Hogarth“New Boy” By Tracy Chevalier Some ideas — the Unicorn Frappuccino, Ryan Seacrest, American government — look better in theory than in practice. Same goes for the Hogarth Shakespeare project, a clever-sounding plan to ask well-known authors to write novels based on the Bard’s plays. The series, which started in 2015 with Jeanette Winterson’s revision of “The Winter’s Tale,” has grown to include Howard Jacobson on “Merchant of Venice,”Anne Tyler on “Taming of the Shrew” and Margaret Atwood on “The Tempest.” Our age is so uniquely fixated on originality that the project feels a bit larcenous — indeed, that’s its appeal.