There are some exceptions, of course. Lord Byron's poets regularly sold out and were very profitable. As was Tennyson and Robert Browning's poetry.
If we had perpetual copyright, I suspect Shakespeare's estate would be worth several billion dollars.
If we had perpetual copyright, I suspect Shakespeare's estate would be worth several billion dollars.
Yet, professional comedians make good money. The best are multimillionaires.
The developments the author points out aren't exactly new or exclusive to this century. You can trace them back to the Industrial Revolution. The 19th century English novelists I read seemed to populate their novels with characters who did nothing but drink tea, read books, make smart quips and over the summer, play a game or two of cricket (hallmarks of the quintessential Victorian gentleman, I was told). You had people who read as a hobby, and people who 'read' (and write about their reading) as a vocation (Matthew Arnold comes to mind, as do an unending list of independent lexicographers, researchers, and scientists).
And extreme success isn't stable. You can fall from the top into nowhere-land at any time.
It's ironic that many engineers believe the arts are a soft career option.
http://www.openculture.com/2013/02/david_foster_wallaces_199...
So yes, Shakespeare would probably still be taught, though the plays would cost a bit more.
My point is that a world with Shakespeare under perpetual copy-write is different enough from this world that it would be very difficult to predict whether or not it would retain its status as a teaching necessity. It could very well be the case that we would be teaching modern renditions of folk tales instead. Or that someone else would write Shakespeare-style archetypes in a more accessible format, and we'd use that instead.
Everybody knows Shakespeare because everybody knows Shakespeare. Its hard to say exactly how much of that is undone by copy-write.