We have no reason to suppose that Measure for Measure ever saw print until it appeared in the 1623 Folio which gives us our text. Most critics agree, however, that in some form or other it dates from twenty years earlier, and accept the entry of the Revels Accounts (confirming a note among Malone's papers in the Bodleian Library) that it was performed at Court before King James I on December 26, 1604. In our note on the Copy (pp. 101–3) we offer some new evidence supporting this date.

The source of the plot stands even less in dispute. It derives originally from Italy, where Giraldi Cinthio (d. 1573) had told the tale in a tragedy, Epitia, and repeated it in a collection of prose tales, Hecatommithii, published in Sicily in 1565. In 1578 George Whetstone, working apparently on the prose version, Englished it into a double play, entitled:

The Right Excellent and Famous | History | of Promos and Cassandra; | divided into two Comical Discourses. | In the first part is shown, | the unsufferable abuse of a lewd Magistrate, | the virtuous behaviour of a chaste Lady: | the uncontrolled lewdness of a favoured Courtesan, | and the undeserved estimation of a pernicious Parasite. | In the second part is discoursed | the perfect magnanimity of a noble King | in checking Vice and favouring Virtue: | wherein is shown | the Ruin and Overthrow of dishonest practices, | with the advancement of upright dealing.