You may have already seen by now this NY Times article entitled How Shakespeare Invented Teenagers:
Yet our whole modern understanding of adolescence is there to be found in this play. Shakespeare essentially created this new category of humanity, and in place of the usual mix of nostalgia and loathing with which we regard adolescents (and adolescence), Shakespeare would have us look at teenagers in a spirit of wonder. He loves his teenagers even as he paints them in all their absurdity and nastiness.
When I first saw this come through I was surprised at how short it was, until I realized that it’s just a snippet from the upcoming book “How Shakespeare Changed Everything”, by Stephen Marche.
Honestly I read it and skipped it, and I’m only posting here to get a little discussion going since everybody and his uncle Antonio has been linking it. I couldn’t help but think, “Didn’t we already go through this with Bloom?”
What do you think? Did Shakespeare invent teenagers?
Yes, we did already go through this with Bloom and I think this deserves no more serious attention than Bloom's absurd contention that Shakespeare invented humanity. It appears to me that Marche is merely inventing a way of looking at things through Shakespeare-colored glasses, much as Bloom did. As his approach is entirely derivative, it strikes me as even more boring than Bloom.
–Carl