To attempt to recover Shakespeare's theatrical vocabulary is then to wrestle with the early printed editions, the primary evidence for how the plays were staged in the 1590s and early 1600s and our major point of entry into the conversation between the playwright and his player-colleagues. To categorize these texts (and the manuscripts or other copy that stands behind them) scholars have developed various terms and concepts (e.g., foul papers', memorial reconstruction, good and bad quartos) and have fashioned appropriate strategies for creating differing editions for differing clienteles. These editions (some of them major works of scholarship in their own right) in turn have become the basis for subsequent scholarship (so that each generation is to some extent characterized by its editing of Shakespeare). In the 1980s and 1990s, for example, one subgroup of such editions exhibits a performance orientation by including accounts of production choices, photographs, stage history, additional stage directions, and other ancillary material to enhance a reader's awareness of the theatrical dimension that extends beyond the printed page.

Such editions, however, whether scholarly or performance-oriented, are often of little help to the project pursued in this book.