Copyright and the Value of Performance, 1770-1911

Description

In the nineteenth century, copyright law expanded to include performances of theatrical and musical works. These laws transformed how people made and consumed performances. Exploring precedent-setting litigation on both sides of the Atlantic, this book traces how courts developed definitions of theater and music to suit new performance rights laws. From Gilbert and Sullivan battling to protect The Mikado to Augustin Daly petitioning to control his spectacular 'railroad scene', artists worked with courts to refine vague legal language into clear, functional theories of drama, music, and performance. Through cases that ensnared figures including Lord Byron, Laura Keene, and Dion Boucicault, this book discovers how the law theorized central aspects of performance including embodiment, affect, audience response, and the relationship between scripts and performances. This history reveals how the advent of performance rights reshaped how we value performance both as an artistic medium and as property.

Derek Miller is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University, Massachusetts.

'Derek Miller's superb study examines how live performances of drama and music became objects of legally protected commodification between 1770 and 1911. In addition to his extended treatment of nearly a dozen major legal cases, Miller supplies a wealth of material from dozens of minor disputes as well as some wonderful archival finds from case files. Copyright and the Value of Performance will be important for literary and performance historians for its expanded account of what copyright is, was, and can be.' John Shanahan, Modern Drama