Excerpt from Literary Criticism From the Elizabethan Dramatists: Repertory and Synthesis And will persist in determining how things ought to be, long after they have ceased to be so. Traditionally the function of the English drama was didactic. It was brought into being because it seemed an effective method of teaching the people. We know, however, how soon it brought down upon itself the displeasrire of the very people that gave it existence, because forces beyond their control, yet innate in its creation, developed for it additional functions which they consid ered anything but desirable. Nevertheless, the ostensible purpose of dramatic production remaiiied didactic to the end of the medieval drama. N ow the end of the medieval drama almost coincided with the culmination of the. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.