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But the choice of a base text does not solve all editorial issues, since editors also need to make decision that affect readability:

• Renaissance play texts use a different (and inconsistent) spelling and punctuation;
• the texts contained words that are no longer in use;
• they contain words and even lines that are obviously incorrect, even when allowing that Early Modern English used different rules than present-day English.

But the choice of a base text does not solve all editorial issues, since editors also need to make decisions that affect readability:

• Renaissance play texts use a different (and inconsistent) spelling and punctuation;
• the texts contain words that are no longer in use;
• they contain words and even lines that are obviously incorrect, even when allowing that Early Modern English used different rules than present-day English.

• Renaissance play text use a different (and inconsistent) spelling and punctuation;
• the texts contained words that are no longer in use;
• they contain words and even lines that are obviously incorrect, even when allowing that Early Modern English used different rules than present-day English.

So even an editor of Hamlet who wants to use the second quarto as a base text (or use only that text because it would have been closest to Shakespeare's manuscript) would need to decide whether to regularise the spelling and punctuation and decide what to do with "sallied". For example, should "sallied" be left in place and glossed as a variant of "sullied" or should it be replaced by "sallied" for the sake of readability? Or when using the Folio as a base text, is it possible to adduce arguments to replace "solid" with the quarto's "sallied" or even "sullied"?

• Renaissance play texts use a different (and inconsistent) spelling and punctuation;
• the texts contained words that are no longer in use;
• they contain words and even lines that are obviously incorrect, even when allowing that Early Modern English used different rules than present-day English.

So even an editor of Hamlet who wants to use the second quarto as a base text (or use only that text because it would have been closest to Shakespeare's manuscript) would need to decide whether to regularise the spelling and punctuation and decide what to do with "sallied". For example, should "sallied" be left in place and glossed as a variant of "sullied" or should it be replaced by "sullied" for the sake of readability? Or when using the Folio as a base text, is it possible to adduce arguments to replace "solid" with the quarto's "sallied" or even "sullied"?

The concept of "bad quarto" is relevant here because it influences an editor's choice of a base text. Historically, there have been different tendencies in modern Shakespeare scholarship. For a long time, editors created "conflated editions" of plays that were available in both quarto and folio editions. Simply put, the looked both the quarto and folio texts and somehow combined them: lines that appeared in one edition but not in the other might end up in the conflated edition.

The concept of "bad quarto" is relevant here because it influences an editor's choice of a base text. Historically, there have been different tendencies in modern Shakespeare scholarship. For a long time, editors created "conflated editions" of plays that were available in both quarto and folio editions. Simply put, the editor looked at both the quarto and folio texts and somehow combined them: lines that appeared in one edition but not in the other might end up in the conflated edition.