Abstract
Today, playwrights enjoy some of the most extensive and stringent copyright protection of any creators. However, when copyright was first introduced into Anglo-American law, playwrights were not even included under copyright's scope. How did copyright law evolve to provide such strict protections to performed works?
Through examining British and American copyright cases and statutes, as well as in-depth research into theatrical history and legal history, this project explores how theater and copyright influence, and continue to influence, each other, to the point that theater makers were able to change the way copyright law is understood and defined in modern law.
By examining primary historical documents and analyzing secondary literature, a narrative of co-evolution emerges, by which copyright law and theater mutually developed into the strong economic and creative protections we see today. From the collaborative, honor-based system enjoyed by playwrights of Shakespeare and Marlowe to the intense legal moral rights campaign by Samuel Beckett, theatrical copyright has undergone numerous changes with profound impacts on broader copyright law and the theater industry.
This project suggests a new way to look at the complicated evolution of copyright law, with theater and theatrical copyright as some of the main drivers of change. By looking at the past three centuries of copyright legislation and litigation, it is possible to discover whom modern playwrights and creatives owe their copyright protection to.