new-insight-into-shakespeares-writingnew-insight-into-shakespeares-writing(Historians believe William Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564, and died on the same day in 1616.)
Alright, I’ll admit before I even start: it is intimidating to write about the writing of William Shakespeare, widely considered to be the greatest writer in the history of the world. I fully realize my headline places my humble scribblings leagues out of his league. By the way, a “league,” as an archaic unit of measurement, is three miles, the distance an average person can walk in an hour. “League” in its most common modern usage is a group of teams in an athletic conference, all according to Wikipedia. Dang! There I go again! Can you believe I actually referenced Wikipedia? Everybody knows you can’t believe anything you read on Wikipedia!
Okay, I’m going to stop worrying about dotting every i and crossing every t! To use a cliché, I will cut to the chase! Thu-Huon Ha, on Feb. 8, 2018, on the internet, published an article he wrote, saying, “Software used to catch cheating college students has a new use: As a tool to study one of the world’s most famous playwrights.” He cites a newly-published book, edited by Dennis McCarthy and June Schlueter, entitled “A Brief Discourse of Rebellion and Rebels” by George North: A Newly Uncovered Manuscript Source for Shakespeare’s Plays.” It was released Feb. 16 (2018) from D.S. Brewer, an imprint of Boydell & Brewer.
The article indicates that scholars long have accepted that Shakespeare’s plays often featured plots and characters “borrowed,” so to speak, from others, but also elevated in quality via Shakespeare’s own writing. What apparently is new is previously undiscovered connections to both the similar language and matching context of some of Shakespeare’s “borrowing.”
McCarthy, co-editor of the new book, “insists that this finding doesn’t bolster the theory that Shakespeare didn’t exist or the idea that he was a rampant plagiarist.”
The greatest message I take from all this is that Shakespeare’s motivations in his day and our standards of appropriateness in not appropriating someone else’s writing as our own come from very different mindsets. Our modern thinking insists that creative writing must be completely original. Shakespeare wrote for a company of actors who regularly needed new material. Therefore, “borrowing” a plot here or even some language there was considered to be acceptable then. Our modern mindset abhors the concept of plagiarism, which comes from the Latin word “plagarius,” essentially meaning “kidnapper.”
My point is not that we should soften our modern standards concerning plagiarism. My point is that we must understand that Shakespeare’s goal was not that he would be considered the greatest writer of all-time, but rather to have the next new show ready for its premier on the next Saturday night! Writers weren’t paid royalties four to five centuries ago. We can’t look back and say how awful, when we aren’t the ones who had to have that new play ready and nobody seemed to care that his inspiration was a little more ready-to-use than most. It remains quite clear that Shakespeare knew how to turn a phrase!
Next: More thoughts on “borrowing” from other writers…