“People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.”

- Milan Kundera

There's a lot of truth in this, but I don't think it applies to the greatest people - people like Shakespeare, for instance. I think it's evident that he was concerned with the future, in the sense that the past is not where the real drama takes place. I believe he was writing for the stage itself in an eternal present, and that his work is intended to help us, not in fighting battles of the past, but to guide us into the future. Therefore, the anachronisms, the mixed-up settings, the disregard of the classical rules of drama - all of this was in the service of a higher principle: to tell the most honest, beneficial, and powerful stories that he possibly could. It's up to us, the living, to learn from them.