Technically might be plagiarism - no sense in denying that the Bard re-used elements of stories and characters that others had used before. Not plagiarism at the time, though - no one had any notion that any previous authors had any right to keep others from riffing on their work. Certainly not plagiarism in the sense that Shakespeare turned those stories into something completely different than what they had been.
No, he was not a plagiarist, even based on my modern definition, because plagiarism is stealing somebody else’s words, not their story and character ideas. Shakespeare was adapting the ideas of others with his own words.
Yeah, the argument is stupid. I chose the “more complicated answer” option because the “I don’t agree at all” option doesn’t quite encompass just how stupid the argument that Shakespeare was a plagarist is. By that line of reasoning, *The Crucible *was plagerized (historical event), *Star Wars *was plagerized (recycled plot), hell 9/10ths of everything is plagerized and the rest walks a very fine line going all the way back to the greeks and Oedipus (based on a well known folk story).
Now, if you want to make the argument that SOME of his plays walk a little too closely to their original sorce you can make that argument. It’s still stupid, but less stupid. *Hamlet *is more similar to its source material than Star Wars is, it’s also more similar than, say, Romeo and Juliet. But in that case you have to ask yourself if things like the hundreds of adaptations of Le Mis count as plagerism? So, you know, still stupid and it only applies to a small handful of his plays in the first place.
In the original Hamlet, the prince survives. And IIRC never acts insane. Macbeth historically was a fairly decent warlord who overthrew one King and also overthrown himself. No where near as compelling as Shakespeare.
I agree that he was a a plagiairist.
Earlier today I, oddly enough, discovered my distaste for William Shakespeare’s plays. Though I have no opinion on his poems, I decided that, when I saw in my studies that virtually all of his plays were based on earlier sources, he was clearly a plagiarist and thus not worth my time.
The whole reason Shakespeare is, well, Shakespeare - as Harold Bloom casts him " the first Modern Human" - is precisely because he took time-honored stories familiar to his audience and presented them in a revolutionary way. He gave the characters internal lives and complex individual motivations.
His reinterpretation of classic stories in a humanistic way is what makes him essential. Considering that plagiarism is missing the real insight on why he’s so great.
First, I don’t know where anyone gets the idea that plagiarism is limited to the written word- “art plagiarism” and “music plagiarism” are terms that have been around for a long time. Second, taking something old and making a substantive change to it does not appear to me to be plagiarism. So, is Shakespeare a plagiarist? Not even close.
Don’t be silly. It was just the final part of the of the “Dick” trilogy.
incidentally, Willy Wonka isn’t canon and is disregarded by serious scholars
I’m apparently completely original in believing that option 2 in the poll best encapsulates my feelings. Yes, Shakespeare stole a lot from other artists, so in that sense, there’s a sizable grain of truth in the statement “Shakespeare was a plagiarist”. But I don’t consider the fact of Shakespeare’s thefts to be at all problematic, since he turned what he stole into things far superior.
How do feel about Led Zeppelin or Picasso? The same?
Boy I am flummoxed that “plagiarism” is even an issue here.
I feel like Led Zeppelin stole music without crediting the original musicians.
Adaptation =/= plagiarism. If I were to write a play about the life of George Washington, that would certainly not be plagiarism, even by modern standards. (It would, of course, be considered gracious for me to acknowledge the historians and biographers whose work I used in researching the play, but I don’t think I would be under any absolute obligation to do so, as long as I wasn’t using their exact words.) If I were to write a romantic comedy with stock elements that I’d seen in lots of other romantic comedies, that would also not be plagiarism, even if I lifted a few plot points or situations wholesale from other works (like, say, writing something that is recognizably a “Cinderella story” but set in modern times). The first example is almost exactly analogous to what Shakespeare is doing in his history plays and many of his tragedies; the second example is closer to what he does in the comedies (most of which are not adapted point by point from an existing source, but much more loosely).
ETA: There are a few comedies that are more closely adapted from an existing source (e.g., As You Like It is a fairly close adaptation of Thomas Lodge’s prose romance Rosalynde, although Shakespeare throws in a few characters that are entirely his own invention), but even here, he isn’t doing anything that a modern-day screenwriter wouldn’t do – except he presumably didn’t pay Lodge for the rights. Still, it’s not as if he were living in a culture where anyone would be expected to pay for the right to adapt a published work.
If your play about George Washington closely followed the structure and content of an existing biography then that might get you into trouble, but simply using existing biographies for research would not.
A few years back the authors of the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail accused Dan Brown of plagiarizing their work in The DaVinci Code and sued for copyright violation. The judge ruled that Dan Brown did nothing wrong in making use of their ideas in his novel. Had Holy Blood, Holy Grail been published as a novel instead of a non-fiction work then they might have had a stronger case as they could have said they’d invented the ideas themselves rather than just uncovering (supposed) historic events, but either way copyright law doesn’t cover ideas but rather specific expressions of ideas.
Would you mind defining plagiarism, then? Because that’s not what plagiarism is. Nor is it a sensible way to evaluate art, but that’s another question.
This is how I feel. Just because Shakespeare used earlier sources for inspiration, doesn’t make him a plagiarist. He improved on those works. Enriched them, in most respects. Just because it was written earlier, it doesn’t automatically make it better.
I’m pretty sure that’s a joke – don’t ask plagiarized the complaint of the woman described in the OP.
I don’t know enough about either of those situations to make an informed judgment on them. In fact, this is the first I’ve heard of either being seriously accused of plagiarism.
Ah. :smack:
It is one of the few plays that is actually set in the conteporary setting of Elizabethian England, and anachronistically featuring the popular character of Sir John Falstaff. (Some argue that the appearnace of Falstaff dates the play during the reign of Henry IV, but aside from a brief reference of Prince Hal by one character there is no other indication and the other clues from the play contract this, so it appears that Shakespeare yanked Falstaff into the play without consideration for canon.) Shakespeare clearly wrote it on the quick to satisfy audience and patron with little concern for plotting or consistency.
Fully a third of Shakespeare’s plays are historical interpretations, and most others are either set in quasi-historical settings (Denmark, Verona, Athens, Sicily, et cetera) or in blatently fantastical settings, so there is a certain amount of borrowing of local legend and history that goes along with that (and taking great liberaliations to make them work as stories). In the medieval and Renissance theatre playrights and producers often worked for a single patron who would commission plays based upon historical events, mythology, or other plays; indeed, the entire notion of intellectual property–particularly in the sense of artistic expression in literaure and theatre–didn’t really exist until the 19th century. A playright who fully cribbed dialogue from another play might be seen as uninspired, but merely borrowing locations, plot developements, and even wholy named characters was hardly seen as any kind of ethical or intellectual failing; the only failing was doing something uninteresting with them. It also needs to be understand that fiction in the modern sense, i.e. a story rendered from whole cloth without reference to prior legond–was still developing as an art form, and was mostly relegated to satire and other forms of allegory.
Regardless, however unoriginal Shakespeare may or may not have been with regard to basic stories, it is unambiguous that as a user of language and coiner of neologisms he is unsurpassed in history. A list of some of the most common works either created or popularized in Shakespeare’s writing can be found here. There is a reason that “A ll quotations were either from the Bible or Shakespeare,” (bonus points for the reference); just a perusal through Hamlet shows many common phrases which originated in that play alone. In plays good and bad, the Bard’s use of language and innuendo was innovative and inspired, not only for its depth but for the way it rolls off the tongue. Orson Welles would never have to complain about Shakespeare being unpleasent and unrewarding to read.
Next up: why Einstein didn’t just rip off a bunch of other peoples’ ideas about relativity and quantum physics, wrap them up in a series of hastily written plageristic papers, and stormed into Stockholm demanding a dinner and his prize money.
Stranger