There are today many conflicting accounts of the origins of Shakespeare's texts and of their subsequent reproduction. Such has not always been the case. For much of the twentieth century, for instance, editors and textual critics accepted and depended upon a single larger story, and most agreed that the few remaining still-contested details would soon be resolved and absorbed into this larger narrative. Today, instead of seeing such resolution, one is hard pressed to find any part of the story that is not in contention.

Editors and textual critics agree that the extant texts of the plays originated in manuscripts that are lost; and they agree that the plays were first printed in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, some plays in individual quartos, some in the 1623 Folio, and some in both quarto and Folio. When, however, one looks for consensus beyond these very basic statements, one finds only problems and questions.