The elevation of the tragedies is mainly an aspect of 19th century thinking, where the tragedies were elevated because they were theatre that was of a higher moral nature. This was especially true when selections from the plays were made for textbooks (students memorized huge amounts of text as part of their education). This is especially true in the USA, where many moralists often objected to theatre. Finally, by the late 19th century, the performing arts began to be separated into low and high art and Shakespeare’s tragedies were seen as the highest level of spoken theatre.