The dramatic tradition of English literature saw its beginnings with Anglo-Saxon settlers and their Germanic tradition. Beowulf, an epic poem of the 8th Century, is the most important writing of the time and its language is Anglo-Saxon, commonly known nowadays as Old English. This what makes it very hard to understand for modern English speakers.
The dramatic tradition (the tradition of theatre) in the West began with the ancient Greeks. This began to flourish in ancient Greece around 600 BC, and many of the methods, styles and categories of theatre that we employ nowadays come from ancient Greece. Theatre particularly developed in the area surrounding Athens, as a way of honouring the god Dionysus.
