: Re: Is it ok to reference something modern to give the reader a better idea of what something looks like if the book is set in the Middle Ages? This is a random example but would it be bad

@Sherry594

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There are some anachronisms in Shakespeare's work, and if Shakespeare can do it so can you.

In Julius Caesar, the clock strikes three, although clocks wouldn’t strike anything for another thousand years or more.
Hamlet was a student at Wittenberg University, which was less than a century old when the play was written, despite Shakespeare setting it centuries earlier.
Cleopatra decides to play billiards more than a thousand years before anything that resembled the game.

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Almost all of Shakespeare’s works are spiced with a moderate amount of anachronisms. The thing with his anachronisms though is that they are not mistakes on his part. More often than not, Shakespeare introduced them purposely for “dramatic purposes”. This means that he was very much aware that he was writing an anachronism, but put them in specifically in order to produce a special artistic effect that attracts the attention of the readers and the viewers of his plays.
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