Eschewing Credit: Heywood, Shakespeare, and Plagiarism before Copyright

How, in a textual system which lacks a concept of authorial/intellectual property, and which operates largely through techniques of imitation, can there be such a thing as "plagiarism"? Can there be such a thing? What is being stolen? By whom? How? And how might it be useful to those of us living at the hypostasization of authorial/intellectual property at the end of the twentieth century to consider its prehistory in the early seventeenth?

We have evidence that the problem existed. Or rather, a version of it did, insofar as there are extant seventeenth-century references to "plagiaries"--that is, people who misappropriate texts. Some of those references occur in attacks against practices of textual misappropriation which are themselves word-for-word reproductions or translations of other texts, entirely without attribution. Perhaps the most famous such case is Ben Jonson's Discoveries, which has been condemned as plagiarism since Dryden, because even as he decries those who use other's words excessively, even wantonly, Jonson himself is "merely" lifting and reproducing extant arguments--that is to say, he practices what he preaches against. Richard Burt makes a compelling case for the extent to which Jonson's practice is in fact traceable to the dialectic between literary and critical production evident throughout Jonson's writing, and in particular Jonson's strategies for legitimating his critical practice. ¹

Other early modern references invoke the afterlife of a writer's own literary productions. For instance, Petrarch, over a century earlier, devotes one of his "Letters of Old Age" to an elaborate discussion of having received, from a friend, a text printed under his (Petrarch's) name. The friend, apparently, has been unable to tell whether or not the text is Petrarch's and has appealed to the scholar to sort things out. Petrarch claims that after a bit of perusal he recognized that it was not in fact his work but someone else's:

You [Petrarch's correspondent, Lelius Angelo] write that recently you have seen a number of short works . . . bearing my name. You sent me the opening lines as well as enough lines of each for me to discern whether they were mine or another's. I laud your diligence, but marvel at your uncertainty. For when I glanced at them, I not only realized at once that they were not mine, but grieved and blushed, astonished that others could think them mine or that they caused you any doubt. Therefore, the people attributing them to me are doubly in the wrong: they rob their author of his work and burden me with what is not mine. If it is asked whom they are treating worse, that is rather difficult to decide. But if it involved some illustrious writer, obviously the one to whom some such thing is attributed against his will would be hurt more than the one from whom it was taken. For the one you rob of his work you would deprive of no more of his reputation than whatever that writing could have brought, whereas the one to whom you attribute another's work you will readily subject to undying disgrace and the judgment that whatever else he might have written well was accidental. It is one thing to take away from someone's praise, and quite another to pile dishonor on him; a great man will disdain the first, but hate the second. As for me, while I have a bit of the glory I hoped for and none of the glory I sought, still I would rather be diminished by this kind of robbery than thrive through one such gift; for I would rather that any grace of my own be hidden away than that another's disfigurements be struck and stamped on my own face. ²

The turn at this point in the letter is strange to modern eyes. Petrarch claims that he would much prefer to be "robbed" of his...