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.

   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.

   1998, Laurie E. Maguire, Thomas L. Berger, editors, Textual Formations and Reformations, University of Delaware Press, →ISBN, page 59