It’s fun to think that the suspension of disbelief was invented.

It’s difficult to do that with theater for obvious reasons, but you can compare old and new fiction books. Nowadays, you’re immediately in the story, go-go-go. Back then, there would be a justification: Who is the narrator? Why are they telling the story? What is it about? Who it is intended for? An unskippable tutorial, if you will. And the language would not conceal the artificiality. It’s *a story*, there is *a narrator*.