The Tragedy of Arthur_ A Novel - Arthur Phillips [86]
“But Shakespeare wrote it.”
“Yes, but if there is only one copy, then whoever has it has the right to do with it as they please.”
A few days after this conversation with my dad, I paid out of my own pocket for the opinion of a copyright lawyer in the United Kingdom, since questions of English eminent domain over the work of an English writer demanded an English solicitor. About two weeks later, the lawyer confirmed, with slightly more detail and legal terminology, what my father had discovered all those years before (see this page).
That day in the Family Hall, my dad called it “a fountain of copyrights.” You don’t own the copyright on the play, but you are the only party permitted to license anything to be printed or produced from that copy. No one can copy those derived licensed works; you copyright them. Other people have to go to some other copy if they want to make a free copy. And there isn’t any other copy.
“And no one is going to say we don’t own this copy.” He was now speaking very quietly and very slowly, in the limited-lip-motion monotone of a veteran co-conspirator. “You’re going to say Silvius gave it to you, and that’s all you know. He told you he found it in an attic in a house he owned. That’s where the only copy of the Titus Andronicus quarto was: an attic in Sweden! An attic. Your stepfather found it in an attic. That’s all you know. Doesn’t matter, because now you own it because he gave it to you. Nobody else has one. Nobody else has the right to it. Not in England, though, Sil didn’t find it in England, because maybe the Crown will claim it, and then we’re out of luck. Ely. He owned a little house in Ely once. There are records of that. Your stepfather found this quarto in the attic of his house in Ely, Minnesota. In the 1950s, in a house your stepfather owned outright.”
“And why didn’t this alleged stepfather of mine do anything with it for fifty years?”
“You have no idea why. What’s it to you? What’s it to them? Keep it simple. Stick to the truth. Much easier to remember.”
“But this isn’t the truth.”
“You’re missing the point. No one is going to be able to say this isn’t Shakespeare, because it is. That’s the truth. It’s got his name on it, the paper is authentic, the ink, all that. I’ve had it tested enough that I am sure. Fire photons at it, whatever you want—it’s real. And I’m confident that there aren’t any others in the world. If there are, we’re out of luck. A second copy turns up, and then ours is just nifty, not without some value, of course, a museum piece, fascinating, but the only money—the real money—is in having the only copy. An oil well. A gusher. A field of gushers. That’s what we have. What I’m giving you to manage for your mother and sister. And to make you famous as a writer.”
As Mr. Piers Strickland later clarified on the phone when I told him what the document in question was: “Every edition. Every version for theater use. Every school copy. Every audiotape. Every children’s illustrated edition with tear-out coloring pages in German or Swahili. Film. Film in Latvian. DVD sales in Malaysia.” Strickland was unknowingly echoing my dad, whose eyes became younger as he explained the loot he was leaving his poor misused family: “William Shakespeare just signed over to you one hundred percent of his worldwide profits on his newest play. On a play the world will be endlessly curious to read, see, evaluate, interpret, debate. Even if they hate it.”
“No, Dad, you’re forgetting. I’m sorry to ruin this. It’s not the only copy.”
“What? Really? Someone …” He was as sickened and horrified as I’d ever seen him. His hands fell to the table.
“You gave Dana that 1904 edition.”
And then he wheezed a little laughter and started to guffaw. “Jesus Christ, you almost gave me a stroke. No, no, I made that.”
“What? Why?”
He brushed off my idiotic question. “Please. I couldn’t walk around with a quarto. I couldn’t read a quarto on the bus. I didn’t want to damage it. If it was worth a hundred million