Shakespeare, pirates and honest prompters Bashny.Net

It turns out that for the English-speaking world, the term "piracy" in the sense of "copyright infringement" has been known since 1603. (This is one experience and the experience of the struggle!) It was then printed pirate text of the play "Hamlet". Good plays has always been sparse, and they were hunted competing theater companies or publishers. Therefore, the full text of the play writer trusted the most honest man in the company - prompter (is!). Each actor had on hand only your text, memorizing and rehearsing which was given just a few weeks. Whence could come play a pirate? Options - from transcribers sitting in the audience (but then there was no more of these specialists), or from the artists, learn by heart the text of the play during rehearsals.
It is known that the actor who plays in Shakespeare's theater leading roles were shareholders acting group Burbage, and selling them to the play would have been unprofitable. In the defendants are the actors in small roles. Comparing pirate text of "Hamlet" in 1603 and the one that produced the troupe in 1604, scientists may have found such an actor, he played Marcellus. The text of the role of the Marcellus coincides with the official full and correct other texts is highly dependent on what could remember and understand how a thief. Napimer in soliloquy "To be or not to be", where Hamlet lists disaster falls on the head of each death, a pirate from himself adds orphans suffering and hunger - that's the reason of theft! But just this character utters the words, "something rotten in the state of Denmark!».

After Shakespeare's death, two of his friend the actor published his "First Folio" in 1623, which included 36 plays. In the preface, they wrote that they took the trouble to "collecting and printing of his plays, including those that were previously warped in various stolen and illegally extracted texts, maimed and disfigured cheats and thieves, cheating publish them."