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PLAYWRITING:
A HANDBOOK
FOR WOULD-BE
DRAMATIC AUTHORS.
BY
A DRAMATIST.
LICENSING I have spoken about in a previous chapter. Every play must be licensed before performance, and all additions and alterations to old plays must also be licensed. Of course, this is practically needed only in the case of important alterations.
Registering is a very particular matter, and
should be paid great attention to. At Stationers' Hall, just
off Ludgate-hill, a book is kept for the registration of
"the proprietorship" in the copyright of books and plays,
and the assignment of such copyright ("copyright" here
includes "stageright.") The proprietor of the
copyright The mode of entry is by stating the title of
the play, the name and address of the author (yourself), the
name and address of the proprietor (also yourself), unless
you have sold the piece, in which case leave it to the
purchaser to do all this, and the date and place of its
first performance. For making this entry you must pay 5s.
After having registered your proprietorship,
you can, for another 5s., make another entry assigning your
right to anybody you like--to your wife, for instance, if
you are afraid of bankruptcy, or it is otherwise advisable
that you should get rid of your ownership in the piece.
This assignment by mere entry is quite as
legal and binding as though it had been done by formal deed,
and it saves the stamp.
Indeed, "registration" is the one point where
the law is really kind to authors. A simple entry in this
registry book, a certified copy of which can be had for five
shillings, is, as I have said, legal prima facie
evidence of ownership, whether as author or assignee, and it
rests upon the other side to prove that the entry is wrong.
A wrongful entry will be ordered to be
expunged from the book upon application to the Court by the
rightful proprietor, and the person who has made the
wrongful entry will be punished.
You are not compelled to make this
registration at all, and your not doing so will not damage
your rights in any way. But you cannot sue until such
registration has been made, so that the first thing your
solicitor will do, upon being instructed by you to proceed
against anyone for infringing your play, is to go to
Stationers' Hall and see that you are duly registered as
proprietor of the play. If it has not been done already he
will do it then, and that will be quite sufficient.
Titles are regarded as trade marks; you must
not use another man's title, nor a "colourable imitation,"
of it, for the same class of work. The principle upon which
the Court will act in the matter is that of preventing the
public from being deceived as to what work is really being
offered to them. You wouldnot be allowed just now to write a
three-act comic opera, and call it Dorothy,
because that would be a palpable attempt to trade upon the
popularity of the Prince of Wales's piece. But you would be
allowed (probably, not certainly) to call a melodrama or a
one-act farce Dorothy, because there could be
no pretence then that you were trying to make the public
believe that your play was Mr. Cellier's.
It would just depend upon the view the judge
took of the matter; and it would save trouble and bother if
you adopted some other title altogether.
I hope it will be needless for me to caution
you against writing anything immoral, or of a nature
calculated to bring public institutions into contempt
(please don't do this), or anything to injure or caricature
public or private individuals. If you write anything of this
kind the Lord Chamberlain will refuse to license it; or if
it does by chance slip through his fingers at the time of
reading, it will be prohibited afterwards (as the author of
The Happy Land, in which Messrs. Righton,
Fisher and Hill brought Mr. Gladstone and Messrs. Lowe and
Ayrton into contempt, could tell you).
The term for which your play is protected is
during your lifetime and for seven years afterwards, or for
forty-two years from the date of its first performance,
whichever period may be the longer. After this, it is public
property.
"Stageright" in a play is a legal property,
and can be assigned, or bequeathed, or, in fact, dealt with
just as any other form of property may be.
As regards international stageright, the
question is a big one, but I propose to go into it only so
far as English authors are affected.
At the end of 1887 a new copyright convention
came into operation as between England and certain foreign
countries. It has not really altered matters very much in
effect from what they were before; but it has done away with
a good deal of harassing detail formerly necessary to be
gone through, especially by foreign authors desiring to
secure copyright with us.
The countries included in the convention are
France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Haïti, Liberia
(wherever that may be), Tunis, and Switzerland. In those
nine countries the English author can secure a limited
stageright for his play, provided he publishes a translation
of his play in such country or countries within ten years
after its original production. If he allow the ten years to
go by without doing this, his play is public property in
those countries. The course of proceeding in each case will
depend upon the laws and customs of the particular country,
and can be carried out effectively only through some foreign
agent. Practically speaking, this part of the matter is
unimportant. English plays are rarely required abroad. The
boot is on the other foot.
Plays brought out in any of these countries
can likewise be protected in England, and, as this affects
the greater industry of adaptation, we must examine into the
matter.
The foreign author sells his British right to
an Englishman It need not be to an Englishman. It need not
be to anyone He, the foreign author, may carry the matter
through himself. But I am, for the sake of example, taking
the ordinary custom. The course that the English purchaser
had then to follow used to be a most expensive and dangerous
one, full of complicated formalities, the slightest bungling
over any one of which would ruin the whole work. (The rights
in Frou Frou were lost merely because Mr.
Edwards' translation was not, in parts, a sufficiently
literal one).
Literal translations had to be made and
published within given periods, copies lodged at the public
libraries, the work registered at Stationers' Hall, &c.,
&c., &c. All this is now needless, and it is only
required that a translation or adaptation of the original
foreign play be published in book form or produced at a
theatre within ten years from the date of its original
production abroad. If the ten years go by, and the piece is
neither published nor produced then anyone is at liberty to
use it.
It is not necessary now (as formerly it was)
that the foreign work should be registered in England before
translation or adaptation. It is sufficient for the play to
have been registered in the country of its origin, according
to the laws and customs of that country.
The purchaser's right to the foreign work
only lasts for ten years, but, when it is once "adapted,"
the adaptation becomes a play of itself, subject to all the
regulations and rights of an original work, and belongs to
the adapter or his assignee for the usual term of seven
years beyond the adapter's lifetime, or 42 years from the
first performance, whichever period may be the longer.
The Act finally proceeds to completely
stultify itself by expressly stating that it only prohibits
adaptations "with non-essential alterations, additions, or
abridgments so made as not to confer the character of a new
original work"; and it would thus appear to give the honest
purchaser very little for his money, as what is the use of
his purchasing the rights from the foreign author, and going
to all the trouble and expense of registering, translating,
&c., when, by making his adaptation a little freer than
usual, and hacking it about sufficiently to enable him to
argue that he had made "essential alterations, &c.," he
could take it for nothing. But, if the Act is framed
foolishly, the courts have decided to administer it wisely.
In "Wood v. Chart" the judge stated very clearly that
if the first and authorised adaptation had been in order,
and he had been asked to prohibit the second and
unauthorised adaptation on the ground of its being a
"piratical translation," he would have done so; and there is
no doubt that the legitimate proprietor of any adaptation
would be upheld by the courts in preventing the performance
of, to quote the judge's words, "anything like it--anything
approaching it."
With respect to all other foreign countries
except the nine named we can steal from them and they can
steal from us with impunity.
Our copyright and stageright relationships
with America are complicated and mysterious. I do not intend
to examine into them, as that would be of no practical use.
I shall content myself with merely stating the bare facts,
as they at present exist, without troubling you with the
reasons and explanations.
How the question stands generally, may be
judged by the following extract from "Morgan's Law of
Literature" (an American authority):--"It appears, first,
that an alien dramatic Author in the United States
practically and in effect receives precisely the same
protection in his literary property as the citizen can
receive in his; and, secondly, that by neglecting to comply
with our copyright laws the alien dramatic author can
actually enjoy greater privileges of protection in his
literary property than he could by complying with them."
So long as you do not publish your play in
book form, and sell copies, it cannot be played in America
without your consent. One method of dealing with it over
there is for you to sell your American rights to a citizen
of the United States. Such sale is generally a mere formal
matter, the purchaser being your agent, or the agent of the
English purchaser out there, and the purchase money being
merely nominal--one dollar or so. The piece is then played,
and your fees collected and remitted to you by the agent. Of
course, if you sell the piece for a sum down to some
American manager that simplifies the case. The usual custom,
however, is merely for an American manager to take the
piece, and remit you the agreed royalties in just the same
way as an English manager would.
The American author is not so fortunate as
his English brother. Any play produced first in America can
be stolen and played in England, as poor Dion Boucicault has
learned to his cost. To protect themselves from this robbery
American authors now produce their plays through some
hole-and- This method of acquiring the English
stageright is in accordance with the provisions of our
Dramatic Copyright Act, which gives to a foreign author the
full British right for his play, provided it be first
produced in this country.
I think I have now explained to you pretty
fully your legal rights, privileges, and protections as a
dramatist. How to enforce and maintain those rights,
privileges, and protections in a court of law--the steps
necessary to recover your fees, to prevent unauthorised
performance of your plays, to defeat infringement, to guard
against piracy or theft--this I do not propose to tell you.
It would necessitate a chapter much longer than the present
one, and be of no practical use. You could not conduct the
case yourself. You must put yourself in the hands of some
solicitor who has made a special study of copyright cases
(there are not too many lawyers who do thoroughly understand
this work. You will do well to make a careful selection). He
will know what to do, and will do it, and your knowing all
about it, too (even if your unlegally trained mind could
understand the process, which is doubtful) would be mere
surplusage.
All that it is needful for you to grasp with
reference to the matter is (1) That if any person shall play
any dramatic piece, or any part of it, without the consent
in writing of the proprietor (or his agent), at any place of
dramatic entertainment in Her Majesty's dominions, that
person shall be liable to payment of various penalties and
damages. (2) That every action for any offence or injury
must be brought within twelve months after the offence is
committed.