Shakespeare As Glamorous Global Hamburger

Rome has built itself a replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. “The Roman Globe will no doubt be celebrated as yet further evidence of the ‘universality’ of Shakespeare’s art. Unfortunately, by the same reasoning, the conquest of Italian city centres by the McDonald’s franchise demonstrates the universality of hamburgers (hamburger, in Italian slang, means ‘fool’). Don’t be misled by the difference in the product being sold: the Globe is the perfect icon of globalisation. Globalisation replaces many cultures with one, and the language of that new international monoculture is English.”