To Fold or Not to Fold? That is the Publisher's Question

If you have studied Shakespeare even a little bit, you should have been exposed to the idea of folios and quartos, not to mention octavos or thirty-twomo's.  If not you are about to be educated.

A thirty-twomo (its a book size :-)

In Elizabethan times, right around the turn of the century into the 17th, playwrights were struggling with losing income and the rights to their works when unscrupulous publishers would steal their works and publish them in print format before the actors were finished performing.  The majority of publishers were not plagiarizing (I don't want to give them all a bad name) but enough to make it a significant problem, especially if the playwright was famous enough.  For William Shakespeare, one of the most famous of his time, about 12 of his plays were published without his authorization, by publishers that had obtained his scripts by unreliable or illegal sources.  The official copies of the play go in  this order: the rough draft, or foul papers which are written in the hand of the author, a fair scribal copy, and then a single printed copy of the play that served as the prompt copy in the theatre.  Publishers could have obtained one of these script copies, but they also could have written it from memory from attending one of the performances.  Usually these printed plays were not very accurate to the author's original words. or the original performance.  Always, these plagiarized works were printed in a quarto format if not smaller.

How a Quarto was folded to get 8 pages, and how the type had to be set

So what exactly is a quarto, and why does it even matter?  A quarto is a book that is created with sheets of printing paper (all of a standard size by then) that have been folded four times, making 8 pages of text.  Several of these folded sheets would be printed on, folded correctly, then bound into the book.  Sometimes the printers and publishers would cut the folds so the pages were separated, but usually it was a mark that you were getting a good, new book to get one without cut pages.  It meant it had never been used. In some modern libraries (esp. in special collections), there are copies of medieval and renaissance books that have yet to be opened, and either a librarian can open it, or if you have been trained and have the right instruments you can neatly slice the paper open yourself.

To a publisher, it matters quite a lot whether they print a quarto or a smaller book (by folding more times), or if they print a folio (the paper is only folded once, making 4 pages of text).  First, paper is expensive, so using one sheet for more pages was more economical.  Can you imagine, the same book would take twice as much paper if it was printed at folio size than quarto, and so on.  Also, it is actually more time consuming to print a folio, because you have to reset the type more often.  So the material printed had to be worth the cost.  literally.  During the Elizabethan Era, it was not that popular to READ plays as literature; it was considered unnatural for dramas to be in such a dead medium.  So, those early publishers of Shakespeare's plays had to be careful that they would even sell, though with his fame it was worth the gamble.  The other factor against them was that they didn't usually have the prompter's copy to plagiarize, so their play probably had significant changes from the drama, and whether the public would like this rougher version anyway. 

The First page of one First Folio up for Auction

About a decade after Shakespeare quit the stage, two of his colleagues from the Chamberlain's Men (his acting troupe) complied the First Folio of his works containing all but one of his plays and a few of his poems.  There were about 480 copies of this work, 230 of which have survived to this day.  One third of those surviving copies are held in the Folger Shakespeare library in Washington, D.C.  There were three more subsequent Folios published, with varying spelling and punctuation, but the only significant difference was the addition of the play Pericles in the Second Folio.  Last thing in your crash course: modern scholars argue about which is the truest text of Shakespeare, and try and bring it back to the 'original' text, but there really isn't a consensus.  In these arguments, the First Folio is abbreviated F1, the second as F2, etc., and quartos are abbreviated Q1 or Q2 (there usually wasn't more than 2 copies of a quarto play). 

Shakespeare is the most famous of the authors to be published in this way, with these printing styles, but it was the common practice in Elizabethan England, and probably through out the modern world.  Wouldn't it be cool to buy a book and then get to cut open its pages? Just another crazy thought.  :-)
For resources, well, they are every where.  Google is marvelous.  I linked only my two favorite resources but there are a lot more out there.