Were people more dramatic in the 1900s than the 1960s?
Some famous authors of historical fiction, such as John Jakes (Kent Family Chronicles, North and South, etc.) and Gore Vidal (Burr, Lincoln, etc.) have said that one of their hardest tasks is to take a typical conversation from the Victorian Age (mid 1800s- early 1900s) and make it flow for modern readers. If you ever read things like “Ben Hur” or “The Pickwick Papers” or “Dracula” in the original, then you know that people spoke in that long, flowing, flowering speech pattern that today’s audiences would find intolerable. So in that respect, I’d say that yes, people were more dramatic back then.
