Shakespeare’s works are too old to be in copyright, so you could even use the same written word if you wanted. And of course, many movies and stories have used his plots.

Even if he were still protected, if you just used basic plot ideas and no words, you might be ok under copyright laws. In general, the ideas are not protected, just their expression. With plots it gets a little tricky — it could be possible to be liable for following a plot step by step, but for the most part plots are general and can be borrowed with payment, license or attribution.

It might be nice to say “based on a play by Shakespeare” but there is no legal reason to do so. (And if you take protected material from a modern work, it doesn’t provide any legal cover to cite the source — thats a standard for plagiarism in an academic or journalistic work, but doesn’t carry any weight for legal copyright issues.)

(P.S. — just a historical note regarding the post above: the most recent major revision of US Copyright law was in 1979, but copyright law has existed as long as the US has: it is written into the Constitution.)

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