tory,
but to witness a vivid exhibition. I will undertake to prove that
Shakespeare's anachronisms are, for the most part, committed of set
purpose and deliberately. It was frequently of importance to him to
move the exhibited subjects out of the background of time and bring it
quite near us. Hence in _Hamlet_, though avowedly an old Northern
story, there runs a tone of modish society, and in every respect the
customs of the most recent period. Without those circumstantialities
it would not have been allowable to make a philosophical inquirer of
Hamlet, on which trait, however, the meaning of the whole is made to
rest. On that account he mentions his education at a university,
though, in the age of the true Hamlet of history, universities were
not in existence. He makes him study at Wittenberg, and no selection
of a place could have been more suitable. The name was very popular:
the story of _Dr. Faustus of Wittenberg_ had made it well known; it
was of particular celebrity in Protestant England, as Luther had
taught and written there shortly before, and the very name must have
immediately suggested the idea of freedom in thinking. I cannot even
consider it an anachronism that Richard the Third should speak of
Machiavelli. The word is here used altogether proverbially the
contents, at least, of the book entitled _Of the Prince_ (_Del
Principe_) have been in existence ever since the existence of tyrants;
Machiavelli was merely the first to commit them to writing.

That Shakespeare has accurately hit the essential custom, namely, the
spirit of ages and nations, is at least acknowledged generally by the
English critics; but many sins against external costume may be easily
remarked. Yet here it is necessary to bear in mind that the Roman
pieces were acted upon the stage of that day in the European dress.
This was, it is true, still grand and splendid, not so silly and
tasteless as it became toward the end of the seventeenth century.
(Brutus and Cassius appeared in the Spanish cloak; they wore, quite
contrary to the Roman custom, the sword by their side in time of
peace, and, according to the testimony of an eye witness,[23] it was,
in the dialogue where Brutus stimulates Cassius to the conspiracy,
drawn, as if involuntarily, half out of the sheath). This does in no
way agree with our way of thinking: we are not content without the
toga.

The present, perhaps, is not an inappropriate place for a few general
observations on