Understanding that this is just opinion, as are most of the previous responses, I don't think it is possible to truly understand what happened here with the Lute.
However there is a concept in the study of the evolution of species that states; the more specialized a species becomes the more prone to extintion it will be. I kind of look at the Lute in this light. We have discussions on this list all the time about all of the different tunings, the different sizes, the different strings, the diffirent forms of music and the different forms of playing techniques. We go from five to thirteen sets, or courses, of strings, to these monster instruments with six foot necks. Personally I think if the Lute had not changed over and over and been re-invented every time music changed, but had stayed with no more than seven courses it might well have survived. I think that those people, who over the years loved the Lute, loved it to death. It got to be too ponderous, too complicated, too expensive to string, too fragile, too difficult to transport, too complicated to play and--- too specialized to survive. Couple all of this with the sound limitations being discussed here and you have a lot of good reasons the instrument could not and did not survive. Of course this is just my opinion which with four dollars will get you a cup of coffee at your local Star Bucks. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
