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 at Guy's Hospital, London, by an amateur company, for nurses and others connected with the hospital specially invited, it was held in 1884, in Duckz;. Bates, that though a performance may be public where the public are present, although no money is taken, yet the production in question was not a public representation. In this leading case, important as a precedent for America as well as in England, the decision was made by Justices Brett, M. R., and Bowen, L. J., Justice Fry dissenting, and the Master of the Rolls, in an elaborate opinion, discussed the relations of private and public performance, as a question of fact: "In order to entitle the author to penalties there must be a representation which will injure the author's right to money ; such, for instance, as a representation which, although it is not for profit, would attract persons who are willing to pay money, and would induce them not to go and see a performance licensed by the author. . . . The representation must be other than domestic or private. There must be present a sufficient part of the public who would go also to a performance licensed by the author as a commercial transaction. ... I wish to say, by way of warning, that those who go beyond the facts of the present case may incur the penalties of the statute."

Common law rights in an unpublished manuscript of an unperformed work, cover both copyright and playright. In 1894, in Gilbert v. Star, while the comic opera "His Excellency" was in manuscript and under rehearsal. Justice Chitty in the Court of Chancery granted an injunction against a newspaper report of the plot and incidents on the common law ground that its communication to the newspaper involved a breach of contract, thus confirming the right of an author to full control of his manuscript work fcocopyright as well as playright, upheld in Prince