Stealing stories. if it was good enough for Shakespeare then it's good enough for me.

in ancient Greece the plays written by the great masters were all just their own version of the same story, told in their own way.
Most of Shakespeare's stories were around before he made them his own.
Like Romeo and Juliet "Its plot is based on an Italian tale, translated into verse as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562 and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1582. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both but, to expand the plot, developed supporting characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris."


So in this day and age most people would look down on a writer who "merely" wrote their own version of a story, not to mention the legal action that would take place if the story was still under copyright. But what makes it a problem for a modern author to "steal" a story if the greatest writer in the English language stole virtually all of his stories?


There is certainly an aversion to being unoriginal, and most people feel they need to write everything from scratch or they aren't original. But what other than the author's creativity and imagination distinguishes "the lord of the rings" from a buddy-cop movie? 


I think the idea to be completely original impedes many writers who would otherwise be honing their craft. a blank piece of paper is a very tall wall to climb, and when you could write anything then you cannot in fact write anything. to quote Ayn Rand "if something can be anything, it is actually nothing; if you feel, “Now I can write anything,” you will write nothing. Only when you have some specific entity in mind—some germ of a plot—can you make something out of something and begin to build." (Art of Fiction, 43)
I think that people who give the advice to start with a blank page and just start writing even if you are just writing gibberish, are giving very bad advice indeed. What beginning writers need is what people learning any profession need. They need to learn good habits and starting writing from an idea is a good habit. if that means taking a story from some other source than your own imagination then that is ok. One cannot expect a person just starting out in pottery class to turn out a Ming vase, or a kid with a guitar to write "yesterday" when he first sits down with the instrument. But this is what we expect from writers and what many writers end up expecting from themselves.


You cannot be too proud to steal a story and work to make it your own, if it was good enough for Shakespeare then it's good enough for me.