ABSTRACT
In the Middle Ages, drama was, in a very real sense, not literature; it was a visual and aural spectacle, which could only be 'consumed' in a theatre. In the post-medieval period, however, drama has become one of several recognized literary genres. By this I mean that members of the literate public are able to read plays privately in their own homes, without going to the theatre; indeed, nowadays drama is probably more read than seen in performance, certainly within schools and universities. In France, this change in the status of drama from spectacle to literature began to occur at the end of the fifteenth and into the sixteenth centuries. Its primary cause was arguably the invention and spread of printing.
