The "good" and "bad" distinctions originate from A.W. Pollard, a scholar and editor in the early 20^th century, who divided the quartos in this way based on his assertions about legal authority: "good" quartos were ones that had been properly registered in the Stationer's Register and legitimately purchased from the acting company whereas "bad" quartos were illegally obtained and printed (Werstine n.p.). These distinctions were also combined with the assumption that "bad" quartos are, in most readers' opinions, "artistically inferior" to "good" quartos (Proudfoot et.al). "Bad"quartos also became associated, through W.W. Greg's research, with memorial reconstruction; Greg proposed that the variations in the "bad" quarto of the Merry Wives of Windsor were due to an actor's attempt to reconstruct the play from memory based on his own part and what he heard onstage (Werstine n.p.). Pollard and Greg's research, among others, made "author-centered Shakespeare editing" both the norm and the goal for the latter twentieth century (Werstine n.p.).

Much of Pollard and Greg's assertions have since been disproven by more recent scholarship. For example, "good" quartos were no more consistently entered into the Stationer's Register than "bad" ones and the publishing of plays was not profitable enough that publishers would have resorted to acquiring the rights illegally (Wernstine n.p.).Greg's assertion of memorial reconstruction, though likely in some cases to some extent, cannot be applied as widely as was originally assumed (Wernstine n.p.).