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26  ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR VISUAL ARTS, INC. 

v. GOLDSMITH 
KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Ecstasy of Influence, in Harper’s Magazine 61 (Feb. 2007).
Or  as  Mary  Shelley  once  wrote,  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
“creating out of [a] void.”  Frankenstein ix (1831).9 

Consider, in light of those authorial references, how the 
majority’s  factor  1  analysis  might  play  out  in  literature.
And  why  not  start  with  the  best?    Shakespeare  borrowed 
over and over and over.  See, e.g., 8 Narrative and Dramatic 
Sources  of  Shakespeare  351–352  (G.  Bullough  ed.  1975) 
(“Shakespeare  was  an  adapter  of  other  men’s  tales  and
plays;  he  liked  to  build  a  new  construction  on  something 
given”).  I could point to a whole slew of works, but let’s take
Romeo  and  Juliet  as  an  example.   Shakespeare’s  version
copied most directly from Arthur Brooke’s The Tragical His-
tory  of  Romeus  and  Juliet,  written  a  few  decades  earlier 
(though  of  course  Brooke  copied  from  someone,  and  that 
person copied from someone, and that person . . . going back 
at least to Ovid’s story about Pyramus and Thisbe).  Shake-
speare  took  plot,  characters,  themes,  even  passages:  The
friar’s line to Romeo, “Art thou a man? Thy form cries out
thou  art,”  appeared  in  Brooke  as  “Art  thou  a  man?  The 
shape saith so thou art.”  Bullough 387.  (Shakespeare was,
among other things, a good editor.)  Of course Shakespeare 
also added loads of genius, and so made the borrowed sto-
ries “uniquely Shakespearian.”  G. Williams, Shakespeare’s
Basic Plot Situation, 2 Shakespeare Quarterly No. 4, p. 313 
(Oct.  1951).  But  on  the  majority’s  analysis?  The  two 
works—Shakespeare’s and Brooke’s—are just two stories of 
star-crossed  lovers  written  for  commercial  gain.  Shake-
speare  would  not  qualify  for  fair  use;  he  would  not  even 

—————— 

9 OK, one last one: T. S. Eliot made the same point more, shall we say, 
poetically.  We  often  harp, he  wrote,  on  “the  poet’s  difference from  his 
predecessors.”   The  Sacred Wood  43  (1921).    “[But]  we shall  often  find
that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be
those  in  which  the  dead  poets,  his  ancestors,  assert  their  immortality 
most vigorously. . . . No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete mean-
ing alone.”  Id., at 43–44.