To this, exactness, so far as
concerns ideal representation, may not only not be truth, but may even be
opposed to it. Anachronisms and the like are in themselves of no account,
and become important only when they make a gap too wide for our illusion
to cross unconsciously, that is, when they are anacoluthons to the
imagination. The aim of the artist is psychologic, not historic truth. It
is comparatively easy for an author to _get up_ any period with tolerable
minuteness in externals, but readers and audiences find more difficulty
in getting them down, though oblivion swallows scores of them at a gulp.
The saving truth in such matters is a truth to essential and permanent
characteristics. The Ulysses of Shakespeare, like the Ulysses of Dante
and Tennyson, more or less harmonizes with our ideal conception of the
wary, long-considering, though adventurous son of Laertes, yet Simon Lord
Lovat is doubtless nearer the original type. In Hamlet, though there is
no Denmark of the ninth century, Shakespeare has suggested the prevailing
rudeness of manners quite enough for his purpose. We see it in the single
combat of Hamlet's father with the elder Fortinbras, in the vulgar
wassail of the king, in the English monarch being expected to hang
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern out of hand merely to oblige his cousin of
Denmark, in Laertes, sent to Paris to be made a gentleman of, becoming
instantly capable of any the most barbarous treachery to glut his
vengeance.
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