Dramatic Traditions Of The Dark Ages PDF Download

Excerpt from Dramatic Traditions of the Dark Ages The author of this book sincerely hopes that it will not be taken as a history of the drama in the Dark Ages. He does not assert more than a sporadic cultivation of what would now be called the legitimate theater at any part of the period between Constantine and Otto III. He has merely attempted to hold a brief for one of the parties to a controversy which, in his opinion, has either been ignored or decided incorrectly, for nearly three-quarters of a millennium. This controversy must be brought to a final decision before the literary history of Europe can be written correctly. As was recently said in The Nation (Vol. LXXXII, No. 2128, p. 307, col. 2): "The immense value to mediaeval Europe of the influence coming from the Eastern Empire is only in part recognized as yet;" and, if this be true in the domain of art, it is equally true in nearly every other department of human activity. Under the circumstances, it was natural that the author of this book should occasionally, perhaps frequently, overdo his part. He may have expanded the definition of the word "drama" unduly. 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.