Re: Copyright in Arrangement (Was: Re: Academics and coursepacks)

On Fri, July 24, 1998, Amy Stoller <redherring[_at_]tuna.net> wrote:
>
> Bob Cumbow <cumbr[_at_]perkinscoie.com> wrote:
> >
> > Apropos the string about copyright claims in a "new" edition of
> > Shakespeare, Michael Scarpitti <mscarpit[_at_]asnt.org> wrote, in part:
> > >
> > > In my analogy, I did not say that no-one had ever attempted to
> > > reconstruct the ruins, only that they were ruins.
> >
> > This ignores Amy Stoller's absolutely correct point that later
> > publications of Shakespeare's plays were emphatically NOT based on
> > fragments, or "ruins", but on the work of Heminges and Condel,
> > actors who had performed the plays themselves, knew the lines, and
> > had both their memories and their scripts to work from. We are not
> > talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls here. Editions of Shakespeare's
> > plays are no more a "reconstruction" than editions of Homer,
> > Sophocles, Dante, Chaucer, or Ben Jonson. Yes, there are some
> > spurious passages and variant readings. That's also true of
> > Joyce's Ulysses and lots of other works of literature. It doesn't
> > mean that any "new" edition that differs in some respects is a
> > "reconstruction" of "ruins".
>
> Thank you, Bob. I couldn't have put it better myself (though I did
> give it the old college try).

I have looked at the introduction to both the Oxford and Riverside Shakespeare. Anyone who feels that the original quartos and folios are sufficient to supply a complete public domain text are seriously mistaken. The modern editors of these plays have made unique and original documents. If that does not qualify as authorship in the broad sense, I do not know what would.

I am cabling OUP to get their own input on the matter.

As far as I am concerned, copying plays from the Oxford Shakespeare and distributing them to classes is totally illegal. If I were Dean in a college where this was going on I would have any teacher who did this fired!

Michael Scarpitti
<mscarpit[_at_]asnt.org> Received on Mon Jul 27 1998 - 00:21:25 GMT