Hello People, I am hoping you can help me. I would love to use Anne Boleyn's execution speech in my play. Should I steer well clear? Does the fact its from as far back as 1536 work in my favour, at all? Thanks in advance for your help. Its much appreciated. Pats.
That depends where you're taking it from - as you weren't actually present you must be using a secondary source for this speech, and if it is still in copyright (usually date of author's death + 70/75 years) then you will need to ask permission to quote from it, and then reference it as a source somewhere in the acknowledgements. If it is out of copyright and therefore public domain you can just reference it without needing to ask permission. You always need to acknowledge your sources though.
that's right... if you've gotten the speech you want to use from a movie or book that's under copyright and the author or screenwriter didn't quote her verbatim from contemporary sources written in her time, then you'd be using the copyrighted version and thus be plagiarizing someone's work, if you didn't obtain permission to use it... acknowledging the source of public domain material, while it can be and often is done, isn't legally necessary, however, especially if it's historically accepted speeches and such...
Edward Hall's account is in the public domain. You don't need to acknowledge it in a play or novel if you use the original words verbatim, or modernise them yourself.
