The Origin of German Tragic Drama is generally acknowledged as Benjamin's most sustained and original work and as one of the main sources of literary modernism in the twentieth century. It begins with a general theoretical introductions on the nature of the baroque art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concentrating on the peculiar stage-form of royal martyr dramas called Trauerspiel. Later, Benjamin discusses the engravings of Dürer, and the theatre of Shakespeare and Calderón. Baroque tragedy, he argues was distinguished from classical tragedy by its shift from myth into history.