@kasdeya For anyone wondering, here is the original post:

https://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/726634851585916928/one-of-my-favourite-bits-of-media-history-trivia

@Tooden @kasdeya or even have *had* standardized spelling yet, right? Weren't they both writing through the time when the idea that there was a "correct" way to write a given word the was just starting to become a thing? And Webster wasn't until nearly 200 years later IIRC...

@kasdeya @Catfish_Man The Shakespeare Stealer is a fun kids’ book on this premise!

@kasdeya MEDIA PRESERVATION IS FOREVER

@kasdeya @jsstaedtler “You wouldn’t steal a carriage”

@kasdeya Reminds me of Mozart rolling into the Vatican and copying that piece of music.

(Which I am not 100% sure is 100% true, but it’s still a great story.)

@kasdeya @siracusa I was taught that the primary sources were actors, as different printings are pretty complete of one (set of characters) but not others.

Not sure how well that surreptitious shorthand stuff works with inkwells.

@kasdeya @volpeon elizabethan camrip lmao

@kasdeya since Shakespeare’s role as Royal playwright was partly as a PR department for the Queen, it may be that pirate copies of the play were not discouraged. For example, when Elizabeth wanted to bring in a commercial banking system using Jewish bankers, he was commissioned to write the Merchant of Venice to demonstrate how the new banking system would operate.

The play was intended to educate the provincial English who had never borrowed from banks before and didn’t understand interest.

@arrrg @kasdeya Don't they have to deliver DRM-free versions to reference libraries?

@OrionKidder @kasdeya Hamlet’s soliloquy is totally deranged. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/Ham_Q1/scene/7/index.html#tln-1710

@kasdeya Is this backed up by any proof?

@kasdeya Sometimes one of the actors would earn a bit extra on the side by reciting the play to a copyist. Where authorized versions exist for comparison, you can even tell which role/s the reciter played: their lines are perfect, lines for which they are onstage are pretty accurate, and scenes where they don't appear are sketchy as.