Folio look more like an edition of Roman plays, such as, for example, the Renaissance editions of the Latin comedies of Terence.

11. Scenes Sometimes the First Folio also marks scenes. However, not all scenes are marked explicitly as shown.

12. Scene divisions Unlike acts, scenes are important subdivisions of Shakespeare's plays if they are understood as units of action during which one set of characters enters and leaves the stage. In this sense, most scenes are generally marked in the early editions, beginning with 'Enter' and ending with 'Exit' or 'Exeunt'.