SOURCE: Barish, Jonas. “Hats, Clocks and Doublets: Some Shakespearean Anachronisms.” In Shakespeare's Universe: Renaissance Ideas and Conventions, edited by John M. Mucciolo, pp. 29-36. Aldershot, Hants, England: Scolar Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Barish examines anachronisms in Shakespeare’s plays, particularly in Julius Caesar and Cymbeline, and argues that most of Shakespeare's anachronisms are unobtrusive, and that Shakespeare's original audiences were less likely than modern ones to notice them.

Shakespearean drama, as we all know, is riddled with anachronisms. Repeatedly the plays jolt us out of the historical moment in which their stories are supposed to be unfolding, by reference to some event or custom or historical person that could not, so far as we know, have coexisted with the setting. Hector quoting Aristotle—several centuries before Aristotle was born; the future Richard III, while Duke of Gloucester, measuring his own ruthlessness against that of the murderous Machiavel...