Shakespeare

(it is true) wrote perfect historical 20 plays on subjects belonging to the preceding centuries, (but) they are perfect plays just because there is no care about centuries in them, but a life which all men recognise for the human life of all time;... a rogue in the fifteenth century being, at heart, what a rogue is in the nineteenth and was in the twelfth; and an honest or a knightly man being, in like manner, very similar to other such at any other time. Ruskin.