Folger Shakespeare Library

Right, so by that rule, someone could stage a theater production or movie of the exact text of one of Doyle's Sherlock Holmes books, but could not make anything similar to the characters and relationships of Holmes and Watson. Forever. And exactly how similar must the new production be? Can there be any deviation from the exact words written by Doyle? It seems your rule would certainly ban the excellent BBC production of Sherlock [0] What about Shakespeare? It seems this would ban the entire writing and production of West Side Story (of course a 1950's riff on Romeo and Juilet) [1,2]. That sounds like a permanent extension of copyright, with a limited media exception. [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018ttws [1] https://www.westsidestory.com/ [2] https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/west-side-story-20…

The Shakespeare Unlimited podcast of the Folger Library is my favourite podcast about Shakespeare, not only for the content, but also for the perfect audio quality (not so common among podcasts). In the latest episode they talk about the reopening of the library https://www.folger.edu/podcasts/shakespeare-unlimited/folger-reopening…

Synopsis of Shakespeare's Sonnet 4: > The poet returns to the idea of beauty as treasure that should be invested for profit. Here, the young man’s refusal to beget a child is likened to his spending inherited wealth on himself rather than investing it or sharing it generously. https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/shakespeares-sonnets…

Check out the spellings in the original folios though: https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeare-in-print/first-folio/bookre… Our school books have all had some (very helpful) translation work applied to the original text.

Source: https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/richard-ii/read/3/2/

- https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/writing-paper-expensive/

You will probably find this interesting https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/writing-paper-expensive/ > To put this in perspective, the average laborer making 6-12 pence a day could purchase up to 75 sheets of paper with a day’s wages.

Sure, but how many of them have 82 copies of the 1623 First Folio? https://www.folger.edu/collection-materials

Things are not inherently expensive. They are expensive relative to the other demands on one's finances. For the average person paper would indeed have been expensive but for those who had disposable income and a reason to use paper it would have felt less so. But it was certainly more expensive than it is now that 500 sheets of A4 at Tesco cost less than 5 GBP and that is one part in 6 400 of UK median annual household income. https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/writing-paper-expensive/ says that the going rate for a quire of ordinary paper was about 4d. Even in 1800 annual income for most people was under 20 pounds. So 500 sheets would cost one part in 60 of annual income (20 pounds * 240 pennies per pound/(4d per quire * 20 quires in 500)). That's about a hundred times more expensive in purchasing power terms. Presumably the further back you go the higher the price and the lower the income. But the poor didn't write so the comparison is far from exact. For the wealthy it would still have been more expensive than now but not importantly so.