ABSTRACT
Four hundred years ago Shakespeare was a living person who wrote plays and poems, lived under the laws of England, including censorship and copyright laws substantially different from those in the 21st century, and willed his property to his legal heirs when he died. Authorial copyright has become predominantly an inheritance right. Unless a person writes something when they are quite young and lives for a long time, the period of copyright protection after they are dead will be longer than the period of copyright protection they enjoyed while they were alive. The integrity right recognized by copyright law was rather more patchwork in Shakespeare’s time. Shakespeare took up, dismembered, and rearranged other people’s works at will.
