Performing Copyright: Law, Theatre and Authorship by Luke McDonagh, and: Owning Performance | Performing Ownership: Literary Property and The Eighteenth-Century British Stage by Jane Wessel, and: Copyright and the Value of Performance, 1770–1911 by Derek Miller, and: Negotiating Copyright in the American Theatre: 1856–1951 by Brent Salter (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Performing Copyright: Law, Theatre and Authorship by Luke McDonagh, and: Owning Performance | Performing Ownership: Literary Property and The Eighteenth-Century British Stage by Jane Wessel, and: Copyright and the Value of Performance, 1770–1911 by Derek Miller, and: Negotiating Copyright in the American Theatre: 1856–1951 by Brent Salter
• Elena Cooper

PERFORMING COPYRIGHT: LAW, THEATRE AND AUTHORSHIP. By Luke McDonagh. Oxford, UK: Hart Publishing/Bloomsbury, 2021; pp. 256. OWNING PERFORMANCE | PERFORMING OWNERSHIP: LITERARY PROPERTY AND THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH STAGE. By Jane Wessel. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2022; pp. 228. COPYRIGHT AND THE VALUE OF PERFORMANCE, 1770–1911. By Derek Miller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018; pp. 289. NEGOTIATING COPYRIGHT IN THE AMERICAN THEATRE: 1856–1951. By Brent Salter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022; pp. 280.

What is the relationship between copyright law and the theatre, both today and historically? How does law influence the theatre and how does the theatre shape the law? Until recently, there was relatively little in-depth and longitudinal literature addressing these questions (an exception being Anthea Kraut's Choreographing Copyright [2015], about nineteenth-century dance and US copyright). Copyright scholarship saw a historical turn in the late 1990s, following the publication of the now seminal The Making of Modern Intellectual Property Law by Brad Sherman and Lionel Bently (1999). Copyright history soon became a burgeoning interdisciplinary field drawing together scholars from law and the humanities, primarily literature and book history; the focus was long on the history of laws protecting books and literary works as the first subject matter protected by copyright. It was only in 2018 that the first monograph-length studies of copyright protecting the visual arts were published (Elena Cooper's Art and Modern Copyright and Katie Scott's Becoming Property), which illustrated that a shift in focus to new subject matter—the visual arts—could provide new and distinct perspectives on copyright history. Such scholarship also implicitly highlighted the continued absence of scholarship in theatre. What new perspectives might be gleaned from a history of dramatic copyright and theatre centered on the value of ephemeral performance?

In view of these long-standing gaps in the scholarship on theatre and copyright, the significance of four recently published monographs cannot be stressed enough. These studies by legal scholar Luke McDonagh, humanities scholars Derek Miller and Jane Wessel, and Brent Salter, a scholar with both legal and humanities training, offer specific insights into the relationship between law and theatre across different periods, from the sixteenth century to present day. Their works also demonstrate, through their originality and broad range of source material and methods, the scholarly value of interdisciplinary perspectives on theatre.

McDonagh's Performing Copyright focuses on copyright and theatre in the UK today, although it also includes a historical chapter and comparative legal analysis, including comparisons with US law. Wessel's Owning Performance | Performing Ownership concerns copyright and the theatre in Britain in the long eighteenth century, from the reopening of theatres in 1660 to the introduction of statutory performance rights in the UK by the 1833 Dramatic Literary Property Act. Miller's Copyright and the Value of Performance uncovers the history of copyright and the theatre in both Britain and the US, from the Restoration until the statutory codification of copyright at the beginning of the twentieth century. Finally, Salter's Negotiating Copyright concerns US theatre and the law, including but not limited to copyright law, from the advent of US statutory performance rights in 1856 to the mid-twentieth century. Taken together, these studies cover a longitudinal period [End Page 408] of four hundred years during which there were significant legal changes. What insights into the dynamics of the legal regulation of the theatre can we gain by reading these studies together?

In Elizabethan Britain, as McDonagh indicates, theatre was characterized by "collaborative theatricality": the "polyvocal" contributions of playwrights, actors, musicians, costumers, prompters (who altered the script), and managers (23, 30); there was no assumption that the playwright occupied a privileged position in this process. With regard to legal rights, the playwright owned the manuscript—as a unique copy—which an acting company could purchase for a flat fee (between £6-10) and that payment...