Earlier today I had a discussion with a young woman who was, oddly enough, quite passionate in her distaste for William Shakespeare’s plays. Though she had no opinion on his poems, she opined that, when she saw in her studies that virtually all of his plays were based on earlier sources, he was clearly a plagiarist and thus not worth her time.
Anybody agree? If yes, why? If not, why not?
There’s this strange attitude that an artist must create everything NEW, and that re-working of prior material/text/techniques somehow lessens the art. Shakespeare does indeed use pre-existing plots, which he re-works considrably. I don’t think that’s plagiarism, not in the least. The same logic would say that Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel is plagiarism because he’s just illustrating stories that everyone knows. The same logic would say that it’s suppose every illustrator, or painter who has painted an illustration, is similarly “a plagiarist.” The same logic would say that “La Boheme” is plagiarised from an original story by someone else. And so on.
Nonsense.
And the other side of the coin: people who have that sort of view of art often love pure shite, simply because it’s completely innovative. Mere novelty (for it’s own sake) doth not necessarily make for good art. There’s a lot of that stuff around nowadays, even in places like the Chicago Art Institute.
The interesting thing about such claims is that the stories Shakespeare borrowed are pretty hokey and preposterous when stripped of the masterful verse and prose he created to tell them. With his words Shakespeare gave immortality to tales that would have otherwise been only known today by a few crusty old scholars.
Here’s a counter argument: The one Shakspeare play that doesn’t have sources written by others is The Merry Wives of Windsor. While it’s a perfectly fine play, I don;t think you’ll find ayone swho will say that it’s Shakespeare’s best play.
I agree with every word in the preceding three posts. Shakespeare was a genius, and we’re blessed to have him as part of our cultural heritage.
It’s a silly argument. There are only a limited number of plots, anyway, and if the originals were so good why aren’t they performed today?
It also shows complete ignorance was to what the word “plagiarism” means – which is taking the actual words of another and using them as your own.
Is Richard III plagiarized? Are all the history plays plagiarized? Somebody (not you Skald) needs a dictionary.
Actually I DO need a new dictionary. Someone stole my hard-copy Merriam-Webster’s, and I can’t find the CD for the computer version, and I absolutely hate the app that came with my newest laptops, and…
Oh, that.
I am cringing at the pretension that goes into using this word, but I can’t think of an alternative, so I’m going ahead: that’s very presentist. She’s judging a writer who was active in the late 16th and early 17th century according to the standards of the 21st century, which isn’t reasonable or fair. Shakespeare was not a plagiarist because he did not taking credit for the work of others. Much of his work was either based on popular works of history or famous historical events or adaptations of classic stories, and writers today still do those all the time. He took a lot of stories from classic poetry or Greek and Roman theater, and my understanding is that that’s what dramatists were expected to do at that time: show their erudition by adapting the stuff everybody knew was the best. Coming up with your own material wasn’t seen as the virtue it is today. Educated people who saw his plays would have known his source material. Today his sources might be credited the way a movie based on a Shakespeare play includes a ‘based on the play by William Shakespeare’ credit, but at the time they didn’t do that.
And generally speaking, Shakespeare didn’t come up with his own plots, but let’s not pretend that’s the only thing that counts. He often made huge changes to his historical or literary source material and made the characters much deeper and more interesting and added twists and complexity to the plots. Even if the story came from somewhere else, he contributed more than a little. And the most notable thing about his plays is usually the language, not the plot - and that language was part of Shakespeare’s contribution.
I just saw a clip from something, YouTube, a reality show, a moron’s convention, whatever, in which some doofus deliberately dove into a large cactus.
This young women is even stupider than that.
Nothing pretentious about it, especially since it’s an important concept (though there isn’t any agreed-upon term for that sort of thinking). When you talk about the past, they bring their own unstated assumptions into their analysis; a good historian will question his own assumptions.
But generally, the hardest thing for people to internalize is the concept that people in the past thought differently than we do. We have our unstated assumptions and, for instance, people thinking about Shakespeare’s times then to assume that people went to sleep about the same time they do now, even though they usually went to bed as soon as it got dark (candles were expensive). People also assume that city streets were lit, unless they know about linkboys.
Now, if you point out to people that there were no streetlights in 17th century London, they’ll get all huffy and say “Of course I know that.” But they still think of things as though streetlights existed.
It isn’t plagiarism to use a basic idea or plot that’s been used before. That’s not what the word means, and if it did then nearly every writer would be guilty of plagiarism. There are arguably only a few basic plots in all of literature, although there’s disagreement as to exactly how many there are. Here’s TVTropes on The Seven Basic Plots, but really any TVTropes page shows that the same ideas tend to pop up in many different works. Even with fairly specific ideas like “young protagonist attends a school for witches and/or wizards” it’s pretty easy to think of many works that fit the description: A Wizard of Earthsea, Equal Rites, The Worst Witch, Harry Potter, etc.
If it *were *wrong to recycle someone else’s plots then Shakespeare is “more sinned against than sinning” because people have been recycling his plots and even borrowing his exact words (as I just did) for centuries. We only know of 37 Shakespeare plays, but there must be far more than 37 derivative works based directly on Romeo and Juliet alone. If Wikipedia is correct you could get more than halfway there just with operas based on Romeo and Juliet – it says there are at least 24 of them.
I’m glad you used the term, since I was thinking of the less precise ‘cultural relativism.’
Please tell that silly little girl to read the “original”. Then read Shakespeares version. Then come back with her views.
A person who desires meets what he/she desires. Comedy or tragedy ensue. That is the only plot.
I agree it’s a real concept. The term just makes me cringe.
That only works if she knows Klingon.
When I saw Hollywood’s Amadeus, I was intrigued by the story. The next day I went to the library (this was pre-internet times)and checked out everything on Mozart’s life. Read it all in an effort to know the truth. What I discovered is that everyone’s history is different. And I recalled the death of JFK, a recent happening, and we still don’t know what happened then. The same is true with Stratford on Avon. We have no clue what really happened. It seems to come down to “ya see what ya wanna see, and you hear what ya wanna hear.”
The plagiarism charge seems bizarre, especially since Shakespeare often chose familiar stories not because he lacked the imagination to devise a novel plot, but because using a familiar story made the plays easier to enjoy. (Today, don’t most playgoers read a play or its summary before attending?) One wonders where such charges of copying come from. (Even Einstein – one of the most creative scientists ever – is often accused of just using others’ work. :smack: )
BTW, there was a related charge levied in 1592:
[QUOTE=Robert Greene in Groats-worth of Witte]
… there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you: and beeing an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey.
[/QUOTE]
AFAIK, this accusation has never been satisfactorily explained.
My answer to the actual question is #3: I don’t agree at all; people who make that allegation don’t understand what plagiarism is..
However, because of the limitations of the poll, my answer to the poll is #6: Why aren’t we being offered something sweet to eat?
Because I have my priorities straight, that’s why.
