bad quarto

English

Noun

bad quarto (plural bad quartos)

1. A quarto-sized publication of a play, especially a Shakespearean play, that is considered spurious by virtue of having been copied down during a performance or later reconstructed from memory.
   • 1998, Laurie E. Maguire, Thomas L. Berger, editors, Textual Formations and Reformations, University of Delaware Press, →ISBN, page 59:

     The implication is that theatrical practitioners have access to the “bad quarto” that is unmediated by the history of its scholarly reception; these practitioners can therefore be depended upon to discover in their performance of the text the true nature of its origin.