22nd March 2010
A 'new' play by William Shakespeare? I'd prefer a new play by somebody else
“This feels like an unprecedentedly derivative age. I know that almost all periods of history have considered themselves to be the most disastrous ever – and ours is no exception – but that’s the only superlative that we seem to allow ourselves. In the last few years, we’ve haemorrhaged confidence in our ability to make new stuff up. It’s not just pretending we’ve found more Shakespeare instead of writing new plays, it’s the “New Mini” and the “New Beetle”, it’s ironic relaunching of Salt’n’Shake and Monster Munch – we don’t even trust ourselves to invent new sorts of starchy crap.
