# Do you consider William Shakespeare a plagiarist? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 9, 2013, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-consider-william-shakespeare-a-plagiarist/652445 "2013-03-09T00:40:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2013, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-consider-william-shakespeare-a-plagiarist/652445/41 "2013-03-09T18:52:44Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > 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. True, but there are other plays that are almost totally original and are much better-liked - The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2013, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-consider-william-shakespeare-a-plagiarist/652445/42 "2013-03-09T23:35:01Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > True, but there are other plays that are almost totally original and are much better-liked - The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example. Collectively known as Ovid’s [Metamorphoses](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphoses_(poem)#Inspirations_and_adaptations) 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![NAF1138](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naf1138/32/3245_2.png) [@NAF1138](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NAF1138)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2013, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-consider-william-shakespeare-a-plagiarist/652445/43 "2013-03-09T23:52:59Z")
Midsummer and The Tempest are REALLY far from Ovid. There is influence there but the main plots of both plays are almost completely original. The drawing together of previously created materials into pastiche is kind of a sub theme in The Tempest (particularly important if you view the play, as I do, as primarily functioning as Shakespeare reflecting on his own life an career) and in midsummer Pyramis and Thisbe functions only as the “play within the play” and is chosen specifically because it is the type of well known story that a troupe of amateurs would attempt to mount at a summer festival. The joke doesn’t work if Shakespeare creates an original play for them to perform. And Marley is right, they are considered two of his finest works. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2013, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-consider-william-shakespeare-a-plagiarist/652445/44 "2013-03-10T00:22:17Z")
> [@NAF1138](#): > > Midsummer and The Tempest are REALLY far from Ovid. There is influence there but the main plots of both plays are almost completely original. Thus the smiley. (Which I never use, and I swear I’ll never use again since they apparently don’t work.) ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2013, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-consider-william-shakespeare-a-plagiarist/652445/45 "2013-03-10T00:24:30Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > Thus the smiley. (Which I never use, and I swear I’ll never use again since they apparently don’t work.) You just have to use enough! :):)🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2013, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-consider-william-shakespeare-a-plagiarist/652445/46 "2013-03-10T00:24:44Z")
If it turned out that the works were really written by his neighbor, Burt Jackson of _Burt’s Fyne Used Cartes (Wherefore Thy Good Employment is Thine Credit)_, whose unpublished works Shakespeare found at an estate sale and signed his name to and pretended were his, THAT would be plagiarism. There’s precious little evidence that Shakespeare did much of anything where his plays were concerned and (of course) many scholars doubt he even wrote them (which is where I thought the OP was probably going to go- they were really Bacon or Marlowe or whoever’s in vogue with the non-Stratfordian camps) but there’s absolutely no evidence he claimed they were 100% original in concept. ---
**Author:** ![NAF1138](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naf1138/32/3245_2.png) [@NAF1138](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NAF1138)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2013, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-consider-william-shakespeare-a-plagiarist/652445/47 "2013-03-10T02:17:55Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > Thus the smiley. (Which I never use, and I swear I’ll never use again since they apparently don’t work.) :smack: I swear I usually pick up on that stuff. Color me wooshed. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2013, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-consider-william-shakespeare-a-plagiarist/652445/48 "2013-03-10T02:30:10Z")
What really pisses me off about Shakespeare is that he totally stole “Sigh no more, ladies” from Jonathan Coulton without attribution. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2013, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-consider-william-shakespeare-a-plagiarist/652445/49 "2013-03-10T15:33:00Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > There’s precious little evidence that Shakespeare did much of anything where his plays were concerned and (of course) many scholars doubt he even wrote them (which is where I thought the OP was probably going to go- they were really Bacon or Marlowe or whoever’s in vogue with the non-Stratfordian camps) but there’s absolutely no evidence he claimed they were 100% original in concept. “Many scholars” don’t doubt anything of the sort – at least not scholars of Shakespeare. The Shakespeare authorship controversy is strictly an amateur hobby. (See James Shapiro’s excellent [Contested Will](http://www.amazon.com/Contested-Will-Who-Wrote-Shakespeare/dp/B0048ELD4G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362928269) for a full history of alternate Shakespeare authorship theories, and for the reasons why scholars in the field do not take them seriously. Shapiro overstates some points – I would disagree with his claim that early modern literature in general is not autobiographical, although it’s fair to say that early modern _plays_ are not – but in general, it’s an interesting and informative read.) There are some bona fide authorship debates in Shakespeare studies, but they involve less sexy topics like “which bits of _Two Noble Kinsmen_ are by Shakespeare and which are by John Fletcher?” Collaboration was common, and often unacknowledged, in the early modern theatrical world; using an actual living person as a frontman was not. (And I think I have just kicked a hornet’s nest that I have sworn never to kick again. However, I challenge anyone who takes issue with this post to find a single example of a scholar of English or theater studies who is 1) currently living; 2) employed at a reputable academic institution; and 3) a specialist in 16th and 17th century drama, who seriously questions whether Shakespeare wrote his own plays. And it ain’t 'cos the Stratfordians had 'em all assassinated, either :)) ---
**Author:** ![Katriona](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/katriona/32/113_2.png) [@Katriona](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katriona)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2013, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-consider-william-shakespeare-a-plagiarist/652445/50 "2013-03-10T17:07:09Z")
I don’t think he’s any more of a plagiarist than the people who create musicals from movies (Legally Blonde, Spamalot, etc.). That said, I loathe his “histories.” I know he didn’t exactly have much of a choice, but some of the Tudor propaganda is nauseating. ---
**Author:** ![gracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e7dd6/32.png) [@gracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gracer)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2013, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-consider-william-shakespeare-a-plagiarist/652445/51 "2013-03-10T21:15:58Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > 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? What studies? This makes me a little curious. She studies his works… so did she read anything? Watch any plays? She thinks that is the same as some of the stuff some other dude wrote? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2013, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-consider-william-shakespeare-a-plagiarist/652445/52 "2013-03-11T01:57:17Z")
Not that I think the woman you talked to would do this, but Marlowe’s _ **Jew of Malta** _ and Shakespeare’s _ **Merchant of Venice** _ are both easy to find. If she read both, I don’t think she would say Shakespeare plagiarized Marlowe in the least. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-consider-william-shakespeare-a-plagiarist/652445.md?page=2)