The proofs of his ignorance, on which the greatest stress is laid, are
a few geographical blunders and anachronisms. Because in a comedy
founded on an earlier tale, he makes ships visit Bohemia, he has been
the subject of much laughter. But I conceive that we should be very
unjust toward him, were we to conclude that he did not, as well as
ourselves, possess the useful but by no means difficult knowledge that
Bohemia is nowhere bounded by the sea. He could never, in that case,
have looked into a map of Germany, but yet describes elsewhere, with
great accuracy, the maps of both Indies, together with the discoveries
of the latest navigators.[21] In such matters Shakespeare is faithful
only to the details of the domestic stories. In the novels on which he
worked, he avoided disturbing the associations of his audience, to
whom they were known, by novelties--the correction of errors in
secondary and unimportant particulars. The more wonderful the story,
the more it ranged in a purely poetical region, which he transfers at
will to an indefinite distance. These plays, whatever names they bear,
take place in the true land of romance and in the very century of
wonderful love stories. He knew well that in the forest of Ardennes
there were neither the lions and serpents of the torrid zone, nor the
shepherdesses of Arcadia; but he transferred both to it,[22] because
the design and import of his picture required them. Here he considered
himself entitled to take the greatest liberties. He had not to do with
a hair-splitting, hypercritical age like ours, which is always seeking
in poetry for something else than poetry; his audience entered the
theatre, not to learn true chronology, geography, and natural history,
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