A posse ad esse

I started this post with a Latin Phrase that roughly translated means “from possibility to actuality.”  I still think of Latin as a power Language, and at the least intriguing, but this particular phrase encompasses the dilemma that I will address.  In my last post I posed questions about the plagiarisms of Shakespeare.  In my class we began discussing that, and my professor pointed out that while Shakespeare did clearly take many of his ideas from other works, many of the ideas were taken from works written in other languages.  As a by-product of his Renaissance education Shakespeare was skilled at analyzing which specific aspects of a work, even when in a language like Latin, made the work into a success.  Honestly, I covet this ability and think that it ought to be the focus of modern English education much more often than it is, but I digress.  Shakespeare utilized this model to heist the concepts he found most effective and to re-imagine them in his own way; in this way Shakespeare took a possibility and molded it into actuality.  For instance, the story of Hamlet closely follows that of Saxo Grammaticus’s Hisotria Danica, yet in my review of it I noticed that where Saxo’s work turned graphic, Shakespeare erred on the side of caution.

Finding out the protagonists intentions:

Hamlet = Ophelia                                 Danica = a Harlot

Killing Polonius:

Hamlet = stabbed                                 Danica = cut into pieces and dropped in the sewer

The End:

Hamlet = a duel and poison                  Danica = a Holocaust, and a vengeful second wife

The more tempered approach utilized by Shakespeare has had a longer lasting appeal, which really does say volumes about the limitations of creative expression.  Returning to my focus, while core features of the stories are the same, or similar, the interpretation of the events is different.  Interestingly, in looking up the definition of plagiarism the Encyclopedia Britannica defined it thus:
     The act of taking the writings of another person and passing them off as one’s own.
But also contained an intriguing closing comment that stated:

     If only thoughts are duplicated, expressed in different words, there is no breach of contract.

So, in this context is Shakespeare really a plagiarist? Or was he simply a really good reader, both of texts and audiences?