Is Shakespeare under copyright?

[Nightfly]

Hey all - New guy. I'm working on a screenplay of Macbeth in modern day. I know there's no problem with an interpretation but does anyone know if can I lift an entire passage verbatim? It's really important to the story. Thanks.

[Cyia]

Shakespeare is WAY outside the bounds of copyright.

[DavidZahir]

Absolutely. Legally you can do anything you like with it.

[Nightfly]

Okay. Thanks. Being that was the new guys first question - and I've a sense now it was probably a pretty obvious one (Here the veterans all slowly nodded there heads in earnest as they continued to read on) I wonder if I could ask a quick "copywrite" follow up to redeem myself. You see I've got this idea for a sitcom based on a piece by Chaucer and I was wondering...
Seriously though, Thanks

[ChristineR]

The original is way out of copyright, but any given edition, with modern spellings, attempts to correct printers errors, cleaning up the tags (names of characters that tell you who's speaking and which are frequently messed up in the original), merging of the various differences in old editions, etc. can be copyright. So don't just assume you can copy the text right out of a book. Try to find an edition that is itself out of copyright--their are many on the web.

In general, though it's not illegal to just quote a few lines of something, even if it's copyrighted.

[Medievalist]

For Mackers, if you use the First Folio you're fine. MIT has the entire text of the first folio online, as do other places. Both Coleridge and the first Oxford Shakespeare do odd things with the text; I'd avoid them.

And Christine is absolutely spot on correct; editions are copyright protected.

[ComicBent]

First, since no one has pointed it out, it is copyright, not copywrite.

While editions of Shakespeare are technically under copyright, your chance of having a problem just by quoting even an extensive passage is nil.

In general, the various editions of Shakespeare are built on one another. Editors use the emendations (changes, corrections) of other editors. There is a whole tradition of editing that goes back for centuries, and there are debates about whether a line should be corrected this way or that way. Many of the early printings, whether the First Folio or the the various Quartos, contained mistakes about which character was speaking. Spellings have been modernized. Sometimes guesswork is involved in what to do about a confusing line.

You do not have to limit yourself to the Folio or to nineteenth-century editions when you quote. In fact, you would be doing yourself and Shakespeare a disservice to try to use those original sources, which are full of errors that editors have puzzled over and corrected (maybe) through the centuries.

If I were you, I would look at two or three modern editions for my extended quotes. See if there are any significant differences. I do not think that you will find many differences. If so, you can decide which versions you want to use. But you are not prohibited from using modern spelling just because somebody put out a copyrighted edition of Shakespeare.

[fezfrascati]

Everyone loves to adapt Shakespeare specifically because it's in the public domain. As long as you are quoting the original text (and not something such as the SparkNotes "modern" translation), you can do whatever your heart desires.

[nmstevens]

Everyone loves to adapt Shakespeare specifically because it's in the public domain. As long as you are quoting the original text (and not something such as the SparkNotes "modern" translation), you can do whatever your heart desires.

And just as a matter of general interest, here's a link regarding *all* the rules regarding what is and is not under copyright and what is and is not in the public domain:

http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

NMS

[JohnM]

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page - Free E books, all the works are in the public domain. They have multiple versions of each of Shakespeare's plays.

[wrangler]

wrangler adores willie. an european, dead white male who is quite deserving of his reputation....he most definitely deserves his "name".