Page:Mr. Sidney Lee and the Baconians.djvu/14

 If such publication "was injurious to the receipts of the theatre," why did not the theatrical owners of Hamlet take steps to prevent rather than aid it? Then again Mr. Lee says:—"In the absence of any law of copyright, publishers defied the wishes of the owner of manuscripts" (p. 48), while on page 207 we read that As You Like It was entered on the Stationers' Registers for publication, and that "a prohibition was set on the publication" of that play and Every Man in his Humour by the Lord Chamberlain's men in 1600, and on page 245 that Antony and Cleopatra was also entered and licensed, but that "the company hindered the publication," and neither play appeared in print till the First Folio was issued! If there was no copyright or no remedy at common law, how were these stoppages possible? "Mr., Lee's ideas of the contemporary copyright laws are as unsound as his notions of ecclesiastical law affecting marriage. There was no difficulty in the law. The common law protected literary work just as did the copyright act, which was merely declaratory of it" (Yeatman). "There is plenty of evidence," says Greg, "to show that the author or proprietor of a literary work could, in some cases at least, prevent unauthorised publication." How does Mr. Lee explain Shakspere's failure to take advantage of this right?

On page 264 Mr. Lee says:—"But until 1614 he (Shakspere) paid frequent visits to London, where friends in sympathy with his work were alone to be found," and on page 258, "There seems little doubt that he left with the manager of his company unfinished drafts of more than one play." In support of these statements there is not a particle of evidence. The only plays possible after i5ii were The Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII., in which even Mr. Lee can trace only a few scenes that might have been Shakespeare's. And these he magnifies into "drafts," describing two plays as "more than one play."