ABSTRACT
Despite the early links between the drama and both the processes of learning and the institutions of secondary and higher education, it is clear that drama in the public domain became clearly separated from these connections, particularly with the advent of the commercial theatre. The formal advances in drama which emerged in educational contexts, particularly the Inns of Court, would probably have been more directly influential if the sort of relative continuity between academic and non-academic drama that is to be found in the pre-commercial interlude drama of the sixteenth century had persisted. As it was, the coming of the commercial stage put a sharp social barrier between the two forms of activity. Whatever influence the higher educational institutions continued to have over this important area of cultural production had to be effected in other, more indirect ways. One of these was the fact of the substantial percentage of playwrights who were trained in these institutions and enjoyed the sort of classical education they provided. Though academic drama cannot be claimed in itself to be a strong influence on the public product, insofar as it constituted a significant dimension of the exercise of neoclassical culture in the universities and the Inns of Court it did constitute part of the early formative cultural milieu of those playwrights who did go to university.
