Passage Summary: Historians don't think old plays show what society was really like because the writers were too busy trying to make the audience feel sorry for the main character.

Reasoning: Playwrights create innocent protagonists facing hostile societies to evoke audience empathy; consequently, historians don't trust these plays as accurate depictions of those societies.

Analysis: The paradox here is why the goal of 'empathy' would make the historical setting unreliable. To resolve this, we need to understand the trade-offs of storytelling. If a writer's primary goal is to make a protagonist look like a victim so the audience cheers for them, they might unfairly exaggerate how mean or 'hostile' the surrounding society is. Look for an answer that explains how the creative need for drama or empathy leads to a distortion of social reality, making the play a poor historical record.