ce_, _Much Ado_, _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_, and _Richard II_, a
Quarto, usually the most recent, provided the text from which the
version in the Folio was printed. Hence, though in several cases the
copy of the Quarto thus employed seems to have been one used by the
actors and containing corrections of some value, the extant Quarto
rather than the Folio is the prime authority for the text to-day. The
same is true of _Titus Andronicus_, except that in this case the Folio
restores from some manuscript source a scene which had been dropped from
the Quarto. If, as some hold, the Folio texts of _Richard III_ and _King
Lear_ were printed from Quartos, there must have been available also a
manuscript version, which is so heavily drawn upon that the Folio text
virtually represents an independent source, as it does in the case of
four of the five plays acknowledged to be due to surreptitious
reporting. _Pericles_, the fifth of these, was first admitted to the
collected works in the third Folio, and is the only "reported" text
forming our sole authority.[8]

TABLE OF QUARTO EDITIONS BEFORE 1623

Transcriber's Note:
The following abbreviations are used in the "SOURCE OF Q TEXT" column:
D--Disputed;
P--Playhouse;
R--Reported.

==========================================================================
| | DATES OF | |
| ENTRIES IN |--------------------------------|SOURCE|
| STATIONERS' | | | | | | | OF Q | SOURCE OF
| REGISTER |Q1 | Q2 |Q3 |Q4 |Q5 |Q6 | TEXT | F1 TEXT
| | | | | | | | |
------+--------------+----+------+-----+----+----+----+------+------------
T.A. |Feb. 6, 1594 |1594| 1600| 1611| | | |P |Q3 completed
| | | | | | | | | & corrected
| | | | | | | | |
R. II |Aug. 29, 1597 |1597| 1598| 1608|1615| | |P |Q4 corrected
| | | | | | | | |
R. III|Oct. 19, 1597 |1597| 1598| 1602|1605|1612|1622|D |Disputed
| | | | | | | | |
R.J. |No entry |1597| 1599| 1609|n.d.| | |{Q1 R |Q3 from Q2
| | | | | | | |{Q2 P |
| | | | | | | | |
1 H.IV|Feb. 25, 1598 |1598| 1599| 1604|160