Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
If Shakespeare had been around today he'd probably be writing scripts for TV soap operas. His was very much the mass entertainment of his day, and he certainly wasn't writing as "art", but as a shareholder in a theatre company, as a commercial business, providing entertainment for the working classes of his day.
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Shakespeare was free to borrow from other plays, from every he had seen in his lifetime. Why do you think he created everything himself? What if he was just a good picker, able to put together many small themes invented by others? If copyright law was present in his time, he might not be able to "create" anything. At least without paying a horde of lawyers who would research where to license every line he wrote.