I recently read a review of a movie that involved historical events. The review was generally favorable; its only criticism was that the history was not accurate. I didn’t think about this for very long. I watched the movie and enjoyed it. I quickly forgot the film (and its name) as well as its supposed historical inaccuracies. Then I started to think about the interplay of history and art.

A work of art, or one that aspires to that category, is under no obligation to be historically accurate. Its task is to be good, interesting, emotionally apposite. Not only is it free to depart from history, but it can also deviate from whatever source inspired it. A few examples of both successful and unsuccessful works that deviate from the underlying facts:

Macbeth is a good place to start. Macbeth was a real Scottish king who reigned from 1040 to 1057. He came to power after killing King Duncan I in battle (not by murdering him in his sleep, as in Shakespeare’s play). Banquo, Macbeth’s friend-turned-rival in the play, likely did not exist at all. He was invented or embellished to provide an ancestry for King James I of Scotland, who was on the throne when Shakespeare wrote the play. The witches are, obviously, pure invention, as is the Sleepwalking Scene. But the play works because it is imbued with genius; its historical accuracy is irrelevant.

Verdi made a great opera out of Shakespeare’s play. He changed the story further. Instead of three witches, he used three groups of witches – about 18 choristers divided into three equal groups. Verdi changes the knocking at the gate in Act 2, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The Macbeths have just murdered King Duncan. Macbeth is horrified by what he has done, his wife less so. Lady Macbeth takes the daggers that he has neglected to leave at the scene of the crime to “gild the faces of the grooms” to make them seem responsible for the murder. She leaves and a knocking is heard. She returns and more knocking is heard. Just before the scene ends still more knocking. The next scene moves to the drunken Porter complaining about the knocking. After a succession of knockings at the gate, he opens it and admits Macduff and Lennox.

In Verdi’s version the knocking occurs just twice, first in triplicate and then in two pairs. They initiate the end of the first act rather than being in the second as in the play. There is no scene with the Porter who does not appear in the opera. Thus, there is no explanation for the knocking other than its dramatic effect as there is no one at the gate, nor is there a gate. Banquo and Macduff enter after the Macbeths have left. The former discovers Duncan’s corpse. The Macbeths return and feign horror at the bloody deed along with the chorus. The act ends in a glorious ensemble that captures the impact of the murder on the Scottish court and the cynicism of the evil duo responsible for the crime. Here, the knocking is not a relief from murder, but rather an awful comment on it. Its effect is like a sledgehammer of doom.

Verdi changed Shakespeare to meet the needs of the lyric theater. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t adhere to the original version. Artistic truth trumps other accuracies. The emotional impact of Verdi’s setting of King Duncan’s murder reaches a creative height rarely achieved in art; that it has no relationship to Shakespeare’s play is irrelevant.

Macbeth Knocking at the gate and Act 1 finale

Verdi’s other operas based on historical events such as Giovanna D’Arco and Don Carlos succeed or fail on their musical merits. Both depart widely from history, but the former fails while the latter is one of Verdi’s greatest works. Giovanna is arguably the weakest opera in the composer’s canon.

Back to Shakespeare. His historical plays. All of them adhere loosely, if at all, to the actual events that they purport to depict; some are masterpieces, others are very badly made. Examples of the latter are Henry VI Part 1 and King John. Richard III is also distorted to make the Tudor usurpation look legitimate and necessary. But it’s brilliantly made and offers a portrait of villainy among the great list of literary evildoers, irrespective of its adherence to the facts.

Henry IV (both parts 1 and 2) are historically inaccurate in their specific details and portrayals of characters. Shakespeare dramatized and invented events to serve his artistic and political purposes, drawing heavily on the biased and often inaccurate Holinshed’s Chronicles. Shakespeare used a historical foundation as a starting point for dramatic effect. The core political tensions are largely accurate, but the detailed timeline, character relationships, and personal motivations are heavily altered or invented. His great creation, Sir John Falstaff is entirely invented.

So popular a dramatic figure was Falstaff that Shakespeare brought him back in another, and much weaker, play The Merry Wives of Windsor. Verdi used The Merry Wives as the source of his last opera, Falstaff. The opera is one of the supreme masterpieces of the genre. Verdi and his librettist, Arrigo Boito borrowed Falstaff’s Honor Monologue from Henry IV, Part 1. Here’s Shakespeare’s version.

Well, ’tis no matter; honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on? how then? Can honour set to a leg? no. Or an arm? no. Or take away the grief of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? he that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no. Doth he hear it? no. ’Tis insensible, then? yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? no. Why? detraction will not suffer it: therefore I’ll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon: and so ends my catechism.

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The text of the Verdi/Boito Honor Monologue is below. It’s followed by an English translation.

L’Onore!
Ladri! Voi state ligi all’onor vostro, voi!
Cloache d’ignominia,
quando, non sempre, noi
Possiam star ligi al nostro.
Io stesso, sì, io, io,
Devo talor da un lato
porre il timor di Dio
E, per necessità, sviar l’onore, usare
Stratagemmi ed equivoci,
Destreggiar, bordeggiare.
E voi, coi vostri cenci
e coll’occhiata torta
Da gatto pardo e i fetidi sghignazzi
avete a scorta
Il vostro Onor! Che onore?!
che onor? che onor! che ciancia!
Che baia!
Puï l’onore riempirvi la pancia?
No. Puï l’onor rimettervi uno stinco?
Non puï.
Nè un piede? No. Nè un dito?
Nè un capello? No.
L’onor non é chirurgo.
Che é dunque? Una parola.
Che c’é in questa parola?
C’é dell’aria che vola.
Bel costrutto!
L’onore lo puï sentire chi é morto?
No. Vive sol coi vivi?…
Neppure: perchè a torto
Lo gonfian le lusinghe,
lo corrompe l’orgoglio,
L’ammorban le calunnie;
e per me non ne voglio!
Ma, per tornare a voi, furfanti,
ho atteso troppo.
E vi discaccio.

Honor!
Thieves! You stay in your honor, you!
Sewers of ignominy, when, not always, we
We can stay in ours. I myself, yes, me, me,
On the one hand I must ask God’s fear
And, by necessity, clear the honor, use
Stratagems and misunderstandings,
Go away, tack.
And you, with your rags and your cake look
From serval and and the fetid sneers you have to escort
Your Honor! That honor?! what honor? what an honor! that chatters!
What a bay! – Can the honor fill your stomach?
No. Can the honor put a shin back on you? He can not.
Not a foot? No. Nor a finger? Nor a hair? No.
Honor is not a surgeon. What is it then? A word.
What’s in this word? There is air flying.
Nice construct! Can the honor hear him who died?
No. Do you live alone with the living? … Not even: why wrongly
The flattery swells, the pride corrupts him,
The slanders plague him; and for me I do not want it!

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Another example of inserting an artistic truth instead of a factual one is Tolstoy’s portrait of Napoleon in War and Peace. It is not historically accurate; rather it is a literary and philosophical tool designed to serve his theory of history. He portrays Napoleon as a self-important, ineffective figure, which directly contradicts the widely held historical view of Napoleon as a brilliant military strategist. For Tolstoy, Napoleon represents the flawed “Great Man” theory of history, which he sought to debunk.

How successful Tolstoy is with Napoleon depends on your view of his lengthy historical digressions in the novel. I’ve always thought that the novel would be better without the author’s historical meanderings. But who am I compared to Tolstoy?

The point of the current meanderings is that when art contradicts fact, it’s of no matter if the art is first rate. Artistic truth overrides the record of the past with decisive rigor. To a real artist the past is no more than a source of inspiration.