An Actor , in reference to the theater , means a man who plays a role in a play, who therein represents a character or character type . The women are called actresses, but all fall under the general name Actors.

Originally, drama consisted of no more than a simple chorus who sang hymns in honor of Bacchus, [1] meaning that the first Actor s were just singers and musicians. See Character, Tragedy , Character type, and Chorus.

Thespis was the first who added to this very shapeless chorus, in order to take some weight off it, a Declaimer who recited some other heroic or comic adventures. Aeschylus, [2] to whom this character alone seemed boring, attempted to introduce a second and to convert the old narratives into dialogs. Before him, Actor s, smeared with lees and pulled on a handcart, entertained passers-bys. He invented the idea of theatres; to his Actor s, he gave more majestic clothes and flattering shoes that were called buskins or cothurnus . See Buskins.

Sophocles added a third Actor , and the Greeks contented themselves with this number; meaning that people regarded as a rule of dramatic poetry, that there can never be more than three speakers on stage at a time; a rule that Horace expressed in this verse: Nec quarta loqui Persona laboret [Let not a fourth person strive to speak] .

This did not prevent theater troupes from being more numerous; but, according to Vossius, the number of all the Actor s necessary to a play should not exceed fourteen. Before the opening of the play, their names would be announced to the whole theater, and then the role that each one had to fill. The moderns have sometimes put more Actors on stage to increase interest by having a variety of characters; but this has often resulted in confusion in the unfolding of the play.

Horace speaks of a kind of Secondary actor s, in use in his time, whose role consisted of imitating the principal Actor s and giving them the most luster they could by imitating dwarfs. Beyond that, we know very little about what their function was.

The ancient Actor s recited lines while masked and were obligated to really project their voices so that they could be heard by the enormous number of people who filled the amphitheaters. They were accompanied by a flute player who warmed them up, gave them the tone, and played while they recited their lines.

As much as Actor s were honored in Athens, where they were sometimes made responsible for embassies and negotiations, they were equally despised in Rome. Not only did they not rank among the citizens, but when someone went on stage, they were chased out of their clan and deprived of the right to vote by the Censors. That is what Scipio expressly said in Cicero, cited by Saint Augustine in the second book of The City of God, chapter XIII: cùm artem ludicram scenamque totam probro ducerent, genus id hominum, non modo honore reliquorum civium, sed etiam tribu moveri notatione censoriâ voluerunt ; [3] and the example of Roscius whom Cicero held in such esteem, does not prove the contrary. The Orator admires, to be sure, the talents of the Player, but he admires even more his virtues, which distinguished him so much from those of his profession that they seemed to exclude him from the theater. In this regard, we have nearly the same ideas as the Romans, and the English appear to have adopted in part those of the Greeks.

Notes

1. The Greek God of Wine

2. He was the author of the Oresteia and the first of the three great Greek playwrights of tragedy, followed by Sophocles and Euripides.

3. See Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (Edinburgh, 1888), 1:62.