Even Shakespeare had bard days

A NEW study finds that half of the nation's adolescents say they have been told off by an adult for reading inappropriate literature – as in a gossip magazine or the lyrics of the latest pop sensation. Clearly this report is false, as everyone knows that every adolescent in every generation gets rebuked for reading "trash".

Of course, one generation's trash is another's precociousness. In a previous era one would be censured for reading Enid Blyton or the dangerously anarchist Beano. Later, consuming the letters page of Jackie indicated incipient moral depravity. There ...