Many know the name Oliver Goldsmith, the famous Irish playwright... few recognize, however, that he only ever wrote three plays. That’s right. Three. That is the entire canon of Goldsmith. Don't get me wrong. His plays are very funny, I've seen them all, even performed one once... But they are no funnier than the farces that are authored today, their characters are no richer, their plots no more clever. But when Goldsmith was writing (1770ish) there wasn't exactly a surplus of playwrights cracking out the hits.
The earth's population around then was 800 million. That sounds like a lot. But today our population is around 7 billion. Considerably higher, no? So it was much less daunting a task spreading his name across the populace. And after he had any kind of name, history became his publicist and now, the name is in every theatrical text book you can find. And originality wasn't an issue, because chances were good that if you came up with an idea for something you could act on it without being concerned that somewhere in the world someone else has the same idea at the same moment; cause the world was smaller.
BUT... What about now? When writers write or painters paint or whoever does what, there are 7 billion other people, which means at any given moment, there are a few people sitting at desks somewhere with the exact same idea and the exact same impetus to get it done. It's become an all-out rat-race to get your ideas in the public haunt quickest. And the ideas we get out there are under so much more scrutiny because chances are someone throughout our long history has had at least a similar idea.
What does this mean? Do we have to push the creative boundary? And strive for ideas that are so original that they seem foreign and implausible to the human tribe? Do we have to say enough is enough and just burn every piece of art created before 1850 so that we can take a fair crack at creating something that won't be held to history's standards.
Let's face it... through all the inventions and discoveries we've made: being a human is still the same now as it was in 400 B.C. when the Greeks were doing it. We still love the same way, we still fight the same way, we still hate those who have what we want the same way, we still want victory over our oppressors the same way... So we still produce art depicting the same humanity it did thousands of years ago... only the interface has changed.
In 159 B.C. Terence said
“There is nothing said that hasn’t already been said.”
In 1993 Tony Kushner said basically the same thing in his play Angels in America
“…it’s all been done before!”(And won the Tony, Drama Desk, and a Pulitzer for it)
How many times between the two do you think that has been restated?
