Nothing is Original

“It is good for the actors when they see their characters copied or portrayed in another form. If the part is played by a comedian, whether comically or tragically, if will gain fresh aspects.” - Bertolt Brecht

“The object of Art is to give life a shape.”
- Shakespeare

“Socrates defines imitation, develops two arguments against it, and finally proclaims that no mimetic poetry will be admitted into the city that the Republic is founding.”
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Plato’s Aesthetics

“The two formulas are before us: the naturalistic formula which makes the stage a study and picture of real life; and the conventional formula which makes the stage an amusement for the mind, an intellectual guessing came, an art of adjustment and symmetry regulated after a certain code. In face, everything depends on the idea one has of literature and of the drama in particular. If we admit that literature is an inquiry about things and human beings made by original minds, we are naturalists. If we pretend that literature is a framework superimposed on the truth, that a writer must make use of observation merely in order to exhibit his power of invention and arrangement, we are idealists and proclaim the necessity of conventionality.”
- Emile Zola